NEW YORK _ DJ LeMahieu went down the line and into baseball history.
LeMahieu watched it fly and the Yankee Stadium crowd looked on with him as the ball made its way toward the second deck and into the record books. His leadoff bomb in the bottom of the first inning gave the Yankees a home run in their 28th straight game and a major league record for the longest all-time streak. It was the first of four solo shots for New York in a 4-3 win on Tuesday over the Blue Jays.
For the Yankees, the win may have come at a steep price. Giancarlo Stanton was involved in a collision at third base and came out of the game with a right knee contusion. He was scheduled to go for an MRI late Tuesday night.
The silver lining for the Yankees is that they have shown the ability to produce with Stanton out of the lineup. This was only his sixth game back after a lengthy stint on the Injured List.
"As we continue to get more and more healthy and whole, there's elite offensive players up and down the order, guys that as a whole, get on base and generally hit for power as well," manager Aaron Boone said before the game. "It doesn't take the whole offense to get hot at once to score a bunch of runs."
LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres and Edwin Encarnacion all homered as the Yankees (51-28) won for the 10th time in 11 games. They've gone 8-1 on their current homestand and are on pace for 105 wins.
LeMahieu and Judge went back-to-back in the first, while Torres added some insurance an inning later by taking advantage of the short porch in right. Encarnacion hit his 24th of the season and third as a Yankee in the eighth. Each run was necessary for the Yankees, who used Chad Green as the opener and Nestor Cortes for 4 1/3 solid innings of relief.
"If we do the job that we expect our guys to do as far as controlling the zone, it allows them to get on base even when they're maybe not swinging the best, which is going to happen throughout the course of the year," Boone said. "Guys up and down the lineup can hurt you if you make a mistake."
By keeping the streak alive, the Yankees passed Alex Rodriguez's Texas Rangers, who went deep in 27 straight games in 2002.
Fourteen different Yankees have homered throughout this run, which began on May 26 in Kansas City. Catcher Gary Sanchez has led the charge with eight blasts, and 23 for the season.
Unexpected heroes have also emerged for the Yankees, a year after smacking a record 267 home runs. LeMahieu has hit seven home runs during the streak, in his first season in the Bronx. Four apiece have from Luke Voit, Gio Urshela and Cameron Maybin, players who've earned bigger roles with their hot play.
The Yankees have also scored at least one run in 161 games in a row, dating back to a shutout loss on June 30, 2018. That's the sixth-longest stretch since 1900 and the second best in club history. They set the league record in 1933 by going 308 games without being shut out.
"We're making it very difficult on the pitcher," Boone said. "The more and more you have to work, eventually usually they'll get to you."
