SAN DIEGO — Who’s hotter, Aaron Judge or the Yankees rotation?
Judge may actually cool off at some point, or even return to normalcy. And a Yankees starter may allow a run or three at some point, too.
But until further notice, they both remain a giant red ball of flames.
Judge continued the torrid stretch that he has been on for nearly a month now, homering for a fourth straight game, while Marcus Stroman became the fourth straight starter to throw a scoreless outing on the way to the Yankees’ fourth straight win, 4-1 over the Padres at Petco Park.
Judge added a double and came around to score in the fourth inning, meaning that 15 of his 17 hits over the last 11 games have gone for extra bases — eight doubles and seven home runs.
Over his last 27 games, Judge is batting .391 (36-for-92) with a 1.458 OPS, 12 doubles and 13 home runs. And over his last 20 games alone, he has piled up 12 doubles and 11 home runs.
Saturday also marked the third time in his career that Judge has homered in four straight games.
The last one came in September of 2022 on his way to hitting 62 home runs. He is now tied for the major-league lead with 17 home runs this season.
As Judge goes, the Yankees (37-17) often go, so they have not surprisingly surged during their captain’s hot streak, winning for the 17th time in their last 21 games on Saturday in front of a sellout crowd of 44,845.
Of course, the Yankees also have been buoyed by their terrific starting pitching, which continued to thrive against the Padres (27-28).
Stroman threw six shutout innings, following Carlos Rodon, Luis Gil and Nestor Cortes to combine to throw 23 ¹/₃ scoreless innings over the last four games.
Stroman also turned in the Yankees’ 13th straight start in which their pitcher has gone at least five innings and allowed two or fewer runs, one shy of the longest such streak since 1893.
During that stretch, Yankees starters have combined to post a 0.78 ERA across 80 ²/₃ innings.
The Padres did not score until Fernando Tatis Jr. took Luke Weaver deep in the eighth inning, snapping the Yankees pitchers’ scoreless streak at 26 ¹/₃ innings. But Clay Holmes recorded his 15th save with a scoreless ninth.
Stroman gave up just three hits and a walk while striking out six. The closest the Padres came to scoring off him was the fourth inning, when Jake Cronenworth led off with a triple. But Stroman stranded him there to keep the shutout alive.
Anthony Volpe extended his career-high hitting streak to 18 games by leading off the night with a line-drive single up the middle. It marks the longest hitting streak by a Yankee since Derek Jeter’s 19-gamer in 2012.
Volpe then came in to score on Judge’s home run, a 429-foot shot that came on an 0-2 curveball down the middle from Padres right-hander Dylan Cease.
Judge got a rally started in the third inning when he lined Cease’s first pitch of the frame down the left-field line for a double.
Alex Verdugo followed with a single to left to put runners on the corners and one out later, Anthony Rizzo delivered a single through the right side to make it 3-0
Gleyber Torres then hit a sacrifice fly to stretch the Yankees’ lead to 4-0.
With the win, which also included some strong defense from Verdugo, Juan Soto and third baseman Oswaldo Cabrera, the Yankees clinched their 13th series victory of the season. It marked the fourth time in the last 75 years and only the eighth time in franchise history that they have won at least 13 of their first 17 series of a season.
