{"id":606625,"date":"2026-02-21T20:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T20:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/606625\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T20:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T20:57:12","slug":"yankees-judge-smashes-2-hrs-in-spring-debut-excited-about-wbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/606625\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees’ Judge smashes 2 HRs in spring debut, ‘excited’ about WBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. —New York Yankees<\/a> slugger Aaron Judge<\/a> hit two homers in his spring debut as he prepares for the World Baseball Classic next month.<\/p>\n

The three-time Most Valuable Player hit a pair of two-run shots, one in the third inning and another in the fourth against the Detroit Tigers<\/a>. He finished 2-for-3 with four RBI.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old has won the MVP in three of the past four seasons, including last year when he hit .331 with 53 homers and 114 RBI.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got the WBC coming up, which I’m excited about, and an exciting Yankees season,” Judge said after his performance. “We’ve got a lot of unfinished business from last season, especially the way it ended for us. I’m just trying to put myself in the best position to help this team win a lot of ballgames.”<\/p>\n

Judge will be part of what looks like a loaded Team USA lineup in the WBC. The position player group also includes Bryce Harper<\/a>, Gunnar Henderson<\/a>, Bobby Witt Jr<\/a>., Cal Raleigh<\/a> and Kyle Schwarber<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The WBC’s pool play round runs from March 5-11 at four sites in Tokyo, Houston, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The championship game will be on March 17 in Miami.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. —New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge hit two homers in his spring debut as he prepares…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":606626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[260841,5723,116538,1266,2228,50,62,67,132,68,182121],"class_list":{"0":"post-606625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-260841","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-judge-aaron","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-new-york-yankees","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}