NEW YORK — The chants from the Yankee Stadium faithful started the moment Aaron Judge stepped into batter’s box in the first inning, with each syllable feeling like a desperate plea for No. 99 to remember what he accomplished this season. This was a late October intervention, with the 49,368 paying customers trying to serenade their hero back to life.
“M-V-P!”
“M-V-P!”
“M-V-P!”
This was the first World Series game in the Bronx in 5,472 days, and all the optimism at the ballpark was quickly replaced with the dread of an early two-run deficit. Judge, of course, could change that mood with one big swing. The outfielder could make everyone — starting with himself — forget that his lifetime postseason batting average that had slipped below the Mendoza Line for the first time.
That’s right. Judge was a .199 hitter in the playoffs when he came to the plate to start this game, a statistic that was not the product of a sample size. The best hitter in the American League has looked unrecognizable for most of this October, but surely, the sight of the bunting around his home ballpark and that short porch in right field would snap him out of it. Right?
Wrong. Judge struck out on a cutter well off the plate for his first at-bat, the first of four weak at-bats that doomed his sleepwalking team in a 4-2 loss. The Yankees are one loss away from a four-game sweep in this supposed matchup between baseball’s marquee franchises, and if it ends that way, their biggest star will be the biggest reason for the failure.
“He’s Aaron Judge,” manager Aaron Boone said when asked what gave him the belief that his best player would snap out of this slump. But Judge is now batting .140 (6-for-44) with two home runs, a double and six RBI in 12 postseason games this autumn. He has 20 strikeouts and, in the rare instances when he has come to the plate with a chance to do some actual damage, he is 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position.
It is hard to reconcile this Judge with the player who led the American League in home runs (58), RBIs (144), walks (133), on-base percentage (.458) and slugging percentage (.701). Judge will easily win his second MVP award for those regular-season accomplishments, but unless something dramatic changes in the coming days, his October no-show is what many fans will remember.
In a silent clubhouse well past midnight, Judge was asked a blunt question: Did he feel like he was letting his team down? He paused a full five seconds before answering.
“Well, yeah, definitely,” he finally said. “You want to be getting the hits. You want to be out there doing your job. I’m not doing my job right now. I’ve got to pick it up.”
Look, Judge certainly isn’t the only reason the Yankees are in this hole. Game 3 starter Clarke Schmidt left a meatball over the plate to red-hot Freddie Freeman, of all people, who gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with another home run. Giancarlo Stanton, the one Yankee who has delivered at the plate consistently, looked like he was dragging a dog sled behind him as he tried to score from second on a single in the fourth inning and was thrown out easily.
Then, of course, there is Boone, who said he thought long and hard about lineup changes on the flight back from Los Angeles on Saturday night and decided to do … well, yeah, next to nothing. If the Dodgers wrap up this series in Game 4, it will be just the sixth time in more than a century of baseball that the Yankees have been swept in a seven-game series. Boone will have two of them on his resume in the past three years. That certainly won’t get the fans off his back.
But Judge is the superstar, and fair or not, the playoffs will shape his place in franchise history. Judge, remember, stayed with the Yankees for the chance to deliver in moments like this. He recognized, before signing a nine-year, $360 million contract in 2022, that his legacy would be incomplete if he took off the pinstripes for good without bringing championship No. 28 (or more) to the franchise.
It is hard not to wonder if all that pressure, something that has never seemed to phase the 32-year-old slugger during his rise to the top of his sport, is starting to impact his performance as the poor postseason at-bats add up. Is Judge pressing?
“He’s as good as I’ve ever seen at handling big-league life,” Boone said. “He’s going to break out at some point. Hopefully it’s today. And moving forward in his career, he’s going to have great series. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
Is there suddenly doubt in Judge’s mind? It certainly looks that way.
On a night when the Bronx faithful tried to remind their superstar of all that he accomplished in the regular season, the likely MVP came up small yet again when it mattered. The next time he hears from the Yankee Stadium crowd, the chants won’t be so supportive.
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.
