NEW YORK — Questions about Aaron Judge’s fitness for October have never been particularly fair, but this is the life of the biggest man in the biggest city whose biggest failures came at the biggest times. The burden of greatness is heavy. The burden of greatness in New York is global. And for those who went wild during Judge’s postseason — on talk shows and sports talk radio, in bars and at family dinners and anywhere, really, where everyone is talking about the Yankees — there was never a question of whether they were fair. After all, his performance had been undeniably bad.
The judge has never paid attention to all this because he is not prepared to do so. He cares about winning. He cares about success. He cares more than anyone who criticizes him, mocks him, mocks him, dwells on his past performances as if they predicted an unknowable future. Judge has always separated these struggles, not only because he needs to, but because it’s his way of living, deliberately dull and deliberately boring. He believed the moment would present itself and he would do it. And why wouldn’t he think that? Every other activity in his baseball life had treated him this way.
Regardless of how the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays plays out, what Judge did Tuesday night was the kind of thing that should put to rest questions about his abilities come October. It won’t, because it never could, but the wide, wondering, childish eyes of everyone in the Yankees clubhouse told the story of Tuesday night’s season-saving 9-6 victory over the Blue Jays, in which Judge’s jaws dropped open.
Poor Louis Varland. The right-handed reliever entered in the fourth inning to protect the Blue Jays’ 6-3 advantage in a game that could have clinched their spot in the AL Championship Series. He fooled Judge on a 90 mph curveball, then blasted him with a 100 mph fastball, then threw another 100 fastball, up and inward.
Nearly 400 feet later, when the ball hit the left-field foul pole — the only place in the judges’ world where a foul is indeed fair — no one on the field could believe it. The absurdity of it all — manipulating his 6-foot-7, 282-pound body to so completely alter his standard bat trajectory, lighting 100 and keeping things fair — was not lost on Varland, the Yankees who continued to watch replays of the swing in the dugout, or the 47,399 people at Yankee Stadium who bore witness to it.
“He made a really good pitch look really bad,” Varland said.
Throughout the entire playoffs, Judge has done this. His 11 postseason wins lead the MLB. For all the ugliness of striking out with the bases loaded in the first game of this ALDS, his at-bats were competitive all October. What he did to Varland was the highlight, precisely what the Yankees needed to see another day.
“You could feel it in your bones,” Yankees reliever Tim Hill said. “It was crazy. It was incredible. I mean, just the pitch he hit. All that stuff. I’m sure my guy over there on the other side is questioning everything.”
Yes, addressing Aaron Judge is the kind of thing existential crises are made of. Before Tuesday, he had never hit a pitch 100 mph or faster for a home run. He has hit 53 home runs this season – and none on a pitch outside the regulation strike zone. Before Tuesday, the Blue Jays were 39-0 this season in games in which they also led by at least five points.
It’s impossible to overstate how unusual this was for Judge. He is proud of his good decisions because he knows how important they are. On pitches in the strike zone this season, Judge hit .400, 40 points higher than the next best hitter. He hit .867, 115 points higher than Shohei Ohtani. In his 214 plate appearances this year that ended on pitches outside the regulation zone, Judge hit .109 and drove in one run. All year round. He didn’t have a single extra base hit on such pitches.
One of the biggest homers of a two-time MVP’s career to win a third this year was for something he’s never done. And if the willingness to step out of his comfort zone and do something few people in baseball history would be physically capable of doing doesn’t show that Judge is not only capable of succeeding in October but that he’s destined for it, well, nothing would. And that suits him. He knows that emotion is the fuel that powers predictions of inevitable disappointment, not consistency or logic.
“I get yelled at for hitting them out of the zone, but now I get praised for it,” Judge said. “It’s a game. You have to go out there and play. It doesn’t matter what the numbers say or where anything is. I’m just up there, trying to put a good swing on a good pitch, and it felt good.”
Inside the Yankees clubhouse, they yearned for Judge to throw a game like this, to further validate their unwavering faith in him. The past is indisputable. Judge’s OPS in the playoffs is more than 250 points lower than in the regular season. The Yankees did not win a championship during his 10 years in the big leagues. It’s real and it’s unfortunate, and it’s part of his legacy. It’s also not the ink with which the future is written, which is why Aaron Boone, the Yankees manager with whom Judge is extremely close, said: “I’m not worried about Aaron and his condition, even understanding all the outside noise.”
From Boone’s perch atop the dugout, he had a perfect view of the left-field foul pole. As the ball passed all night, Judge stood near home plate. He didn’t pull out a Carlton Fisk, trying to brandish it fairly. He just waited for it to land.
And when that happened, helping raise his postseason batting average to .500 and his OPS to 1.304 — nearly 300 points better than his career regular-season OPS, for the record — Judge uncorked a mini-bat flip and began his jog around the bases. When he returned to the dugout, his teammates lined up and greeted him with a full line of high-fives.
“He’s a real player, and he’s a player as loved as ever by his teammates,” Boone said. “They all look up to him, look up to him, respect him, want his approval, and it’s a credit to who Aaron is and the way he handles things.”
After slapping the last hand, Judge took another step toward the end of the dugout. There waited a television camera. The judge looked at him, pointed at him and turned around. He then pirouetted backwards and gave the audience one more look. It wasn’t an accident. Nothing the judge does is. It was a message, a reminder, a siren for all those who didn’t believe it.
The Yankees were still alive. And as long as that is the case, he intends to wear them. Even in October.
