Yankees shouldn’t let Judge suffer same fate as Mattingly
NEW YORK — Don Mattingly played 13 full seasons for the Yankees and never played in the World Series, making him the greatest Yankee to never do that. Aaron Judge has made it as far as the American League Championship Series three times, something Mattingly never did. But Judge has now played seven seasons with the Yankees. It means he is more than halfway to being Mattingly.
And now Judge, by missing the postseason, does what Mattingly did for all of his career until October of 1995. That was when Mattingly, even at the end, went toe-to-toe with future Hall of Famers like Ken Griffey, Jr. and Edgar Martinez and Randy Johnson, and showed what October had missed before that by not having him in it.
Judge was a rookie in 2017 when the Yankees led the Astros 3-2 in the ALCS before losing, mostly because Judge stopped hitting along with everybody else in pinstripes. The Yankees finally lost that series in seven. Two years later, they lost in six to the Astros, before getting good and swept last season.
No. 99 is one season into a contract that is worth $360 million, the biggest investment the Yankees have ever made in one player. He isn’t going anywhere. But where are the Yankees going? And when you look at teams like the Braves, and look at what a bunch of kids for the Orioles just did at the top of the American League East, either Hal Steinbrenner or Brian Cashman maybe needs to reassure Judge that he is going to make it to a World Series himself before he plays through his prime.
Because if Steinbrenner and Cashman are already trying to tell themselves that it was just bad luck that knocked the Yankees to fourth place in the East then they are kidding themselves, which is a lot easier than kidding their fans.
If Steinbrenner is now going to be convinced by Cashman that this is all simply the fault of the analytics department, if some of them are going to be fall guys the way the former hitting coach Dillon Lawson already has been, then the owner of the Yankees will look even more out of his depth than he ever has.
We hear a lot about Cashman’s track record with the Yankees, and it is certainly impressive, even if he first came through the door being the general manager of teams that he simply did not construct. But for all of the winning seasons in a row, and
the fact that the Yankees did make it to the Final Four three times in the last seven seasons, there has never been a time since 2009 when the Yankees had the best team.
Here is what Judge himself, the captain of the team, said in a recent interview with NJ Advance Media:
“There are a couple of quick fixes and then there’s some other things that are going to take some tough conversations and some long talks with a lot of people in the room. I won’t get into that right now. I can sit here and talk about it all I want, but it’s about us sitting down and getting it figured out and getting it done. It’s going to take a lot of people. You have a season like this, it opens eyes with some people. You can mask some things by winning. This season puts us in a different light. It’s going to give us a chance to get some things right.”
It’s not Judge’s job to get things right, however. It is not Aaron Boone’s. Cashman needs to fix this. He is the one who thought trading for Giancarlo Stanton (and what was left on the $300 million-plus contract he had signed with the Marlins)
was a good idea.
This is about the Yankees not having developed, and sustained, a frontline starting pitcher since Andy Pettitte. This is about the Yankees getting older and slower as their own division gets younger and faster.
So, the Yankees didn’t finish in last place, the way the Red
Sox did again. But the Red Sox have won four World Series since 2004 at a time when the Yankees have won one. And even as recently as two years ago, the Red Sox were within two games of going back.
Judge isn’t getting any younger, and got hurt again this season. Gerrit Cole, the other star of the team, a total star of the team and another $300 millionplus contract, will turn 34 next season. It is also fair to wonder just how much left he has in his own prime. Again: Judge isn’t going anywhere. But Cole has the right to opt out after next season.
Aaron Judge, though, is the one. It is Judge around whom the Yankees present and future is built. It is Judge who signed over the rest of his prime to his team. Seven years a Yankee now. Halfway to being Mattingly.