‘If you don’t win, what’s the point?’ Yankees’ Aaron Judge seeks October redemption

NEW YORK — It’s been 11 years since the New York Yankees drafted Aaron Judge. Eleven years of the towering slugger absorbing the franchise’s unyielding championship doctrine. Eleven years, from A-ball in Charleston to the scorching lights in the Bronx, of striving to meet that standard. World Series or bust. Every year.

“There’s no other way to put it,” Judge said the morning of the Yankees’ regular-season finale. “Ever since I’ve been a Yankee, getting drafted in 2013, all that was ever engrained in my head or what we were taught is win in New York. Be a winner. Championship mindset. It’s just always been the way I was raised, even before I got here it was: If you don’t win, what’s the point?”

Judge has been a full-time major leaguer for eight years. By the Yankees’ definition, the first seven ended with failure — but the eighth might be his best shot to avoid it. The Yankees are in a prime position this October in large part thanks to Judge’s otherworldly regular-season feats.

After posting the best record in the American League and claiming home-field advantage until the World Series, the Yankees opened their postseason with a 6-5 win over the Kansas City Royals in Game 1 of the American League Division Series on Saturday.

Judge, however, went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts and a walk to extend his personal October struggles. Since 2020, the likely AL MVP is 10-for-74 (.135) with five home runs and 28 strikeouts in 18 postseason games. His strikeout with runners on first and second in the sixth inning even induced a smattering of boos from the Yankee Stadium crowd after he heard them during his disappointing 2022 postseason performance.

The Yankees stand 10 wins from snapping a 15-year championship drought. But to accumulate those wins — and fill the biggest hole remaining in Judge’s legacy — Judge will need to flip his October fortunes.

“I think there’s no question that he’s one of the franchise’s greatest players,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before the start of the series. “But he’s playing for that [World Series title] …That’s why he does this. Not to rack up personal accolades. So he embodies that. He lives that. And that’s what we’re all working to get to, and I’m sure that, obviously, winning it all would certainly add a level to his legacy.”

In baseball, one player can only carry his team so far. But Judge puts much of the Yankees’ recent title drought on himself.

“I like to take a lot of the weight when we don’t win,” Judge said. “I just feel like that’s the position I’m in. It comes down to me.”

Judge carried that burden in 2022, when he went 1-for-16 in the ALCS and the Yankees were swept by the Houston Astros. He finished the playoffs 5-for-36, inducing boos from the same home crowd he had delighted during his record-setting 62-home-run-season over the previous six months. He shouldered the load again a year ago, when, after missing nearly two months with a toe injury, the Yankees missed the postseason for the first time since Judge broke into the majors in a late-season 27-game cameo in 2016.

“Look I think Judgey first and foremost, just like all of us, has been through this a lot now,” Boone said. “We want to win a championship. That’s where the focus is. I know that’s where his focus is, and I feel like he’s in a really good spot right now. It’s not about individual stuff at all. This is about us going out and doing things to try and win baseball games and compete for a championship.”

“There’s a lot of unfinished business, man,” Judge said. “It drives me crazy in the offseason. During the season I try not to think about it. I try to take it day by day. But every year that we come up short, the offseason really isn’t that fun.”

Judge, 32, is on a path to Cooperstown. He is a six-time All-Star and the captain of one of the most famous sports franchises in the world. He has cemented his place inside Monument Park — starting with the 52 home runs and American League Rookie of the Year award in 2017, all the way to setting a new AL home run record in 2022. His No. 99 will someday join the long list of retired numbers honored there.

And this year, he was better than ever. He authored perhaps the greatest season by a right-handed hitter in MLB history, leading the majors in home runs (58), RBIs (144), on-base percentage (.458), slugging percentage (.701), walks (133), intentional walks (20), fWAR (11.2) and bWAR (10.8) while playing out of position in center field. He finished third in batting average (.322), fourth in runs scored (122) and eighth in hits (180). He partnered with newcomer Juan Soto to produce the game’s most prolific one-two punch since Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. He is the overwhelming favorite to win his second MVP Award.

