When it comes to Aaron Judge, no one around the Yankees ever panics.
The reigning MVP has earned that, especially in the regular season. With two of those trophies, the American League single-season home run record and the best offensive season by a right-handed hitter already on a resume littered with other accomplishments, Yankees hitting coach James Rowson has every right to call Judge “the most dangerous man in baseball.”
“Everybody else knows that,” Rowson continued. “So he’s going to be pitched difficult. He’s going to be pitched differently at times, and sometimes those come in bunches.
“I have no worry about him. I don’t think he’s worried about it at all.”
Rowson expressed his everlasting confidence in Judge on Wednesday with the Yankees’ captain enduring his first skid of the season. On Thursday, Judge tried to put the slide behind him, going 1-for-3 with one walk, one strikeout and a double in a 7-3 win over the Angels that snapped a six-game losing streak.
Judge wasn’t perfect in the matinée, as his strikeout came against the left-handed Tyler Anderson with runners on the corners and nobody out in the first inning. Anderson also got him to hit a soft pop up with a man on first to end the fifth.
Even Judge’s double seemed to follow a strikeout, as he appeared to whiff on an 0-2 Héctor Neris fastball that went past Angels catcher Travis d’Arnaud and to the backstop in the eighth inning. Judge ran out of the box as if it were a dropped third strike, but home plate umpire Roberto Ortiz deemed it a foul ball.
A few pitches later, Judge seized his second chance, driving a full count heater 395 feet to left-center at 109.9 mph to leadoff the inning. He then scored on an Anthony Volpe groundout.
“I thought he did a good job of not expanding, getting deeper [in the count] and then finally getting the pitch he could really handle,” Aaron Boone said in his postgame press conference.
At another point in the presser, the manager noted “there are things that went our way today as well” while discussing another questionable call in a game full of them.
No matter the circumstances surrounding Judge’s double, the two-bagger was a welcomed one for the slugger.
He entered Thursday’s contest 2-for-24 with one home run, one RBI, two walks and 15 strikeouts over his last seven games. Judge has also had at least two strikeouts in 10 of the 17 games he’s played in this month. That stretch includes five three-strikeout performances, surpassing his total from his previous 57 games.
Judge had been flirting with a .400 batting average about a week ago, but he’s down to a still-absurd .366 amid his first relative slump of 2025.
“Is it though?” Boone countered after Judge went 0-for-4 with two punchouts in a 3-2 loss on Wednesday. “Monday night, he had two rockets and had a couple walks, and he goes 0-for and it’s a slump. Maybe he’s missed a couple pitches. I mean, it’s a hard game. I don’t know if I really see it that way. He’s not going to get two hits every day, week on week. It happens. So he’ll continue to make adjustments, like he always does.”
Judge also mentioned how difficult the sport can be when asked about his own performance earlier in the week, which has overlapped with some quiet outings for the Yankees’ entire lineup.
“Ah, that’s baseball,” he said Wednesday. “You hit two balls hard today, and you don’t get rewarded for it. So I gotta show up tomorrow and just do my job. That’s about it.”
Judge is still leading the majors in average, and his 1.191 OPS is pacing the league by a solid margin. His 26 homers are second only to Seattle’s Cal Raleigh.
It’s not like Judge’s recent funk has ruined his stat line or his chances of winning another MVP Award.
But with Judge playing at a superhuman level for most of the season — the last few, really — it’s hard not to notice whenever he scuffles for more than two or three days.
Asked if he feels good mechanically, Judge said, “I always feel good.” Rowson repeatedly mentioned pitchers attacking the outfielder “differently,” but the coach understandably declined to talk specifics.
Boone mentioned that Judge has “probably left the zone a little more than he normally does,” but Rowson said that trend “hasn’t been alarming.”
One could reason that with the rest of the lineup struggling prior to Thursday, Judge may have been trying to do too much. After all, other Yankees openly talked about pressing as a scoreless innings streak grew earlier in the week.
Judge, however, said it was “hard to say” if he felt his peers were applying extra pressure on Tuesday and Wednesday, and he didn’t make any mention of pressing himself.
Whatever the reasons for his recent woes, odds are Judge will snap out of it soon enough. Maybe he already did with Thursday’s mulligan double.
“I have no real concerns at all about Judgey,” Rowson said. “If there’s someone I’m not worried about, it’s AJ.”
