Another explosive day for the Yankees offense nearly wasn’t enough.
But four homers and a rough, four-out save by Clay Holmes managed to beat the Rangers, 8-7 on Sunday in The Bronx.
Juan Soto homered twice, Aaron Judge smashed a home run and reached base four times and Giancarlo Stanton added a three-run homer to build what seemed to be a comfortable lead. That was before Mark Leiter Jr. gave up three runs in the eighth and Holmes allowed another in the ninth before finally closing the door.
With two outs, Holmes allowed three straight baserunners before he got Leody Taveras to ground out to finish the 45-pitch save.
It was the second straight subpar performance from the bullpen.
Marcus Stroman held the Rangers scoreless into the sixth inning. He’d been pushed back in the rotation for extra work on his mechanics following consecutive disastrous outings in which he’d allowed 12 runs — 10 earned — over just six innings.
Stroman still wasn’t at his sharpest, walking three, but was mostly effective.
And with Soto and Judge clicking on all cylinders, it was good enough.
Soto, just 25, has now homered against all 30 MLB teams and has topped 30 homers for the third time in his career.
Stroman got off to a shaky start, as Josh Smith led off with a hard grounder that turned into an out and Corey Seager followed by lashing a ball off the wall in right.
Seager raced to second and was initially called safe, but the Yankees challenged the play and Soto’s throw — and Anthony Volpe’s tag — proved to be in time to get Seager for the second out.
Stroman also walked Marcus Semien before finishing the inning.
The Yankees took the lead in their half of the first against ex-Yankee left-hander Andrew Heaney thanks to an unearned run — sparked by a throwing error by third baseman Josh Jung on an Alex Verdugo grounder.
Judge’s single sent Verdugo to third and he scored on a Stanton sacrifice fly.
A solo shot from Soto in the third into the right field seats made it 2-0.
Soto nearly added to the lead in the fifth.
Back-to-back singles to open the inning by DJ LeMahieu and Verdugo put runners on the corners. Soto followed with a hard line drive — right to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who caught the smash and tagged Verdugo for the unassisted double play.
The Rangers then walked Judge intentionally to bring up Stanton, who drilled a three-run homer to left to make it 5-0.
After throwing five shutout innings, Stroman faltered in the sixth, walking Smith and allowing a run-scoring double to Seager.
Stroman was replaced by Jake Cousins.
Cousins whiffed Semien and after a single by Jung, got Wyatt Langford looking and Nathaniel Lowe swinging to end the inning.
The Rangers got back in the game due to some infield hits and a Jazz Chisholm Jr. error at third.
Texas took advantage of a pair of infield hits that loaded the bases and with two outs, Chisholm booted a grounder by Semien.
Two runs scored on the play to cut the lead to 6-3 before Tommy Kahnle got out of the inning.
Soto and Judge then went back-to-back to make it 8-3.
