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WEST SACRAMENTO — It was a thing of beauty. A work of art. A glorious textbook swing on an extremely hittable pitch, right smack over the middle of the plate. Dead red for any hitter.
Particularly Aaron Judge.
On the first pitch he saw in his first at-bat in his first big-league game in Sacramento, an hour from his hometown of Linden, Judge showcased his Judgian swing Friday night and smashed a vicious line drive, a sizzling 114.7 mph off his bat.
The launch angle was a mere 18 degrees. Anything more, and it would have cleared the left-field wall for his 13th home run. Instead, the ball ricocheted off the top of the wall, and he settled for a double.
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Judge hit it too well. He also smoked a towering fly to the wall and finished 1-for-4 with an intentional walk in the Yankees’ 10-2 rout of the A’s. His teammates hit four homers, three by 22-year-old Jasson Dominguez, the youngest Yankee in history with three homers in a game, and another by Paul Goldschmidt.
“It’s a good place to hit,” said Judge, who knew his liner wouldn’t go out because the ball had too much topspin. “A couple of those balls had no business getting to the track like that. They did. So I look forward to tomorrow.”
The baseball world eagerly anticipated this moment, the world’s most feared slugger taking hacks at little ol’ Sutter Health Park, a minor-league facility that A’s owner John Fisher is using, at least temporarily, while focused on relocating the team to Las Vegas.
With two more games in the series, the two-time American League MVP will have more opportunities to pad his home run total. Fisher, who was giddy at a news conference last year when saying he was looking forward to watching Judge and others “launch home runs” here, attended Friday’s game.
“Excited,” Judge said. “The fans were rowdy. It was a packed house. It was pretty cool playing a game here. … There were a lot of Yankee fans, which was cool. A lot of support.”
The A’s called a crowd of 12,049 their second sellout of the season. Capacity is 14,014, but announced crowds count only tickets purchased, not comps. The A’s are last in the majors in attendance, averaging 9,839 per home date, but the Yankees travel well, and their fans were far noisier than A’s fans and loudly booed when Judge was intentionally walked in the eighth.
That the A’s were out-homered 4-0 is nothing new. While getting off to a decent start at 20-19, they’ve failed to use their new digs as a homefield advantage. They’re 13-7 on the road but 7-12 in Sacramento.
It’s a small sample size, but the splits are dramatic nonetheless. Sutter Health has the majors’ sixth highest homers-per-game average among the 30 ballparks, though it’s not because of the A’s.
In 19 home games, the A’s have hit just 18 homers — while giving up 31. It’s a bandbox, but only for the visiting team. On the road, it’s the opposite. The A’s have hit 29 homers and surrendered just 12.
In a pregame interview with The Standard, A’s pitcher Luis Severino, who was signed to a three-year, $67 million contract in the offseason after spending nine seasons in New York, eight as a Yankee and one as a Met, shed light on the challenges of playing half the games in the long-time home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats.
“For me, it’s the atmosphere,” Severino said. “On the road, we feel like we’re in the big leagues. Right now, it feels like a spring-training kind of thing.”
Severino cited a good example, the fact that there’s no clubhouse behind the dugout for players to visit in down time; clubhouses here are located beyond the outfield wall, and players don’t have time to get out there between innings.
It may not sound like much to a casual fan. But to an accomplished big-leaguer, it matters greatly.
“I’d say 95% of the starting pitchers don’t stay in the dugout,” Severino said. “They throw an inning and then go indoors and relax in there. Being here, you go out (to the mound), you compete and then sit down again and watch the game and then go back. It’s tough for me. It takes you out of your routine. You’re used to doing your routine your whole life, and then you come here, you have to change it.”
Severino wasn’t complaining. He was simply stating fact. It just so happens his road ERA is 0.95, while it’s 5.28 at home. He’s scheduled to start Sunday’s series finale. In road games, he said, “We feel more comfortable because we can do things we cannot do here.”
Severino isn’t the only Athletic with extreme home-road splits. The hitters are feeling it, too. Tyler Soderstrom and Brent Rooker lead the A’s in homers with nine apiece as Soderstrom has hit seven on the road while Rooker has six. Five of Shea Langeliers’ seven homers have come on the road.
What gives? Manager Mark Kotsay said, “I can’t explain it right now. We haven’t played well at home.” Rooker added, “There’s no obvious factor that stands out. By the end of the year, I think our numbers will be pretty close to even.”
One consideration: The A’s have had a tougher home schedule with series against the Cubs, Padres, Mets, Rangers, Mariners, and Yankees. The only pushover was the White Sox. The wind has been a factor, though it’s the same for each side. Some days, it blows toward the plate. Other days, it blows toward the outfield. Friday, it hardly blew, six miles per hour at first pitch, calm and 91 degrees. A hitter’s paradise. At least for the Yankees.
“Pitching here’s tough,” Severino said. “Some days the ball’s flying. Some days it’s not. You have to know how to pitch here. It’s tough, I’m not going to lie. But in the end, this is what we have. This is what we have to deal with.”
Judge had a lot of family, including his parents, and friends in attendance, just as he always did at the Coliseum. It was his first game at the facility since 2013 when his Fresno State team played Sacramento State.
“Just felt like being home,” Judge said. “Any time we play the A’s, it’s just always something that’s familiar for me, close to home for me. It was special.”