Gotta keep Judge off bench this season
Mr. All Rise, who must stay healthy, has a lot riding on 2021
There are two more seasons before Aaron Judge becomes a free agent, this one and the one after it. Judge might not need all of that time to convince everybody that he is going to be one of those Yankees, which means a Yankee for life the way Derek Jeter was, and that he is going to worthy of one of those contracts, which means one of the $300-million contracts that guys are suddenly getting these days in baseball. But Judge still has more on the line this season than anybody, including and especially the other Aaron, Mr. Boone.
We all know what Judge can do when he can stay on the field. He hit 52 home runs and set the all-time rookie record for home runs that Pete Alonso would break two seasons later. To put that in some perspective, you know how many other hitters in Yankee history not associated with performance-enhancing drugs — we’re talking about you, Mr. On-Again with Jennifer Lopez — have hit as many as 50 homers in a season? Three:
Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris.
When that home run season of ’17 was over, and even though it ended up with the Yankees one victory shy of finally making it back to the World Series, we thought that Judge was going to be the star of the Yankees for the next 10 years at least, and the homegrown face of the franchise the way Jeter was. He was that good, that year. And All Rise was already that popular with Yankee fans. There was nothing not to like about the way he conducted himself, on the field and in the clubhouse and with the media.
But he is no different from Giancarlo Stanton, whose own $300-million contract will eventually play into the Yankees’ decision about what to do with Judge going forward: He can’t hit baseballs out of sight from the Injured List.
Judge missed 50 games one season and 60 another and last season, if baseball had been able to go all 162, he would have missed 100 games at least. I have pointed this out before. But here is how many times Mike Trout has missed 50 or more games in his career: Never, that’s when.
We do keep hearing chatter about Aaron Boone, because that comes with the territory. We are talking here about the Yankee manager who became the first in the history of the team to win 100 or more games in his first two seasons. Now we hear about how much money is being spent on the players he manages, as if that is some sort of marker on the job he is doing. Really? The Yankees have probably spent around four billion dollars on baseball players since the 2001 World Series and have played in two since then and won one.
In the postseasons that Boone has managed, he gave the ball to his ace, Luis Severino , in a 1-1 division series against the Red Sox and then watched Severino get knocked around so much that you were surprised that he didn’t end up across the street where the old Stadium used to be. The last two years? He gave the ball to his closer Aroldis Chapman twice when the Yankees had match point against them, and Chapman effectively did something no closer in history ever did before:
Give up season-ending home runs. One was a walk-off in Houston to Jose Altuve and the other was a bottom-of-the-8th shot from Mike Brosseau against the Rays last October. And this was Boone’s fault? On what planet? And if you think it was Boone’s decision to pull Deivi Garcia after one inning of Game 2 against the Rays, you also believe that Alex and Jennifer are going to make it to the altar someday.
Maybe his job is on the line this season. It shouldn’t be. Again: I believe the one with the most on the line is Aaron Judge, who needs to turn into All Rise again. Who needs court to be back in session out there in the outfield at the Stadium — even if it’s a diminished court — for an entire season. Who needs to go back to looking and slugging and playing like someone who became as big a star as the sport had four years ago, even if Altuve beat him out for MVP.
“If I get the barrel of the bat on the ball, I’ll get good results,’’ Judge said the other day in Florida. “I try not to worry about it. I worry about my mechanics and swinging at the right pitches.”
You better believe he came on like gangbusters as a rookie (even having gotten nearly 84 at-bats in 2016), and made everybody think, at least power-wise, that we were looking at a young Mickey Mantle. The problem is that ever since he has looked as fragile as Mantle. Is it his fault? Injuries never are. It wasn’t Mickey’s fault when he first injured his knee in a drain in the outfield at the old Stadium. It wasn’t Judge’s fault when he got hit by a pitch and broke his wrist in July of 2018. But to paraphrase the old Parcells line, you are what
your record of games-played
says you are. Last season Judge ended up playing 28 out of 60.
Now he is healthy into the middle of March. So is Stanton, who played fewer regular-season games than Judge did last season, but who showed up as big as both of them are in the postseason, with six home runs in seven games against the Indians and the Rays. Maybe this is the season when they are healthy together all season long and dangerous together all season long. Here is another thing to know about Judge and Stanton: Before them, there was only one time when the Yankees ever had two players on the same team with 50-homer seasons on their resumes, because the same year that Judge hit 52 in New York
Stanton hit 59 in Miami. The only two non-juicers to ever hit as many as 59 were Ruth and Maris.
Stanton came here from somewhere else. Yankee fans look at Aaron Judge as their own. Not so long after Jeter left the stage, he came along to turn all of 2017 into a Home Run Derby. The next two years after that he combined to hit 54. Still plenty of time for him to punch his ticket to Monument Park. Not sitting next to the Aaron who manages the team.