In a weird sense, the 2024 season has been defined by various players on the Yankees vanquishing prior demons, and settling into their roles as they’ve become a cohesive unit. Giancarlo Stanton winning ALCS MVP felt like a crowning moment in his tenure with the Yankees, guiding the team to their first pennant since 2009 as they got huge performances from players who have been heavily scrutinized throughout the season. Gleyber Torres went from lost-at-sea to the perfect leadoff hitter, Carlos Rodon delivered two strong starts in two critical wins, but one player has remained fairly quiet.
Aaron Judge, who has been criticized heavily for his playoff play, has yet to find the magic in October. The driving reason behind the Yankees’ ability to even qualify for the postseason, he’s gone cold once again, but if this team finally wants to bring home its first World Series title since 2009, they’ll need their captain to rise to the moment. In a season defined by redemption, Aaron Judge needs to reach his MVP form once more to join the most legendary players in the franchise’s illustrious history.
It’s All Up to Aaron Judge to Guide the 2024 Yankees to Eternal Glory
A two-run blast against Emmanuel Clase serves as Aaron Judge’s most game-changing postseason hit, tying the game in the seventh inning and giving the Yankees a chance in Game 3 of the ALCS. While they would come short in that specific game, it caused the Guardians to deplete more high-leverage arms late in that game to ensure they could make a comeback in the ninth and tenth innings, which may have helped the Bronx Bombers in Games 4 and 5.
Outside of that moment it’s hard to find many game-changing hits for Judge, who is 0-7 with RISP although he does have two sacrifice flies. The Yankees have had chances to break the game open, but their best hitter has fallen short of delivering time-and-time again. While it didn’t haunt them against Kansas City or Cleveland, it certainly could against a Los Angeles Dodgers team that does nothing but absolutely mash the baseball.
The stars will be out in Los Angeles and New York throughout this series, but none can change a game the way 99 has been able to throughout the 2024 season. For the first time since 2016, the Yankees are winning games despite the lack of production from Aaron Judge, a sign that Brian Cashman assembled a strong roster but also a sign that there’s another gear this team can kick into. With a 94 wRC+ and 31.7% strikeout rate, this series needs to be the one where Aaron Judge finally has a signature series.
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The advantages that various left-handed hitters had on the Yankees won’t exist, as it’s mostly up to the team’s righties to make sure they take advantage of three pitchers who are below-average in these matchups. As a whole, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching staff has a 1.38 HR/9 on their active roster when facing right-handed hitting, and this creates a lane for Aaron Judge to do serious damage.
In his career against the Dodgers, Judge has hit .389 with eight home runs in just 10 games, and we’ll need to see his reign of terror over the West Coast powerhouse continue. Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts have been remarkable in the postseason while Freddie Freeman has gotten much-needed time off to rehab his ankle, all three of them are locks to go into the Hall of Fame and are in the middle of their primes.
With how deadly their offense is, Aaron Judge is the ultimate equalizer for the Yankees to counter a lineup that thrashed the Mets in the NLCS.
This is the biggest series of Aaron Judge’s illustrous MLB career. He has a chance to add the final thing missing to his incredible resume, and solidify himself as an all-time great Yankee. While I wouldn’t align myself with the idea that team success should dramatically affect a player’s standing in all-time ranking conversations, it’s undeniably a huge part of their legacy.
Will Aaron Judge go down as another great player who never won it all or will he get his first-ever World Series title and virtually gurantee that he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer? This is one of the greatest baseball talents we have ever seen, and he opposes another once-in-a-genration talent in the World Series. Shohei Ohtani is going to show up, just as he did in the postseason up to this point and just as he did in the World Baseball Classic in 2023.
One of these two players are known as a big-game player; the other is known as an unreliable bat when the lights have shined the brightest. Aaron Judge can flip the narrative forever with one great series, and more importantly, he can bring a World Series back to the Bronx after 15 years of waiting for one of the most demanding fanbases on the planet.
Aaron Judge could play well and the Yankees could still lose the World Series, but if he has the monstrous series we all know he’s capable of, it’s more than likely that New York will be a city of champions once again.