Austin Wells: Two Home Runs in One Inning, Off the Bench
The Yankees catcher was not in Sunday’s lineup, and he still walked out of Yankee Stadium with a record no player in major league history had ever held.
Austin Wells spent the early innings on the bench at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, August 30. His name was not on the lineup card. By the end of the night, he held a record no player in major league history had ever held.
Wells catches for the New York Yankees, who drafted him 28th overall in 2020 out of the University of Arizona. In 2024 he finished as a finalist for American League Rookie of the Year. Then in March 2025 he led off the Yankees’ opening day with a home run. No Yankee had ever done that.
The bench is familiar ground, and it has been good to him before. In March 2026 he played for the Dominican Republic at the World Baseball Classic. He came into the quarterfinal against South Korea in the seventh inning as a defensive replacement. Then he hit a three-run homer that made it 10-0.
The tournament’s rout rule is its version of a mercy rule, so the game ended right there, on his swing. Five games were enough to put him on the All-Tournament Team at catcher.
This season has been harder. Wells is hitting .184. He has hit much better since July, though, which is a large part of why the Yankees kept the job open for him. New York passed on trading for another catcher at the deadline. Instead the club committed the rest of the season to two catchers sharing one job.
So manager Aaron Boone wrote catcher Ali Sánchez in behind the plate on Sunday and held Wells back. Wells did not get to choose which day would be his. He only got to choose whether he would be ready when that day came.
The call came in the sixth inning. Boone sent Wells up to hit for Sánchez, and on his first swing of the night he lifted a sacrifice fly to center to drive in a run.
Then the eighth inning came around, and Wells batted twice in it. Both times he hit the ball out of the park.
The Yankees scored nine runs in that inning. Wells started it with a two-run homer off Jovani Moran, with Jazz Chisholm Jr. scoring ahead of him. Then New York kept hitting. They batted around until Boston ran out of pitchers, so the Red Sox sent infielder Andruw Monasterio to the mound to finish the game.
That is where a lot of hitters stop competing. Monasterio is an infielder, not a pitcher, and his slider arrived at 49.8 miles per hour. No one would blame a player for coasting through an at-bat like that. But Wells worked it anyway. He hit his second two-run homer, with Chisholm aboard again, and the Yankees won 16-1. Five runs batted in, from a player who had been sitting when the game started.
No one in major league history had homered twice in an inning in a game he did not start. Only six Yankees have ever homered twice in a single inning at all.
| Yankee | Year |
|---|---|
| Joe DiMaggio | 1936 |
| Joe Pepitone | 1962 |
| Cliff Johnson | 1977 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 2007, 2009 |
| Gleyber Torres | 2022 |
| Austin Wells | 2026 |
Still, every one of the others was in the lineup when the game began. Wells was not.
A catcher who splits time is not waiting for a season to start. He is already in it, doing the quiet work that turns a night off the bench into a record. The next time your name is not on the card, the game is still yours to prepare for.
Try this at your next practice
- The dugout at-bat. While a teammate hits, watch the pitcher from the bench. Then call the next pitch quietly, out loud, before it leaves his hand. Keep score of how often you are right.
- Two-swing warmup. From cold, run the exact routine you would run if a coach said your name right now. Time it. Then shorten it until it fits the time you would actually get.
- Bench-to-box tracking. Sit for ten minutes. Then have a partner flip you five pitches with no warmup swings, and track each one all the way in. Wells came off the bench cold in the sixth and drove in a run on his first swing.
Sources: Yankees 16-1 Red Sox, box score and play-by-play (ESPN) · Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees recap and gametracker, August 30, 2026 (CBS Sports) · Austin Wells homers twice in 9-run eighth as Yankees rout Red Sox 16-1 (AP via Boston.com) · Austin Wells makes MLB history in Yankees’ blowout win (Yardbarker) · Austin Wells Made MLB History In Red Sox Game (Heavy) · Austin Wells Making Strong Case to Remain Yankees’ Starting Catcher (Sports Illustrated) · Yankees’ catcher makes World Baseball Classic All-Tournament Team (Sports Illustrated) · Wells’ homer gives Dominicans rout-rule win over South Korea for WBC semifinal berth (AP via TSN) · Austin Wells’ bat shows more signs of life with Yankees role now set (Yahoo Sports) · 2026 MLB trade deadline date and time (MLB.com).