NEW YORK _ At some undetermined point of a baseball season, a good start to a year simply becomes a good year.
The Yankees are full-steam ahead that way, if they haven't reached it already.
They again laid the lumber to an overmatched pitching staff, scoring six runs in the first inning and hitting five home runs in a 16-3 rout of the Orioles on Saturday night in front of 45,232 at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees have outscored the Red Sox and Orioles 41-6 in winning four straight games to move a season-high 13 games over .500 at 36-23.
The Yankees had a season-high 18 hits, including 10 in the first four innings as they bolted to a 12-0 lead.
Aaron Judge went 3 for 4 with a walk and hit his MLB-best 19th homer, a screaming liner to left in the first inning that left his bat at 121.07 mph. It was the hardest-hit ball in the majors this season, surpassing the 119.8-mph rocket single off Red Sox reliever Fernando Abad on Thursday night.
Didi Gregorius hit his sixth homer, Starlin Castro his 11th, Matt Holliday his 13th and Gary Sanchez his ninth. Sanchez drove in four runs and Judge, Holliday and Castro added three each. Judge, Holliday and Sanchez had three hits each.
The outburst made it four straight games in which the Yankees, who were averaging an MLB-best 5.57 runs per game entering Saturday night, scored at least eight runs and four straight games in which they hit multiple homers.
Pitching?
They got that, too. Luis Severino continued to make a strong case for an All-Star bid, allowing one run and two hits in seven innings. He had a shutout going until there were two outs in the seventh, when Chris Davis hit his 14th homer.
Severino retired the first 12 Orioles before Mark Trumbo led off the fifth with a walk. The Orioles' first hit came two batters later.
Severino, who was 2-0 with a 2.02 ERA in his previous six starts, improved to 5-2, 2.75. He struck out eight and walked two, giving him 84 strikeouts and 18 walks in 751/3 innings this season.
The Yankees buried the Orioles (31-29) in the first, an inning in which they sent 10 to the plate and began, strangely, with Chris Tillman actually retiring the first two batters he faced. But the next seven batters produced six hits and a walk.
Judge annihilated a 1-and-0 changeup down the leftfield line for a 1-0 lead. Holliday singled and Castro doubled and Sanchez doubled home two runs to make it 3-0. Gregorius then stepped into a first-pitch fastball and sent it deep into the seats in right for a 5-0 lead.
Chase Headley walked, went to second on a wild pitch and scored on Chris Carter's single to make it 6-0.
In the second, Tillman walked Judge and Holliday on four pitches each and got in a 3-and-0 hole against Castro. Tillman finally threw a strike and Castro launched the get-me-over fastball over the Orioles' bullpen in left-center for a 9-0 lead. That was all for Tillman, who was replaced by right-hander Stefan Crichton.
Aaron Hicks walked in the fourth, Judge singled and Holliday lined a three-run homer to the opposite field for a 12-0 lead.
Judge's two-run double in the fifth made it 14-0 and Sanchez's two-run homer in the eighth made it 16-2.