Based on weighted runs created plus (wRC+), a metric that attempts to qualify a player’s offensive value while controlling for park effects and run environment, Judge recorded the seventh-best offensive season in MLB history. The only players with better outputs than Judge’s 218 wRC+ were left-handed: Barry Bonds (three times), Ruth (twice) and Ted Williams (once).

Zoom out and Judge’s 173 career wRC+ is tied with Bonds for third in MLB history, behind Ruth and Williams. It’s been a career almost anybody would describe as fulfilling.

And yet, if you ask Judge, he balks. “We play to win, so … ” Judge said.

But can’t you still have a great career without winning a championship?

“Yeah, but that’s not why I play,” Judge said. “I don’t play for, whatever, Player of the Month or MVP. That’s not why you play. You play to be the last team holding up the trophy, where you look back at all your teammates and just think of the hard work that you put in all year and have that connection.”

Judge sees that connection every summer, just before the 162-game marathon’s final stretch, when the Yankees hold Old Timers’ Day. This year, the festivities celebrated the 2009 Yankees, the last Yankees team to win it all. Among the players from that team who attended were Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, plus Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, CC Sabathia, Hideki Matsui, Alex Rodriguez and Johnny Damon.

Jeter described Judge’s season as “amazing” and marveled over his seemingly impossible improvement. Rodriguez called him a “unicorn” who will eventually become a World Series champion with his sheer determination.

But does he need a title to complete his legacy?

“I think he’s going to have a legacy whether he wins or not because he’s a special player,” Joe Girardi, the 2009 team’s manager, said. “But I think, personally, it would mean a lot to him, the work that he’s put in and the work that his teammates — because there’s nothing like being a champion. There’s a bond that’s created for life. You do not see guys for years and you come back and you feel like you just saw them the day before.

“So I think for that part of it, you would love to see it happen. You would love to see it happen to such a great player that has such an impact on a game, but it takes so many more players. One guy can’t do it. Two guys can’t do it. It takes a ton. And I hope it happens for him.”

Soto won a ring five days after his 21st birthday. He was a force during the Washington Nationals‘ improbable World Series run in 2019, slugging five home runs with a .927 OPS in 17 postseason games, surrounded by a star-studded cast. He has seen Judge’s hunger for a championship up close since reporting for spring training in February.

“He always talks about [winning a championship],” Soto said. “He always, from the first day that I got here, he’s always talked about how he wants to win a championship, how he wants us to win a championship, how he wants to win a championship for the Yankees and be part of the history.”

This year’s Yankees are far from perfect. They are susceptible to sloppiness. They have holes on defense. The numbers indicated they were the worst baserunning team in the majors during the regular season.

But the path to a pennant is favorable. The Astros, the Yankees’ postseason nemesis over the last decade, have been sent home, leaving three low-payroll AL Central challengers between them and the World Series. The Yankees, on paper, are the favorites with a talented ensemble around Judge, whose growth as clubhouse leader has helped integrate the various personalities in the room.

Last month, with the Yankees stuck in neutral, unable to separate themselves from the middling Baltimore Orioles atop the AL East, Judge called a players-only meeting in Texas. The Yankees went 12-6 over the next three weeks to build a six-game cushion in the standings.

“I try not to do it too much,” Judge said. “I mean, things aren’t going too well if you’re doing that a lot. So, usually good teams don’t have too many meetings like that. When it’s needed, you’ve got to do it. You got to step up and do some things like that.”

Now it’s about stepping up on the field when it matters most. Seven years after falling a game short of the World Series in Judge’s rookie season, 11 years after Judge joined the organization, the Yankees have a great chance to win World Series No. 28. It’ll take Judge being Judge to make it happen.

“Wearing pinstripes here in New York, it’s about the World Series, so it makes it simple for us, what to focus on,” Judge said. “You may have a good year, but it’s not really a good year unless you won it all.”