Aaron Judge’s Yankees teammates enjoyed his home run record chase for obvious reasons: the history and the fact that Judge’s 62 homers — one more than Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League record of 61 — played a major role in them winning the AL East.
But the pursuit served another purpose: It put the Yankees into a playoff-type atmosphere for most of the final five weeks of the season.
As Aaron Boone pointed out this week, once Judge hit his 50th homer of the season in Anaheim on Aug. 29, the reality of the outfielder catching Maris started to feel real.
The attention grew as the Yankees played in front of bigger crowds than usual and with significantly more media attention — even for them.
Players such as Judge, Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rizzo have been in such an atmosphere before, but newcomers such as Isiah Kiner-Falefa — who have never played in the postseason — tried to soak it up.
“It was a lot to deal with at first, but I embraced it,” Kiner-Falefa said. “This is why you play for the Yankees, to play in that kind of environment, and having Judge do what he did gave us a little taste. I think it will help guys like me when the playoffs start.”
The Yankees open the postseason Tuesday when they host Game 1 of the ALDS against the winner of the Guardians-Rays wild-card series.
After abbreviated playoff runs as a wild card in 2020 and 2021 (when they lost a wild-card game in Boston with Cole pitching through a hamstring injury), they enter the postseason this year as the No. 2 seed in the American League, having withstood a bad stretch that whittled their AL East lead from 15 ½ games to as few as 3 ½. They will face either a hot Guardians team that ended up running away with the AL Central or a Rays team that typically has given the Yankees trouble.
Not much, though, will be a bigger deal than Judge’s march toward the record books, which progressed from the Yankees’ blistering start, when the franchise mark of 114 wins seemed to be in jeopardy, through what Judge called “the dog days of summer,” when their good fortune evaporated and they were hit by injuries and poor play before finishing the regular season in strong fashion.
Through it all, Judge carried the offense.
“He never changed through any of it,” Anthony Rizzo said.
But Judge did fall into a 7-for-35 skid between homers 60 and 62, and admitted after breaking Maris’ record the added spotlight did get to him at times.
Now that October is here, the attention will be spread a bit more evenly and perhaps the recent run in the spotlight will even give the Yankees something of an advantage.
Texas two-misstep
When the Yankees closed the regular season in Texas, the Rangers provided a reminder that splashy free-agent signings don’t necessarily result in on-field success.
They handed out a 10-year, $325 million deal to Corey Seager and a seven-year, $175 million deal to Marcus Semien as part of an offseason in which the team committed to $556 million in free-agent contracts.
Although the middle infielders performed fairly well — Seager hit .245/.317/.455 with 33 home runs, and Semien hit .248/.304/.429 with 26 homers and 25 stolen bases — the Rangers finished 68-94, ahead of only the tanking A’s in the AL West.
Texas fired manager Chris Woodward and team president Jon Daniels during the season and appear headed for another reboot.
After the Yankees sat out the free-agent shortstop class, they won 99 games and the division.
Dominguez plays on
Jasson Dominguez doesn’t turn 20 until February, making him the fourth-youngest player in the Arizona Fall League.
Kevin Martir, Dominguez’s hitting coach at the beginning of the 2022 season at Low-A Tampa, said the extra games on Dominguez’s schedule will do him good.
“He’s exciting to watch,” Martir said. “He’s a hard worker, very smart and a quick learner who makes adjustments.”
Dominguez entered the AFL having played in just 177 games since signing with the Yankees in July 2019. He was among the prospects affected by the cancellation of the 2020 minor league season. Now he will look to make up for some of that experience shortfall by being among the Yankees minor leaguers playing for the Mesa Solar Sox this fall.
“He has all the tools,” Martir said. “It’s about game-planning and learning the game. He just started playing, which is crazy to think about.”
After starting this year with Tampa, Dominguez spent 40 games with High-A Hudson Valley and played well enough to earn a late-season promotion to Double-A Somerset. He hit .273/.376/.461 with 16 home runs, 37 stolen bases, 72 walks and 128 strikeouts in 530 combined plate appearances across the three levels while playing 102 games in center field and 18 as the DH.
“He’s learning as he goes and learning fast,” Martir said. “And he’s still so young. He’s almost always the youngest guy wherever he goes.”