Yankees reach 300 home run mark at Texas, and keep adding on in their race with the Twins

ARLINGTON, Texas – Giancarlo Stanton’s monstrous solo blast in Friday’s first inning was the Yankees’ 300th home run this season.

At Globe Life Park, Stanton destroyed Texas Rangers starter Joe Palumbo’s hanging breaking pitch to left-center field – a ball that seemingly traveled further than the 440 feet estimated by MLB Statcast.

It was just the first of six homers in a 14-7 win on Friday by the Yankees, who had scored just one run in their last 21 innings during a two-game sweep by the Rays at Tampa Bay.

On Thursday night, the Minnesota Twins had become the first big-league club to reach 300 home runs in a year.

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With a 305-303 lead in homers on the AL Central champions, the AL East champion Yankees will meet Minnesota in a best-of-five Division Series, beginning next Friday at Yankee Stadium.

And their back-and-forth battle to establish MLB’s new single-season team home run record has two more games to go.

Cameron Maybin, Brett Gardner, Gio Urshela, Mike Ford and Austin Romine also homered for the Yankees on Friday night, while the Twins had collected two more homers for a seasonal total of 303.

“We’re definitely keeping track,’’ said D.J. LeMahieu, who has 26 of those homers. “It’s a pretty dangerous lineup.’’

Stanton has just three of those homers, having played in just 16 games this year due to three lengthy injuries.

“It’s fun. I haven’t put too much of my input on that, but it’s fun to see the back and forth,’’ Stanton said. “That’s pretty cool, I think it’s exciting for baseball.’’

Gardner belted his 28th homer of the year, extending his own personal single-season mark for homers, and he was two ahead of Aaron Judge (rested from Friday’s lineup) in their personal longball battle.

That was also Gardner's 10th home run in month of September, the most by any AL player. 

Last season, the Yankees established a new seasonal MLB mark for home runs by a team with 267.

This year, they've set a new MLB mark with 14 players hitting at least 10 home runs.