MLB Playoffs: Yankees’ Aaron Judge Struggles Again; Is the fan criticism fair?

The New York Yankees have a chance to clinch a trip to the American League Championship Series on Thursday by beating the Kansas City Royals. Giancarlo Stanton’s home run in the eighth inning on Wednesday night lifted the Yankees to a 3-2 victory and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series.

Stanton, whose career postseason slugging percentage of .633 tops his regular-season mark of .525, is no stranger to October heroics.

The same cannot be said for Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge.

Arguably the AL’s MVP, Judge is 1-for-11 to start the series. He hit .322 with 58 home runs and 144 RBI in the regular season; his next postseason home run or RBI will be his first.

Perhaps most troubling for Yankees fans: This is nothing new. Judge hit .063 (1-for-16) with no home runs in his last playoff series, a 2022 AL Championship Series loss to the Houston Astros.

In his career, Judge is hitting .203 with 13 home runs and 25 RBIs in 47 playoff games. After striking out in four of his first six plate appearances against the Royals, Judge moved into the all-time lead for the highest postseason strikeout percentage by any player with at least 200 October plate appearances:

Fortunately for the Yankees, Judge’s underperformance hasn’t cost them a win in two of their first three ALDS games. And as always happens at this time of year, it’s a small sample.

That still hasn’t stopped some Yankees fans from using Judge’s performance as a springboard for criticism.

Speaking with The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty, Yankees hitting coach James Rowson acknowledged that Judge’s swing was off, but not by much.

“I thought his at-bats were great (Wednesday),” Rowson told Kuty. “I thought it showed up. Even in his (batting practice) before, you started to see him hit the ball right away. You started to see the ball spin a little bit. I could feel his swings in the game they were really good. A couple of balls today I feel like he’s in a good spot, man, because I think his swings are getting closer and closer to seeing it here.”

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Teammate Alex Verdugo, who led the Yankees to a Game 1 win, noted that Judge “literally only missed three balls (Wednesday) probably by a hair.”

The Yankees offense is effectively built around two players: Judge and Juan Soto. Any team that can neutralize this dual threat has a decent chance to win a short series, even against the team with the best regular season record in the American League.

Fans can get frustrated all they want, but the depth of the Yankees’ lineup was a known risk. For any team, including the Royals, exploiting Judge’s propensity to strike out is simply a good strategy. And it’s a strategy more teams should be able to execute in the playoffs when the pitching is better overall.

The Yankees’ optimists may be right, too. The judge might be about to explode. It’s just harder to do this time of year.

Judge’s $360 million contract opens him up to more criticism than all but a handful of athletes. Fairly or unfairly, it might have to come out on Thursday to quell the latest round of criticism.

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