NEW YORK -- Aaron Judge took a swing, winced and then labored to make it all the way to first base. Quickly, the crowd at Yankee Stadium went silent, realizing this was a most costly hit. Judge hurt his left oblique and was expected to go on the injured list as the already banged-up New York Yankees(cheap New York Yankees championship rings) beat the Kansas City Royals 9-2 Saturday. The All-Star slugger homered early but injured himself in the sixth inning while hitting a single. He was taken for an MRI and further tests. Manager Aaron Boone said he didn't know the severity of the setback. But when asked if Judge could possibly avoid going on the injured list, Boone said, "Probably not." The team later said it expected to promote infielder Thairo Estrada from Triple-A to take Judge's spot on the roster Sunday.



The Yankees began the game with 12 players on the injured list, including Giancarlo Stanton, Luis Severino, Gary Sanchez and Aaron Hicks. Of those missing, only Sanchez appears close to returning. "You never want to see that and you know he doesn't come out of games like that," Stanton said. "We'll just wait and see what we got." Judge hurt himself on the swing and gingerly made his way down the line. Trainer Steve Donahue immediately came from the dugout to check on Judge, who then left. Judge has five home runs and is batting .288 with 11 RBI. The right fielder has played in every game this season.

"It's Aaron Judge. He's one of the great players in the game," Boone said. "Such a key figure to our club, not only between the lines, obviously, but what he means to us in the room. He'll be part of continuing to lead forward. This is not a time where we're going to feel sorry for ourselves." It was the second straight season Judge was hurt playing against Kansas City (Kansas City Royals championship rings for sale). Last July, he sustained a broken right wrist when he was hit by a pitch from Jakob Junis and missed nearly two months.

It also was the second time Judge injured his oblique on a swing. In a 2016 game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in mid-September, he suffered a Grade 2 right oblique strain and missed the rest of that season. The Yankees hit four home runs in this win as they reached .500 for the first time since they were 5-5. Judge connected in the first, Clint Frazier had a solo drive in the second and Mike Tauchman and DJ LeMahieu homered on consecutive pitches in the fourth. Boone was ejected for the first time this season in the third after an apparent three-run homer by Gleyber Torres was overturned by fan interference and ruled an out. Torres hit a flyball to left and a fan in the first row reached over and tried to make a barehanded catch as Gold Glove outfielder Alex Gordon attempted to make a leaping catch.

The Royals challenged the call and following a lengthy review to overturn it, Boone raced out of the dugout and was ejected by second base umpire Jerry Meals following a demonstrative display. After being tossed for the fifth time as a manager, Boone briefly argued with first base umpire Ron Kulpa before heading off the field. Judge and Frazier hit their fifth homers of the season in the opening two innings off Heath Fillmyer (0-1) as the Yankees took a 2-0 lead. Tauchman made it 5-0 with a three-run homer that easily cleared the right-center field fence. After Tauchman homered for the second straight game, LeMahieu hit his first of the season. Masahiro Tanaka (2-1) pitched seven innings of one-run ball. He took a shutout into the sixth before allowing a homer to Whit Merrifield to start the inning.

NEW YORK -- Austin Romine and Clint Frazier, backups carrying the burden while most of the Bronx Bombers are out for repair, kept the Yankees from a devastating loss and boosted the injury-decimated team back to a winning record. On a day that began when Aaron Judge became the 13th New York player on the injured list, New York cruised to a five-run lead over Kansas City behind six more scoreless innings from James Paxton and Frazier's sixth homer. After the Royals surged ahead in a six-run eighth inning , Romine tied the score in the bottom half and followed with his third RBI single in the 10th for a 7-6 victory Sunday that got the Yankees back over .500 for the first time in two weeks.

"Get comfortable being uncomfortable," manager Aaron Boone. "A lot of good things happened for us to snatch that game back." Aroldis Chapman, flashing 100 mph heat for only the second time this season, escaped a ninth-inning jam, and Zack Britton got out of trouble in the 10th. New York improved to 11-10, its first time over .500 since it was 5-4. "There's a couple guys that are irreplaceable here, but we've got to find a way to do it," Romine said. "We're still winning games. We've got guys stepping up left and right."



DJ LeMahieu scored on a first-inning passed ball, and Romine hit an RBI single in the second after Mike Ford doubled for his first big league hit . Frazier, a big league cleanup batter for the first time, hit a three-run homer in the fifth, a 429-foot drive off Jorge Lopez that went over the left-field bullpen and gave him a team-high 17 RBI. Coming off eight shutout innings of two-hit ball over Boston, Paxton allowed three hits and induced 18 swings and misses plus a pair of foul tips for strike three. He fanned 12 and walked one for the second straight game, becoming New York's second pitcher with 12 or more strikeouts in back-to-back starts after David Cone in June 1998.

He left after allowing Alex Gordon's double leading of the seventh and walking Hunter Dozier, but Tommy Kahnle got three straight outs. Kansas City(world series rings) loaded the bases against Chad Green, and Adam Ottavino -- the first No. 0 in Yankees history -- came in and laid some Easter eggs: Adalberto Mondesi hit a two-run double , Gordon drove a cutter to right for three-run homer and Dozier sent the next pitch, another cutter, off the back of the right-field bullpen .

"There's no quit in us," Dozier said. And little relief pitching on a team that wasted leads in 12 of 15 losses. Mike Tauchman doubled off Wily Peralta leading off the bottom half and tied the score at 6 on Romine's two-out single. Chapman allowed a leadoff single in the ninth to Billy Hamilton, who stole second and third but was stranded when Mondesi struck out and Gordon flied out. Britton (1-0) gave up a leadoff single to Dozier in the 10th and picked off speedy pinch runner Terrance Gore.

"It's just me messing up basically," Gore said. Britton turned his right ankle as he applied the tag at first to end the rundown. Britton's mind flashed back to his Achilles tendon surgery in December 2017. "Any time something's down there, it brings back some memories," Britton said. He took a practice pitch and handed the ball to plate umpire Ron Kulpa. "Maybe I'm not as athletic as I was pre-surgery," Britton told him, smiling.Britton then threw called third strikes past Jorge Soler and Chris Owings, giving Kansas City(cheap championship rings) 20 strikeouts, two more than the previous team record. The Royals whiffed 53 times in the series, nine more than their previous mark.