Hours after the Yan­kees made their biggest move before Tuesday’s trade dead­line, Aaron Judge want­ed to make sure that he and this team con­tin­ued to prove they are contenders.

So far, with less than 24 hours to go before the MLB trade dead­line, the Yan­kees have added left-hand­ed hit­ter Andrew Ben­in­ten­di, reliev­ers Scott Effross and Lou Triv­i­no and starter Frankie Mon­tas. They are expect­ed to make at least one more move before 6 p.m. on Tues­day, send­ing Joey Gal­lo out.

“You can always improve. There’s ways to  improve,” Judge said. “I don’t think any­body in this room or on this team is sat­is­fied with what we’ve done so far. We’ve got­ten off to a great start. But as a team, we did our part and I  think the front office’s doing their part.”

So, Judge went out and hit his major-league lead­ing 43rd home run of the sea­son and Jose Trevi­no hit two in a game for the first time in his career as the Bombers beat the Mariners 7–2 at the Stadium.

The Yan­kees (70–34) and with the series-open­ing win, the Bombers clinched their 31st con­sec­u­tive win­ning sea­son at the Sta­di­um, going 41–13 in the Bronx.

Judge is just the sec­ond Yan­kees and fourth major lea­guer to hit at least 43 homers through the club’s first 104 games of a sea­son. He joins Bar­ry Bonds(45 in 2001), Mark McG­wire (45 in 1998) and Babe Ruth (45 in 1921).

Antho­ny Riz­zo home­red for the third straight game, the 10th time in his career he’s done that. His 26 homers lead all big league first-basemen.

Trevi­no had solo shots in the fourth and eighth innings for a career-high nine home runs in 74 games. He came to the Yan­kees with nine career big league homers over four big league seasons.

DJ LeMahieu went 3‑for‑4 with a walk, he has reached base in 18 of his last 21 starts.

That’s what has got­ten the Yan­kees to the best record in the Amer­i­can League this sea­son, and after Tuesday’s dead­line, they should be an even bet­ter team.

“When you think about Ben­ny Effross and now Mon­tas and Triv­i­no, there’s no ques­tion we added four, in their spe­cif­ic posi­tions, high cal­iber play­ers. So to inter­twine them with our group already. Yeah, I mean, on paper, we’re bet­ter,” the Yan­kees man­ag­er said. “But  I will cau­tion that it’s just on paper. We got­ta go out and do it still and go out and prove that.  We def­i­nite­ly upped our tal­ent in these last few days.”

In what is like­ly his last start for a while, Domin­go Ger­man allowed two runs, both earned on six hits. He walked three and struck out one. He gave up a sec­ond-inning home run to Kyle Lewis and an RBI-dou­ble to Abra­ham Toro.

Com­ing off hav­ing his streak of 56 straight bat­ters retired and 19 score­less innings snapped on Sun­day, Ron Mari­nac­cio went out and pitched a per­fect inning, strik­ing out one. Arold­is Chap­man worked around a hit for a score­less inning and Jonathan Loaisi­ga and Wandy Per­al­ta both threw a per­fect inning.

Effross is expect­ed to be in the bullpen Tues­day night and Mon­tas and Triv­i­no should arrive by then.

It will be a boost of ener­gy when they see the team they will take into the playoffs.

“It’s a good feel­ing,” Judge said. “It’s tough to describe because, usu­al­ly we don’t focus on that we just focus on play­ing, but kind of get­ting that back­ing from the front office know­ing that Hey, you guys put your­self in a posi­tion to be in a good spot going down the stretch in the post­sea­son and now we’re gonna give you a cou­ple pieces to kind of boost you guys a lit­tle bit and fill some holes where we need them.”

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