This CAN’T be the way this season is going to play out. Not after 58 home runs. Not after stretches of the season when it felt like there’s never been anything more impossible to accomplish on a baseball field than retiring Aaron Judge. No. This can’t be the way it’s going to go the rest of the way, however long that is.
Surely, Aaron Judge will snap out of it.
Surely, he will return to form, and revert to being the most fearsome hitter in the game.
Because if he doesn’t …
Well, look: the Yankees are in a 2-0 hole now in this 120th World Series, after losing 4-2 to the Dodgers in Game 2 on Saturday night at Dodger Stadium. That is not a comfortable place to be.
But Yankees history is littered with times they’ve spotted a team two games in a seven-game series. As good as the Dodgers feel about themselves — and they should, despite the fact that Shohei Ohtani walked off the field with his left shoulder dangling — all they have done so far is hold serve. The Yankees get three back in The Bronx now, before fans that’ve waited 15 long years to offer their voices to the cause.
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“Our fans will have our back,” Judge said. “They always do.”
What the fans will need, after the initial wave of energy wears off, is something to sustain their thunder. What they need, in basic terms, is for Judge to play like Aaron Judge again, and as soon as possible. Because if the imposter wearing No. 99 the past few weeks shows up for work again this week, then they’ll be lucky to last another 15 minutes.
“I’ve got to step up,” Judge said late Saturday night. “I’ve got to do my job. The guys around me are doing their job getting on base and I’m failing them backing them up.”
Judge came into Saturday night’s Game 2 of the World Series with a postseason slash line of .167/.304/.361. He’d struck out 16 times in 36 at-bats. And things got even worse on Saturday: 0-for-4, three more strikeouts — and, notably an empty ninth-inning at-bat when the guys around him to whom he referred were doing their job.
The Judge we see now bears no resemblance to the Judge we saw all year, unless you’re talking about the Judge who woke up on May 2, after 33 games, with a slash line — .197/.331/.393 — that looks awful familiar to the one he carries now.
You may have heard: Judge recovered.
“At times I think it’s trying to make things happen instead of letting game come to you,” Judge said. “You see Gleyber [Torres] on base, you see Juan [Soto] on base, you want to get something done.”
It’s time. And it should be his turn. The stars on both sides of this series have all announced themselves, delivered big moments — Juan Soto (another home run Saturday night) and Giancarlo Stanton, Ohtani and Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The Dodgers seemed optimistic about Ohtani’s status — although Judge can reluctantly offer plenty of firsthand testimony that injuries sustained in this 62-year-old ballpark don’t often reveal their full extent right away. It was a collision with the base of the outfield wall that ruined Judge’s season in 2023 and sent the Yankees reeling toward Palookaville.
If he can’t turn this around, and quick, we might look at a second-straight season dying in Hollywood. That can’t be the way the season is going to turn out, either. Right?
“We know what’s at stake,” Judge said of the team, and of himself he said: “We’re getting close.”
It’s not only easy to believe Judge, it’s now essential. We’re not quite at the point where Father Herbert Raymond reached in 1953. Farther Raymond, a 44-year old parish priest at St. Francis Xavier Church on Sixth Avenue in Park Slope, had suffered with Gil Hodges during the 1952 Series when Hodges went 0-for-21. Then, still in the throes of a hangover from that failure, Hodges couldn’t buy a hit the following spring, either.
One especially steamy Sunday, in lieu of a sermon, Father Raymond told his congregation: “Go home, keep the Commandments. And say a prayer for Gil Hodges.” Soon enough, sure enough, Hodges started hitting again.
Maybe we’re not quite there yet. But it probably wouldn’t hurt if the sure-to-be-crazed denizens at Yankee Stadium add a little oomph to the ovation they’ll bestow on Judge during pregame introductions Monday. Might not be a bad idea for the Bleacher Creatures to lean into it a little when they chant his name in the top of the first.
Every little bit helps.
“We’ll turn it around in Game 3,” Judge said, and if they do, it’s almost certain that the narrative around him will have changed. That’s the first step.