- Yankees captain became the fastest player ever to hit 300 Home Runs, this season
- Judge has received the American League Player of the Month award three times during the 2024 MLB campaign
- The 32-year-old earned his fourth consecutive All Star selection, but has endured a poor postseason and his World Series performances have been widely criticised
Aaron Judge’s stats and personal accolades may have seen him mentioned more than once in the same breath as Babe Ruth, but the New York Yankees captain is a game away from potentially being immortalised as a postseason meme.
Of course, given the fact Judge is a six-time All Star and has a records list longer than the line of people who want to queue up to punch Tony Hinchcliffe in the face, his ludicrous litany of personal achievements and penchant for thundering baseballs all over ballparks across America will cement him as one of the all-time greats. Yet the current World Series against the LA Dodgers, in which the Yankees trail 3-0 and in which Judge has performed particularly miserably, is the type of series which stands the test of time above so many other successes.
Social media and analysts can of course be needlessly hyperbolic and ill informed, to say the least, with their ‘look at me’ criticisms, yet it is also undeniable that Judge’s performances, or lack thereof, in the playoffs this year are worthy of more than a little discussion.
Failure to buck the trend against the Dodgers tonight and the Yankees captain may have missed his only chance at World Series glory. If he had done so while still dinging homers across both Dodger and Yankee stadium, the 6’7 Californian could have been heralded as heroic in defeat. If the Yankees get swept tonight, it will be abject humiliation for a player who has spent the last few years stockpiling records like toilet roll and tinned goods at the beginning of a pandemic.
“I am so disgusted with Aaron Judge,” yelled Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’S ‘First Take‘ “…What the hell is going on with Aaron Judge? Ladies and gentlemen, this man, Aaron Judge — who had batted .336 with an on-base percentage of .509 with runners in scoring position during the regular season — the man is one-for-nine with no RBIs, six strikeouts in the World Series. He’s hitting .150 in the postseason.”
Judge has been hitting .150/.280/.325 in the postseason this year, bringing his career line down to .199/.304/.436. Worse still is that, in 55 playoff games, the 32-year-old has now whiffed 85 times.
There’s no dancing around it, those stats are heinously bad. Yes, Judge’s heroics during the regular season may have been a very significant part of what brought the Yankees to the dance, but now he’s dancing like he has two left feet and he’s doing it to an audience of almost 15 million people a night.
Worse still, is Judge is being memed left, right and centre on social media. Again, no self respecting athlete is going to allow the users of a platform owned by Elon Musk to dictate their actual legacy, but it feels particularly disrespectful when the person the barbs are aimed at has drawn comparisons with Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Lou Gehrig. Yet here we are, with Judge being targeted after the previous six months brought nothing but wall-to-wall praise and rightful acknowledgement of his greatness.
The World Series against the Dodgers was Major League Baseball’s dream scenario. New York vs Los Angeles. Two dynasties from the two biggest markets in America going head-to-head, hopefully across seven unforgettable nights in two of the most iconic ballparks in the USA. Judge vs Ohtani. Instead, only one team has turned up, and ‘All Rise’ has remained seated. One game could change all that.
