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Aaron Judge is back — and the Yankees have to hope their offense is too.

After homering in his last at-bat against the Rays in Sunday’s loss, Judge went deep twice in an 11-10 win over the Angels in The Bronx on Monday.

And it was just enough, as the Yankees bullpen repeatedly blew leads.

The back-and-forth victory snapped a five-game losing streak, as the Yankees took advantage of five home runs and won it on a Jordan Romano wild pitch that scored José Caballero with Ryan McMahon at the plate — and Judge on deck.

In his first at-bat versus the Angels Yusei Kikuchi, Judge took a 2-0 changeup and blasted a two-run, 456-foot shot halfway up the bleachers in left-center for an early lead in the bottom of the first.

With the Yankees involved in a battle with the Angels — thanks to a bad night by just about every pitcher Aaron Boone went to, starting with Will Warren — the Yankees needed Judge again in the bottom of the sixth.

He gave them the lead again with a solo shot to left.

It was his sixth homer of the young season, but it also put Judge in the franchise record books.

The multihomer game was Judge’s 47th of his career, passing Mickey Mantle and leaving him behind only Babe Ruth, who had 68 with the Yankees, as well as the most in MLB history with 72.

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Still, the Yankees don’t want to completely rely on Judge, but a combination of poor performance from half the lineup for much of the season- and an ugly one from the bullpen on Monday, forced that to be the case again.

And that’s why the Yankees can’t seem to afford any drop-off from Judge and weren’t able to during the five-game losing streak entering Monday’s game.

The encouraging start to the season has been replaced by worries in the bullpen and all over the infield, where Jazz Chisholm Jr., McMahon and Caballero have all disappointed in multiple facets of the game.

And the pen has been inconsistent at best.

With Warren knocked out in the fourth inning — despite bringing a no-hitter into the frame — Boone had to turn to Fernando Cruz, who walked a pair of batters and forced in a run.

Lefty Tim Hill allowed three hits and a run in 1 ²/₃ innings, but the Yankees have generally been able to rely on both Cruz and Hill.

That has not been the case with Jake Bird, a disaster after coming over from the Rockies at last year’s trade deadline.

The right-hander gave up a three-run homer to Mike Trout, and two innings later, Doval allowed a two-run shot to Trout, who entered the game with just a pair of homers on the season.

But with the threat of Judge in the on-deck circle, Romano threw a 3-2 pitch in the dirt to give the Yankees the win.

The Texas Rangers scored eight runs while the Northern California Athletics scored one run.

Maybe the most surprising thing about tonight’s game, especially as it was unfolding early, was that A’s starter Luis Severino ended up pitching six innings. Or maybe it was that the A’s eventually scored at all.

In the game’s first frame, following an out, Severino walked the next two Texas hitters and then Jake Burger blasted a three-run bomb that looked destined to bounce off the team bus for a big early. Severino appeared to slip on the mound at one point and had the trainers check on him in the inning before allowing a couple more hits that the Rangers stranded.

In the top of the 3rd, Burger took Severino deep once again, a solo shot for his second of the game and fourth of the year. And that was all the scoring for a couple of hours until the Rangers broke through again for four more runs in the top of the 8th on RBI hits from the Joshes Smith and Jung.

As for the A’s? Well, they weren’t ever especially close to touching home for most of the game as they ran into vintage Nathan Eovaldi. The A’s lone run scored on a solo Lawrence Butler home run off Luis Curvelo an inning after Eovaldi had exited an 8-0 game.

Eovaldi, who had a couple of uncharacteristically poor outings to begin the year, looked solid in a win over Seattle in his last outing but he stepped it up to 2025 levels of good tonight against an A’s team that came into the evening sharing a lead with Texas in the American League West.

With Burger doing damage early, and the bats adding on late to combo with Eovaldi’s mastery, the Rangers are back alone atop the AL West as they evened their record on the current West Coast road trip.

Player of the Game: Joc Pederson had three hits so you know it was a good night. And while Burger deserves praise for providing the bulk of the scoring and carrying the bats when the game was still in question, the work put in by Eovaldi was sensational and I simply refuse to let an opportunity pass to appreciate Nasty Nate.

Overall, Eovaldi went seven shutout innings and allowed just three hits and a couple of walks while striking out seven on 84 pitches.

