Like everyone else, the Yankees continue to wait for Aaron Judge to be Aaron Judge.
He entered Friday night still hitting just .197 with a very unJudge-like OPS of .725.
When it appeared he was about to break out recently, with three homers in five games — including home runs in back-to-back games in Milwaukee — he followed that outburst with one hit in 13 at-bats in four games before Friday’s series opener against the Tigers in The Bronx.
And then Judge came through in the bottom of the ninth, but not in his usual fashion.
He led off the inning with the Yankees trailing by a run and not having come close to scoring against the Tigers.
Judge’s single up the middle, his first hit of the night, sparked a game-winning rally in a 2-1 victory over the Tigers.
“There’s no question when Aaron Judge does stuff, guys react positively,’’ Aaron Boone said following the win. “He’s got that kind of presence, and he’s that kind of player.”
So while it wasn’t a mammoth home run, perhaps this will be the at-bat that finally gets Judge going, since it’s over a month into the season and he is still not producing at anywhere near his normal level.
“I’m not overly, overly concerned about it, but obviously, when you look at it, you’re not gonna say there’s no concern,’’ hitting coach James Rowson said before the game. “There’s a level of wanting him to get going and getting back to himself, but right now, we’re trying to do the simple things of getting the timing of his swing right consistently.”
Rowson goes back with Judge to his minor league days, when Rowson was a hitting instructor and Judge was coming up through the organization, so he has seen Judge have down times before.
“I feel like from the beginning of the year to now, he’s made some adjustments and we’ve seen some sparks, so we feel he’s really close,’’ Rowson said. “A lot of it is getting to the right spot on time and doing that consistently. But he’s the same guy.”
Not when it comes to results this season.
His average exit velocity of 94.6 mph is the lowest he’s posted outside of the 2020 season.
And he’s struggled in particular against the fastball, with a slugging percentage of just .415 against the pitch this season, as compared to well over .700 each of the previous two seasons.
Scouts aren’t convinced of an explanation for the slump.
“He looks healthy in the outfield and you’ve seen him have stretches where he’s just off offensively,’’ one AL scout said of Judge, who made a terrific running catch of Andy Ibanez’s long fly ball to deep left-center to open the eighth inning. “This is one of those times and it’s lasting longer than it normally does.”
Boone said before the game what he’s repeated often this season: “I don’t worry about him too much. It’s a matter of time before he gets there. I know I’ve been saying that a lot, but he really is not far off.”
And although the regular season is over a month old, Boone noted it could be worse.
“He still has six homers and 18 RBIs, and he’s walking,’’ the manager said, to go along with Judge’s OPS of .725. “A lot of people kill to have an over-.700 OPS when they’re in a tough stretch. There are All-Star players sitting in the .500s in OPS [this year].”
That doesn’t do the Yankees any good, especially when they were shut down in a series loss in Baltimore, scoring just six runs in four games.
“He’ll get there,’’ Boone said. “Hitting is hard, even for the best of the best, which he is. We’ve seen where it’s, ‘Man, he’s locked in’ and then a couple at-bats where he doesn’t.”
Rowson said it’s not due to a lack of effort and believes Judge will turn it around.
“I’ll tell you right now, I’m fully confident he’s going to return to the hitter he is,” Rowson said. “But right now, he’s going through the ebbs and flows of a season.”
