DENVER — That’s more like it.
A day after the Yankees allowed the Rockies to enjoy a rare victory, a brief escape from the worst 50-game start to the season in baseball’s modern era, reality set back in.
This is how 30-20 versus 9-42 is supposed to look: in the midst of the Yankees’ 10-run fifth inning, Paul Goldschmidt lining an RBI single to right field that Rockies second baseman Adael Amador could only fling his glove up at, unsuccessfully of course.
Amador later told reporters the glove slipped, but it may as well have been a white flag as the Yankees went on to wallop the Rockies 13-1 in front of 43,186 on Saturday afternoon at Coors Field.
Yankees bats were quiet on Friday night outside of Aaron Judge and Goldschmidt, and that was the case again early on Saturday before the fifth-inning outburst in which the Yankees sent 14 men to the plate and scored 10 of them — the second time this season they have recorded a 10-run inning.
“We’ve been kind of waiting for that big inning since we’ve been here in these two games,” Judge said. “We were all kind of pissed that we gave up the lead there in the inning prior, but the boys answered back. That was the main thing: tie game, we got our ace on the mound, let’s go to work and do our thing.”
All 11 Yankees who took a plate appearance had at least one hit on the day, with six of them recording multi-hit efforts — led by three-hit games from Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe and DJ LeMahieu — as the Yankees (31-20) racked up a season-high 21 hits.
Their 13 runs Saturday were more than they had scored in their past four games combined.
It was more than enough offensive support for Max Fried, who worked quickly over 7 ¹/₃ innings of one-run ball — on just 83 pitches — to continue his terrific start to the season.
The left-hander, who scattered six hits and one walk while striking out seven, kept his ERA at 1.29 in his 11th start.
The Yankees will be tasked with taking the rubber game on Sunday to make sure they avoid handing the Rockies (9-43) their first series victory of the season.
“I’ve had a lot of games here and crazy things happen here a lot of the time,” Bellinger said. “Just continuing to stay with our plan and continue to pass the baton. We’re doing a pretty good job of that right now.”
Entering the fifth inning Saturday, the Yankees’ only run in a 1-1 game was Judge’s solo shot in the top of the first, his 18th home run of the season.
But they got aggressive against Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland to take the lead and then break the game open.
Austin Wells got the rally started with a single and scored all the way from first when Oswald Peraza ripped a double to the wall in left-center field for the 2-1 lead.
Manager Aaron Boone indicated that those two at-bats — he called Peraza’s “the hit of the game” — provided a jolt to the dugout before the inning “snowballed.”
“Wow, it’s a big moment for me and for the team,” Peraza said. “Looking for a good pitch, he threw me a cutter inside and I put my bat on the ball. Excited for that.”
Goldschmidt, who followed with a walk, agreed that the back-to-back hits electrified the dugout.
“A lot of times I’d probably say not, but it actually did,” Goldschmidt said. “We had a bunch of guys on base those first couple innings. They got those [two] double plays and kept us at bay. … Very first pitch, Peraza hit that double — that was really the big swing. Then we had the lead and momentum and we were able to add on from there.”
The Rockies helped out with an error and then intentionally walked Judge, but Bellinger and Jasson Domínguez hit sacrifice flies, Volpe and Goldschmidt delivered RBI singles and Wells and Grisham each had two-run doubles in their second at-bats of the frame before it was over.
“Good players, good hitters,” Boone said. “But today was a really good example of a really good snowball inning. … Coming off four, five days where we haven’t scored a bunch, to break out like that was nice.”
