It’s not just Aaron Judge’s fault, of course. There were Yankee failures Saturday across multiple departments in the opener of the AL Division Series, from starting pitching to the bullpen to a lineup that didn’t deliver in yet another loss in Toronto.
But the lingering moment, at least for Yankees fans smarting over an enormous chance missed in a game that would devolve into a laugher, might come from the stressful sixth inning with Judge at the plate. The bases were loaded, nobody out, in a still-taut game. The Yanks were down by two runs.
Kevin Gausman, the Blue Jays starter, was rolling, but Judge is a longtime nemesis – the Yankee star owned a 1.283 OPS against Gausman entering Saturday. His lifetime six homers off Gausman are the most he’s slugged off a single pitcher. It was, as Gausman would put it later, "Mano y mano.”
Mano Gausman won. He got Judge to swing at a low splitter – obviously a ball – on a 3-2 pitch, capping an eight-pitch battle with a crucial K. Gausman walked in a run, but the Jays ultimately escaped the inning, allowing just that one run. Reliever Louis Varland struck out Giancarlo Stanton to end the threat and Toronto went on to a 10-1 victory.
“In the end, you know, I didn’t get the job done,” Judge told reporters in Toronto. “That’s what it comes down to.”
And so the October scrutiny will continue for Judge. He’s clearly one of the greatest hitters of this, or any, era. In the postseason, it’s too much to ask for anyone to reproduce the outsized numbers he’s stacked up during the regular season. But he’s a career .217 hitter this time of year after going 2-for-4 Saturday. (He’s actually having a strong postseason so far, batting .400).
But, fair or unfair, he probably needs to wreck a series himself to get full credit from pinstriped fans. A World Series wouldn’t hurt, either, obviously.
But all that’s not just on him, just like the blame for the loss in the Division Series isn’t solely his to own. After Judge, the Yankees had Cody Bellinger, Ben Rice and Giancarlo Stanton coming to the plate. Plenty of thump there, too, but Gausman and Varland wriggled (mostly) free.
Overall, the Yankees were outhit, 14-6, and were just 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position.
Let’s go back to the Yanks’ big chance. Gausman’s splitter was particularly dangerous against the aggressive Yankees and, as the at-bat against Judge went on, it was easy to think he’d use it as his out pitch. But he set it up beautifully by first throwing a 97 mile-per-hour four-seamer inside to Judge, which Judge fouled off. Then Gausman threw an 86-mph splitter outside that dipped below the strike zone. Judge swung and missed.
“I kind of threw some pitches that I got away with, to be honest, early in the at-bat,” Gausman said in the interview room. “But I thought the pitch before really set up the split down and away. In that moment, to be honest, I'm fine walking him. He can blow that game right open with one swing. So kind of knowing that, the whole at-bat I was trying to go down and away with the split, left a couple kind of too good.
“But that was a good pitch. I thought the pitch before definitely set it up.”
“That’s a huge, huge strikeout of a guy who’s going to be the MVP of the league, probably,” Toronto manager John Schneider added. “You’re kind of going to feed on the emotion a little bit, too, to be honest with you. But that’s the last thing you want to see (Judge at the plate in that situation).”
Judge lamented that he had swung at ball four. “You guys all saw it,” he told reporters.
There’s no question the game changes if the Yankees come away with more than one run there. Maybe their bullpen usage changes and Luke Weaver, who has let all six batters he’s faced reach base this postseason, does not get the ball. Yankees relievers allowed eight runs in 5.1 innings in total, though, so it wasn’t just Weaver. And starter Luis Gil was unimpressive, too.
Clearly, Judge and his teammates must forget Saturday’s dud. One way to do that is to start dreaming about how the pitching lines up for them going forward. Max Fried starts Game 2 on Sunday – he was 11-1 with a 1.82 ERA in 16 starts after a Yankee loss this year – and he’ll be followed by Carlos Rodón in Game 3 and then Cam Schlittler, the rookie sensation who overwhelmed the Red Sox in the clincher of the Wild Card series, in Game 4.
Judge will continue to get chances. It’s probably worth believing in him, regardless of Octobers past. Maybe it’s worth continuing to believe in the Yankees, too, despite the way Saturday sagged.
Judge does. “I like our chances,” he said. “We’ve got to keep getting those opportunities and we’re going to come through when we need to.”
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