Erik Boland: If won't be long until Yankees' Aaron Judge starts taking care of business again
Yankees' Aaron Judge looks on during the sixth inning against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park on Tuesday in Seattle, Washington. Credit: Getty Images/Steph Chambers
SEATTLE — What a miserable, lousy, highly unproductive, sky-is-falling start to the season for Aaron Judge.
It’s the kind of start the three-time AL MVP hasn’t experienced in . . . well, two whole years.
Judge, by any standard, has come out of the 2026 gate slow.
He went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in Wednesday’s 5-3 victory over the Mariners, his lone time on base the result of an eighth-inning throwing error.
It dropped Judge, who has won back-to-back AL MVPs, to 3-for-24 with 11 strikeouts to start the season.
Bad numbers to be sure, but also eerily familiar ones.
Because Judge started 2024 in a 3-for-24 skid, with seven strikeouts, in his first six games.
And, at least, two of his hits this season have been home runs.
In 2024, Judge didn’t hit his first homer until his seventh game and through 15 games he remained stuck on two.
Digging further into that season, the outfielder ended the month of April hitting .207 with six homers and a .754 OPS. His batting average dipped to .197 after going 0-for-4 on May 2, 2024 in Baltimore.
Why harp on 2024?
To demonstrate the silliness — absurdity and stupidity aren’t too strong word choices — some have had to Judge’s start to this season (something that, embarrassingly, began after his 0-for-5, four-strikeouts performance in the season opener).
Because starting May 4, 2024, Judge produced a .398/.507/.932 slash line with 25 home runs, 64 RBIs, 70 hits and 36 walks over his next 50 games. He finished that season nearly winning the AL Triple Crown, hitting .322 with 58 homers, 144 RBIs and a 1.159 OPS, which did win him the second of his MVPs.
“The track record speaks for itself,” hitting coach James Rowson said Wednesday. “I have no concerns, at all, with Judgie.”
Rowson smiled and laughed after saying the last line because Judge, he said, is “absolutely” the last player he worries about when he’s in a slump.
And Rowson learned that first-hand in 2024, his first year as Yankees hitting coach.
“Which plays into why I don’t worry too much about him, about where it [the season] starts,” said Rowson, who actually goes back much further than 2024 with Judge, who was drafted in 2013.
Rowson served as the organization’s minor-league hitting coordinator from 2014-16, that time overlapping with the early stages of Judge’s professional career.
“We’re literally talking about five games of a season,” Rowson said before Wednesday’s game. “And five games where he’s already got two homers.”
Aaron Boone, Judge’s manager since 2018, has always shrugged off slumps from his captain, appropriately doing so again Wednesday.
“Just early in the season,” Boone said. “Again, [it’s] a small stretch. Even for him when it’s not clicking at a level we’re accustomed to seeing all the time, he’s still had a major impact in two wins offensively coupled with all the other things he brings to the table on defense, in here in the dugout. With Judgie, it’s always a matter of time before he gets dialed in from a timing standpoint, and off we go.”
Boone gave a half-smile when asked if there’s any “signs” he looks for that tell him Judge is about to go on one of his tears.
“When he shows up,” Boone said. “I saw him walk in today so that could be the sign.”
Turned out that wasn’t the case Wednesday as Judge produced another 0-fer.
After the Yankees completed a three-game sweep in San Francisco last Saturday with a 3-1 victory, a game in which Judge homered, the rightfielder said: “We took care of business, that was the most important thing.”
The Yankees, even without their most important hitter doing much of anything, did the same here. They took two of three against a Mariners team that advanced further (the ALCS) than the Yankees did a season ago Seattle is a team that may well end up on their menu this October.
Judge heads back to the Bronx with the rest of his teammates after about as successful start to the season as even the most critical Yankees fan could have envisioned, going 5-1 on the West Coast.
Just about everyone involved took care of business, the starting pitching staff, which allowed a ridiculous two runs combined in those six games, especially.
History suggests, and it’s not ancient history by any means, Judge will be taking care of his soon enough.
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.
