It's hard to argue: Yankees aren't the same team without Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge of the Yankees looks on from the dugout during the first inning in Game 2 of a doubleheader against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday. Credit: Getty Images/Winslow Townson
Some form of this phrase is familiar to just about every professional baseball player who has spent time in the minor leagues, which is pretty much all of them: If you don’t like it down here, play better.
That can be applied to a variety of circumstances in the sports universe, certainly when it comes to narratives that crop up during the course of any season relating to a given player or team.
And ultimately it is the player or the team that has the final say when it comes to narratives, positive or negative, that develop.
If you don’t like it, change it.
Not all narratives, of course, are based in reality, and fans and/or media inventing them is not an infrequent occurrence. (One recent example: Introducing Josh Donaldson to the Yankees’ clubhouse in 2022 a year after he mentioned Gerrit Cole in regard to sticky stuff applied to baseballs would without question create a toxic clubhouse dynamic, an overwhelmingly popular narrative that never came close to materializing.)
But then there are the ones that are obvious.
Such as: The Yankees’ offense is borderline abysmal without Aaron Judge.
Both Aaron Boone and Anthony Rizzo, somewhat oddly, seemed to take issue with that narrative, which has enveloped the 2023 Yankees as the reigning American League MVP continues to miss time with a sprained right big toe. There still is no timeline for his return.
“That’s the storyline, so we’re going to get beat over the head with that,” Boone said Sunday after the Yankees were held to four hits in a 6-2 loss to the Red Sox in the first game of a split doubleheader at Fenway Park. “The reality is that team we’re rolling out there is capable of doing damage offensively.”
After the Yankees were held to five hits in a 4-1 loss in the nightcap a few hours later, it was Rizzo’s turn.
“I know the narrative is ‘without-Judge this-and-that,’ but I don’t think that’s fair to put on him or anyone on this team,” said the first baseman, a team leader whose clubhouse impact is on par with Judge’s.
But the facts are the facts.
After being swept in Sunday’s doubleheader at Fenway Park, that made it four straight losses for the Yankees, who fell to 4-8 since Judge landed on the injured list. In that 12-game stretch, the Yankees have scored 39 runs. They had only seven hits in 17 innings after the first inning of the first game of the doubleheader.
To be fair to Boone and Rizzo, neither outright downplayed the captain’s absence, but both clearly did not want to be viewed as using it as an alibi for the offense’s difficulties, a more than fair public stance to take.
“That, to me, is just an excuse right now. We’ve got plenty of guys capable of putting up runs,” Boone said. “I know it’s going to be the story every day until we start banging away. But we’ve got more than capable people to get it done. We just got to get a little more consistent right now.”
The trouble is that pretty much all of the “guys” Boone referenced are slumping.
Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu and Josh Donaldson have gone 16-for-138 (.116) during the 12-game stretch without Judge. Ironically, one of those tasked with taking Judge’s spot, minor-league call-up Jake Bauers, is among the few hitting the ball hard on a regular basis.
“One guy doesn’t make the biggest difference in the world,” Rizzo said. “And for us as a unit, we have to come together and rally — for us, for him, for everyone.”
At the moment, though, the numbers suggest only one conclusion that can be drawn: that one guy absent from the Yankees’ lineup is making the biggest difference.
And that narrative will persist until the Yankees change it.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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