I imagine the Rangers might have tried to squeeze another inning out of Eovaldi but with a long top of the 8th, they decided to turn to a ’pen that was surely grateful that the veteran starter had gone deep in the game.

Up Next: The Rangers and Athletics will play the second game of this four game set with LHP MacKenzie Gore ready to go for Texas opposite former Rangers left-handed hurler Jeffrey Springs for the Sactown squad.

The Tuesday evening first pitch from Sutter Health Park is scheduled for 8:40 pm CDT once again and you can catch it on the Rangers Sports Network.

The Guardians had an excellent win to open their series against the Cardinals last night and look to follow it up with a second tonight.

Here’s your recap from yesterday. The Guardians swapped George Valera onto the roster for CJ Kayfus who was barely playing. I wonder how they will work Valera into the lineup with Angel Martinez absolutely balling out. I suspect he’ll get plenty of DH reps.

The Guardians also swapped Hunter Gaddis for Kolby Allard, whom they had to DFA to move off the roster. Gaddis averaged 95.1 mph with his fastball, so he looks back to his old self (94.7 mph average last year).

TJ Stats released an updated prospects’ ranking, with DeLauter now at #11.

AROUND MLB:

There were eight multi-homer performances yesterday, and everyone was scoring a ton. The Twins destroyed the hapless Red Sox, 13-6. Is Garrett Crochet suddenly bad??

The Yankees walked off the Angels 11-10. Really shows what kind of day it was.

Craig Albernaz was struck in the face by a foul ball while standing in the Orioles dugout during Baltimore’s 9-7 win over the Diamondbacks on Monday.

The scary moment occurred in the fifth inning when O’s second baseman Jeremiah Jackson sent a screaming foul ball into his team’s dugout and struck the Orioles’ manager on the side of the face with the ball as he was standing at the top of the tunnel to the clubhouse at Camden Yards. 

Albernaz was taken down into the clubhouse and evaluated by the medical staff. 

Bench coach Donnie Ecker took over as manager. 

Ecker told reporters after the game that Albernaz was doing “good.” 

Craig Albernaz took a scary shot from a foul boul into the dugout pic.twitter.com/5oPiN0DtYd

— Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) April 14, 2026

“Just as a precaution right now, he is going to get scanned, and we’ll have more information tomorrow,” Ecker said. 

“We sit there every game and we’re all kind of vulnerable to it,” he added. “When it happens, everyone feels for him.” 

Albernaz did eventually return to the dugout in the sixth inning, the MASN broadcast showed. 

A red mark was clearly visible on his face when he was shown on the broadcast and he eventually left the dugout again and did not return. 

“The fact he didn’t go to the ground shows how tough of an SOB he is. And the fact he wanted to come back to the dugout, he’s got a big set of balls on him,” Orioles pitcher Trevor Rogers said, per the Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka. 

The Orioles had been trailing 4-1 at the time that Albernaz was hit with the foul ball. 

Baltimore was down 7-1 heading into the bottom of the sixth, when the Orioles battled back with five runs in the sixth. 

Jackson capped it off with a grand slam to cut the O’s deficit to just one, with the blast coming just in time for Albernaz to see when he briefly returned to the dugout. 

Pete Alonso’s two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh gave the Orioles an 8-7 lead and Jackson hit a solo shot in the bottom of the eighth to extend the advantage. 

The Yankees announced they have optioned right-handed reliever Jake Bird to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

The move came after New York snapped its five-game losing streak with an 11-10 walk-off win over the Los Angeles Angels on Monday in The Bronx, but in a game that saw the Yankees use five arms out of the bullpen amid a stretch of 13 games in 13 days.

A corresponding move was not immediately announced, but the club has several relievers on the 40-man roster who still have options, including Kervin Castro, Yerry De los Santos,and Angel Chivilli.

Against the Angels, Bird entered with a runner on first base and two gone in the top of the sixth inning. But after allowing a bloop single to center, he left a 3-2 sweeper out and over the plate to Mike Trout, and the future Hall of Famer jumped all over it for a 421-foot, game-tying three-run home run.

Bird got out of the frame and started the seventh with a strikeout, but he allowed a hard-hit single and a hard-hit double, setting a game-tying sac fly to the final batter he faced, erasing the lead Aaron Judge briefly provided with his second home run of the night.

