Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres play hero in win over Angels as Jhony Brito rebounds

It looked as if Shohei Ohtani had given the Angels an early lead for the second game in a row when his bat connected with a Jhony Brito changeup in the first inning Wednesday night.

Then Aaron Judge’s feet left the ground.

The Yankees’ 6-7 center fielder robbed Ohtani of a home run into Monument Park, impeding the fence-clearing ball with his Rawlings leather. Unable to squeeze the 111.5-mile-per-hour projectile, Judge caught the ball with his bare hand after it bounced off his glove. The play elicited MVP chants for the man who won the award over Ohtani last season.

“If I was a good outfielder, I would have caught it on the first try,” Judge joked. “It was kind of a juggling act there, but we made the play. It’s tough timing those up.”

But Judge’s first inning theatrics were far from over, as he then crushed a no-doubter deep to left after leadoff man Anthony Volpe singled. The 111.7-mph, 412-foot blast off Angels starter Griffin Canning gave the Yankees an early lead in a series-tying, 3-2 win over Los Angeles that ultimately ended with a walk-off sacrifice fly from Gleyber Torres in the 10th inning.

Brito, starting for the first time since allowing seven runs and recording just two outs against the Twins on April 13, logged a respectable, if imperfect, rebound. The right-hander totaled 4.1 innings against the Angels, limiting them to three hits and one earned run over 84 pitches.

Brito also walked a career-high three batters and struck out three more while lowering his ERA to 5.40 in his fourth major league start.

“He did a really good job of mixing his sinker and his four-seam fastball and using both sides of the plate,” manager Aaron Boone said of Brito. “He just made a lot of mistakes with the sinker last outing, where he was up with it and it was running back to the heart of the plate a number of times. So I thought today he was better not only north and south, up and down with the four-seam and the sinker, but I thought he was on both sides of the plate with it. His changeup was good. He even got some punchouts with the breaking ball.”

Brito added that he was “missing too much in the middle of the plate” against Minnesota.

The Angels’ first run came in the fifth inning when Michael King took over for Brito and the Yankees traded the run for an out on a Taylor Ward groundball. King then got Ohtani swinging violently to end the inning.

King went 2.1 innings in relief, striking out four while not being charged with any runs. Left-hander Wandy Peralta eventually replaced him in the seventh to face Ohtani, a port-side swinger, with two on, two out and the Yankees clinging to their 2-1 lead. Once again, Ohtani’s at-bat ended with a breezy swing and no contact.

Peralta wasn’t as lucky in the eighth inning when a Hunter Renfroe single and a balk set ex-Yankee Gio Urshela up for a game-tying single. But Judge made another highlight-reel play to keep the game tied at two when he laid out for a ball in right-center field.

“I felt like he had a beat on it,” Boone said of Judge’s second catch. “I thought he had a really good jump on it and was closing on it. But he had to do it just right, and then obviously laid out. Obviously, a huge play in the game.”

Clay Holmes kept things knotted up in the ninth, thanks in part to a questionable check swing call against Mike Trout that led to Angels manager Phil Nevin being ejected. Ian Hamilton then did the same in the 10th before Torres sealed the deal.

“Gleyber had good at-bats all night and didn’t have anything to show for it,” Boone said of Torres’ performance before the game-ender. “But really good approach there at the end to walk it off for us.”

Added Torres: “I just wanted to put the ball in play.”

The Yankees will look to win the series on Thursday when they play a 4:05 p.m. getaway game for the Halos.

Nestor Cortes is scheduled to start for the Yankees, while fellow southpaw Patrick Sandoval is taking the bump for the Angels. Both are off to strong starts, with Cortes registering a 2.60 ERA and 15 strikeouts through his first three starts and 17.1 innings. Cortes most recently threw a season-high seven innings on April 14 while allowing two earned runs against the Twins.

Sandoval, meanwhile, has a 1.23 ERA over three starts, though he only went 3.2 innings against the Red Sox on April 14 due to an inflated pitch count.

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