The last game to be completed Saturday provided a fitting punctuation mark to a noteworthy day of home runs as the Los Angeles Dodgers used three consecutive home runs in the bottom of the ninth inning to rally to a 6-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.
With the Dodgers trailing 5-2, Yasiel Puig homered leading off the ninth. Cody Bellinger -- who hit his first career home run in the seventh inning -- cracked another one to draw the Dodgers within one.
Before Bellinger, the last Dodgers player to have a two-homer game in his first five career games was Puig in 2013. And before that, it was Charlie Gilbert -- in 1940.
With the score 5-4, Justin Turner pinch hit for pitcher Grant Dayton. And Turner homered, tying the score and extending his hitting streak to a career-long 15 games.
The Dodgers won it on Adrian Gonzalez’s two-out infield single, which scored Austin Barnes.
The Dodgers’ back-to-back-to-back home run display was reminiscent of what the franchise did Sept. 18, 2006, against the Padres. In that game, the Dodgers hit four consecutive homers -- Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russell Martin and Marlon Anderson -- in the bottom of the ninth to tie the score, winning on a two-run homer by Nomar Garciaparra in the 10th.
That 2006 game was the most recent time any team had hit back-to-back-to-back home runs in the ninth inning to force a tie score or take the lead in a game.
Yankees’ Judge matches rookie mark for April
Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees hit his 10th home run of the season in a 12-4 win over the Baltimore Orioles. With 10 home runs in April, he tied the record for the most in the month by a rookie in major league history, matching Jose Abreu in 2014 and Trevor Story in 2016.
It took Judge 22 team games to reach 10 home runs this season. Elias Sports Bureau research shows that only five Yankees players have needed fewer team games to reach double digits in home runs in a season. Three of them -- Mickey Mantle (19 games in 1956), Babe Ruth (20 in 1921) and Yogi Berra (21 in 1956) -- are in the Hall of Fame, and the other two are Alex Rodriguez (14 games in 2007) and Graig Nettles (17 in 1974).
Judge’s 10 home runs are the most in April by a player age 25 or younger in Yankees history. (Judge turned 25 this week.)
Saturday’s home run was calculated at 435 feet. It was Judge’s fifth home run of at least 425 feet this season, tied for the most in the majors.
Rare combination Saturday
Carlos Gomez of the Texas Rangers hit a home run to complete a cycle, and Matt Kemp of the Atlanta Braves hit three homers.
Saturday was the first day there was a cycle and a three-homer game on the same day since Aug. 24, 2012. That day, Adrian Beltre hit for the cycle and Chris Davis hit three home runs.
Gomez’s home run was calculated at 431 feet. It is tied for the second-longest home run as part of a cycle in the past five seasons. Only Michael Cuddyer's 440-foot homer in his August 2014 cycle has gone farther.
Longest homer of season hit for second day in a row
Diamondbacks third baseman Jake Lamb's fifth-inning home run off the Rockies’ Tyler Anderson was calculated at 468 feet, the longest home run in the majors this year. The previous longest this season was hit by the Orioles’ Manny Machado (466 feet) -- all of one day earlier.
Lamb’s shot was the longest by a Diamondbacks player at home since October 2015 (Peter O'Brien, 471 feet).
Machado’s home run was one of 48 homers hit Friday. That is the most in one day this season, four more than on any other day.
On Saturday against the Cubs, Hanley Ramirez of the Red Sox turned a third-inning pitch into a 463-foot home run. He now has two of the four longest Red Sox home runs at Fenway Park since ESPN began tracking homers in 2009.
Did you know?
Kemp became the first Braves player with three homers in a game since Mark Teixeira in 2008.