Bird has really struggled since coming over to the Yanks in a trade last season with the Colorado Rockies. He made just three appearances after the trade, surrendering seven runs (six earned) on four hits with two walks and four strikeouts in 2.0 innings before he was optioned to Triple-A.

Through eight appearances this season, he's allowed six runs on nine hits with one walk and nine strikeouts in 7.0 innings and has once again been sent to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

The Red Sox lost to the Twins 11-6 on Monday, a Crochet Day. They were down 11-0 before the second inning was over and got some runs after that, but it was plenty over by then. It was bad. It was very bad. It was abysmal. The end.

All sorts of problems were on display for the Yankees: infield defense that has been under the microscope again underwhelmed; a couple of misplays extended an inning that would not end; Will Warren could not overcome the problems behind him and could not put batters away; a bullpen that had been spotty was far worse than that and coughed up lead after lead.

But these issues become minimized when the Yankees offense hums and Aaron Judge destroys baseballs.

In an entertaining Monday matchup that pitted the past two Team USA World Baseball Classic captains against each other, Judge and Mike Trout put on a show for eight innings before Judge’s co-stars stole the spotlight in the ninth.

Trent Grisham — who did not even start yet launched his first two home runs of the season — stepped into a two-run home run to tie the game in the ninth before the Yankees manufactured the game-winner, José Caballero doubling, stealing third and scoring on a walk-off wild pitch to claim an entertaining and back-and-forth 11-10 victory over the Angels in front of 35,789 in The Bronx.

“Maybe it was good to have a game like that where it was a little messy,” manager Aaron Boone said after the Yankees (9-7) snapped a five-game skid. “The offense was able to really pick up what’s been excellent pitching for us so far.”

The Yankees outhit their other issues, their offense awakening in the New York heat and against Angels pitching. It took five innings for the Yankees to score seven runs — or more runs than they had scored in each of their previous seven games.

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Because of their other problems and because of Trout, they needed to keep adding on.

It was Trout — whose bid for a grand slam died a few feet short earlier in the game — who answered a three-run shot from Grisham in the fifth by smoking his own three-run home run to tie it 7-7 in the sixth.

A few minutes later, Judge crushed his second home run of the game to left, a bullet that might have dented the pole if angled a few feet to the left, giving the Yankees another lead that they would not hold.

They already had blown a 4-0 lead after three innings — because the Angels scored four unearned runs against Warren, done in by an inability to finish off hitters and an error from Caballero plus a play Paul Goldschmidt normally makes — and a 7-4 edge after five innings because of Trout’s first homer.

What was one more lead to blow, this one 8-7 after the sixth?

The Angels seized control in the seventh and eighth — in the former, two hits and a sacrifice fly off Jake Bird tied the game, before Trout victimized Camilo Doval by demolishing his second homer of the night, a two-run, 445-foot dagger that banked into the visiting bullpen — which made the Yankees reach for their remaining ammunition in the ninth.

“A bunch of big homers could really get you down as a team,” said Grisham, who sat against opposing lefty Yusei Kikuchi, entered in the fifth and authored his best game of the season. “Staying in there and fight and staying in it the whole time was good to see.”

What might have been the most backbreaking loss of the season became arguably the most inspired. Against closer Jordan Romano, who entered with a 0.00 ERA, Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled before Grisham — who entered the game hitting .133 but undeterred because of the strength of his at-bats — saw a 3-1 slider and punished it to right to flip the game.

“To go out there and get some results and put the ball in the seats in some big spots obviously was huge,” Boone said of Grisham, who then watched Caballero — the reigning American League steals leader — create havoc, aided by a nine-pitch at-bat from Ryan McMahon in which eight fastballs were followed by one slider, which slid all the way to the backstop and prompted a subdued Yankees celebration around the plate.

The defensive misplays, lack of length from Warren and, most notably, the 5 ¹/₃ innings of six-run ball from the Yankees bullpen could be forgotten for the time being.

So could that five-game losing streak.

“Every good team goes through at least two big losing streaks,” Judge said. “Hopefully we can get this one out of the way and hopefully try to avoid the other one. But it’s going to come, and you can’t ride the roller coaster.”