We know about the rarefied air that Aaron Judge is breathing after nine full seasons in the big leagues. He is now on the list of Yankees who have won three MVP Awards, along with Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. Only two other Yankees — Babe Ruth and Roger Maris — have hit 60 or more homers in a season the way Judge has. And only Judge, Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, out of all the players in baseball history, have hit 50 or more home runs in a season four times.
But here is a list from which Judge wants his name removed as soon as possible, maybe even as soon as next season, when he turns 34: The one with the greatest baseball players who never played on a World Series winner. That is the one with Ted Williams’ name on it, and Ken Griffey Jr., and Ernie Banks, and Barry Bonds; other Hall of Famers like Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew and Ichiro Suzuki and Harmon Killebrew. If you want to go back further, Ty Cobb never won a World Series, either. Mike Trout might never win one with the way his injury-filled career is playing out.
Williams played in just one World Series for the Red Sox across his career. Judge has only played in one so far. There is still plenty of time for Judge. Just not as much as there once was, back when he wrote his name on another list and became the first rookie to hit 50 or more homers in a season back in 2017.
A year ago, when Judge finally made at least the one World Series the way Don Mattingly (who has another chance to become a Hall of Famer on the latest Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot) never did for the Yankees, but Judge and his team only won one game against the Dodgers. This year, despite the Yankees tying the Blue Jays for most wins — 94 — in the American League, the Yankees only managed to win one game against the Blue Jays in their AL Division Series. This was despite Judge hitting a dramatic home run off the left-field foul pole at Yankee Stadium in Game 3, an epic shot that did the most to keep his team’s season alive that night.
That whole ALDS was Judge’s best postseason moment so far, after so many times when he didn’t come close to hitting at his own high standards in October: a .600 batting average, .684 on-base percentage and .933 slugging and 1.618 OPS, nine hits across the four games. Before that he hit .364 against the Red Sox in a three-game Wild Card Series. Finally All Rise Judge really did rise up in October. But the Yankees once again weren’t good enough. In 2026, he will try to change the narrative for himself and for his team in his 10th full year in Major League Baseball.
Here are some things Judge said after the Blue Jays series, unsurprisingly talking more about his teammates and the fans, just because that’s who Aaron Judge is: “I liked our chances all year; it was a special group. Just sucks for the guys that might be their last time wearing pinstripes and not getting a chance to have a long run with them and end in a championship. Especially with the fans all year … disappointed we let all those guys down.”
Judge also said this, before talking about the need to “turn the page” once again: “For us we gotta clean a couple of things up and we’ll be right back there.”
The Yankees, in his time with them, always give themselves a chance to win it all. They have been to the postseason in eight of the past 10 years. That includes three trips that ended in the ALCS and the aforementioned World Series loss to the Dodgers a year ago. They have had one good team after another. They just haven’t quite been the best team.
And when you take a closer look behind their 94-win season this past year, you see only a 27-25 record against the AL East, with six of those wins coming in September against the 87-loss Orioles. You also see that they only had a winning record against three of the other 11 teams that made the playoffs. One of the things that needs to be cleaned up for the Yankees is playing their best against the best teams — and not just teams from the AL Central — when the money is on the table.
Judge has proven himself to be one of the greatest Yankees of all time, putting himself squarely into the conversation with Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Mickey and Yogi and Joe D. But now Shohei Ohtani, the other legendary slugger of this era, has two World Series titles on his resume. His teammate Mookie Betts, another former MVP, has won four World Series championships.
We know all about the October history for those other famous Yankees. Judge very much wants to make some of his own. And soon. It’s like Yogi said: “It gets late early out there.” Here in Judge’s case meaning Yankee Stadium. Here and now.
