Yankees’ Aaron Judge slugs 42nd home run in 2022, second fastest to 200 career homers

New York Yankees Sloth Aaron Judge is in the midst of a torrid hot streak, reaching a milestone Saturday afternoon as he cruised to an 8-2 victory. Kansas City Royals (Box score) Judge hit his 42nd home run of the season — his 12th in his last 14 games — and his 200th career home run. Kyle Schwarber (32) and Yordon Alvarez (30) are the only other players to hit 30 home runs this season.

Here’s Judge’s 42nd homer of 2022. It comes a day after he hit two homers and stole a homer:

Judge was the first player in Yankees history to hit 42 home runs before August, and the second fastest player in baseball history to 200 career homers. Here is the leaderboard:

1. Ryan Howard: 658 games for 200 homers
2. Aaron Judge: 671
3. Ralph Kiner: 706
4. Juan Gonzalez: 766
5. Harmon Killebrew and Albert Pelley: 769

“Like I’ve said a thousand times, I’m just focused on winning baseball games right now,” Judge told MLB.com following Friday’s game When asked about hitting 60 home runs. “Statistics and things like that, we can talk about that at the end of the year.”

The Yankees played their 102nd game of the season on Saturday. Roger Morris hit 61 home runs in a single season in 1961 for the Yankees — and the American League. That total would require Judge to hit 19 homers in his team’s final 60 games. Seeing as how he’s gone deep 12 times in his last 14 games, we’re officially in record sight.

Judge, 30, carried a .297/.378/.668 batting line into Saturday’s game. He leads baseball in runs (84), RBI (89), and total bases (250) in addition to home runs. Judge famously rejected a seven-year, $213.5 million spring training extension Will become a free agent after the season.