Aaron Judge’s Rough Start Highlights Random And Fluky Nature Of The Division Series

It was just merely two weeks ago when Aaron Judge returned home fresh off hitting his 61st homer to tie Roger Maris for the AL record.

Two weeks after the seventh game of fans standing up and getting silent in anticipation of those at-bats, Judge stood in the middle of the Yankee clubhouse facing a wider group of questioners.

Not because he homered or produced the game-winning hit and most certainly not because it was a regular-season game.

Instead, Judge stood in the middle of the clubhouse in front of a blue Yankee banner with a corporate sponsor to explain to some people who appear only for postseason games what suddenly has “gone wrong” for him in the small sample known as postseason.

And the final jeopardy answer according to Judge is timing.

“When you are a little late, you miss some pitches you usually do some damage on and you are usually swinging at stuff that you don’t,” Judge said. “I’ve had two bad games in my career multiple times. It’s part of it. You have to learn from your mistakes. You have to get ready for the next one. There are no breaks right now.”

In the crapshoot known as the postseason that sometimes produces more random results than a Strat-O-Matic card, Judge is 0-for-8 through the first two games. He has seen 45 pitches and seven third strikes.

Adding up to the sound from some segments of the crowd on Friday. Boo!!

The boos were not present when he swung and missed at a Shane Bieber cutter to open the game about 10 minutes before Giancarlo Stanton hit a two-run homer. The boos were non-existent when he swung and missed at the same pitch in the third and did not occur in the fifth when Judge looked a fastball that appeared slightly outside and prompted him to briefly glance back at plate umpire Jeremie Rehak.

Then in the seventh of a tie game with the crowd anticipating a big moment came this sequence against Trevor Stephan: swinging strike on a fastball, foul tip on another fastball, ball one on a splitter and then a swinging strike on the same pitch.

The four-pitch sequence was followed by the boos and online the hashtag of #notmymvp. As for how he took the booing, it was about what you would expect if you ever listened to him in interview settings.

He took the boos in stride while conceding the obvious after hearing not even Hall of Famers Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter were immune from listening to on occasion.

“There’s nothing I can do. I gotta play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. Didn’t do the job tonight.”

And a lot of Judge not getting the job done in the postseason is against Cleveland.

In nine postseason games against Cleveland he is 2-for-37 with 28 strikeouts. In his other 29 games, Judge is a .274 hitter (29-for-106)

Still even with Judge’s lack of results against whatever arm from Cleveland faces him, the Yankees are 6-3 in those games with a five-game ALDS win in 2017 and a two-game sweep in the pandemic-induced and now actual wild-card round in 2020.

And it probably explains why Terry Francona was not biting on a question about his team’s strategy for the slugger produced his fourth career postseason game of four strikeouts and the 92nd all-time in the postseason and 42nd instance in a division series game.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but if I did, I’m not sure I’d really want to share it,” Francona said. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I think sometimes hitters can’t hit a button, and as good as guys are, sometimes guys take 0-fors.

“Until you get through a series successfully, I don’t think anybody if going to stand up here and pound our chest,” Francona said. “He’s too dangerous. We know that.”

Perhaps if Cleveland wins the next two games, Francona can share the details for pitching to Judge. Some of those pitchers who allowed any of Judge’s 62 homers during the regular season might be interested but until then the other Yankees are certainly not abandoning ship on the player who carried them most of the season.

“He’s had 10 or less at-bats,” Stanton said. “It’s just a small sample size that you can use. He’s got time and it’s over now. So that don’t matter. We got to win two out of three and he’s going to help us do so.”

The small sample can produce weird individual results. Just ask the likes of Alex Rodriguez, who was 8-for-44 in 13 ALDS games from 2005 to 2007 and then went 8-for-22 in his next six ALDS games before going 4-for-32 in his final nine games.