Aaron Judge is not chasing history.
If history arrives, though, he will accept it.
Sunday night’s storm-shortened, six-inning, 2-0 Yankees win over the Red Sox in The Bronx was Judge’s fifth straight without a long ball since he slammed No. 60 on Tuesday. He has sat on the doorstep of baseball immortality — one swing away from tying Roger Maris’ team and league record — and has swung at 35 pitches in the five games. None have left the yard.
He and the weather left the home fans disappointed last night, when the Yankees completed a four-game sweep of Boston, but another sellout crowd missed out on history. The Yankees now head to Toronto, and their best player probably will face questions concerning whether he is pressing. Five games, 21 homer-less plate appearances in which an entire stadium stands on its feet and falls silent for each pitch. Is Judge wilting under the pressure?
The Post’s Jon Heyman argued that he is pressing. If Judge is, the way he is conducting his at-bats does not reflect it.
Judge is swinging at the right pitches. He is taking balls, he is hunting strikes and he has been typically successful through this apparent drought. The supreme approach just has yet to pay off like it has 60 other times this season.
Through the five-game span, Judge has gone 4-for-15 with three doubles and six walks for a .476 on-base percentage. His double down the third-base line to open the Yankees’ bottom of the first Sunday qualified as a disappointment: Fans only want to see the home run.
Judge wants to see more. At a time when he could be forgiven if he gripped the bat a bit tighter or allowed himself to be more swing-happy at the plate, he has done the opposite.
In Judge’s first 143 games this season, he saw 1,411 pitches that were outside the strike zone, according to Statcast’s zone measurement. He swung at 328, for a chase rate of just over 23 percent.
In Judge’s homer-less games from Wednesday through Saturday, he swung at nine of the 42 pitches he saw that were out of the zone, for a chase rate of just over 21 percent. (One of those, by the way, was that check-swing strikeout that ended his final at-bat Saturday, a call he was not thrilled about.)
So in some of the most pressurized at-bats of his life, when others might be overanxious and abandoning their plate discipline, Judge has been more selective.
On Sunday, when Judge finished 1-for-2 with a walk, his best plate appearance came in the third inning, when the slugger fell behind 0-2 to Red Sox rookie Brayan Bello, who has a pair of pitches with excellent downward movement. Bello tried a pair of sinkers, one dipping right below the zone, the next a touch outside. Judge ignored both. Bello tried a pair of changeups that were thrown in the middle of the plate but dove under Judge’s knees. Judge ignored both, and he happily took first base as 46,707 fans booed a walk that was not nearly intentional.
The fans could not complain in the fifth inning, when Judge got a first-pitch slider that hung across the plate. He just missed, sending a very high fly ball to left field. He is allowed to just miss. The far bigger concern would be if he were so on edge that he abandoned the approach that brought him to the record books.
If the approach is intact — which it appears to be — the results tend to follow. But Judge’s luck has not been strong this week, which extended to the circumstances that washed away potential final chances Sunday. He would have been due up in the bottom of the seventh, but the downpour that would not relent couldn’t allow the game to continue.
There are 10 more regular-season games for the Yankees, and Judge probably will reach and exceed 61 home runs. He’s got time, and he has proven patient.
He probably will make history, but he won’t chase it.
Today’s back page
It looks like Joe’s about to go
Yesterday was an entertaining NFL Sunday.
The 3-0 Dolphins held off the Bills in an early-season AFC East battle in which plenty happened. Tua Tagovailoa appeared woozy leaving the field, yet missed just one series with what was originally called a head injury before the team called it a lower back injury. The Dolphins QB was then apparently cleared, and the NFL Players Association reportedly wants to open an investigation. Miami punter Thomas Morstead, from his own end zone, kicked directly into the back side of blocker Trent Sherfield. The “Butt Punt” deflected out of the end zone for a safety. Oh, and the Dolphins’ defense tackled Buffalo’s Isaiah McKenzie inbounds to halt a game-ending Josh Allen drive to hold on for the victory.
The Patriots’ Mac Jones hopped off the field without putting any weight on his left leg during a loss to the Ravens. Jalen Hurts threw for 340 yards as the Eagles dominated the Commanders. The Colts used a 16-play drive in the closing minutes to stun the Chiefs.
Interesting Sunday! But not for the Jets.
The Joe Flacco era is likely finished after a 27-12 loss to the Bengals in which the Jets were shut out of the end zone. Flacco was sacked four times, and if he has much left, the Jets will not tap into that talent often behind their offensive line.
Zach Wilson, expected back next week against the Steelers, is much more mobile. With Wilson’s return, the stakes of each game will be heightened. The 1-2 Flacco regime has felt mostly irrelevant; even the win over the Browns lacked a lasting appeal.
Sure, it is great for the team that Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner limited and annoyed Ja’Marr Chase. The Jets’ defense as a whole played well, even if they will need to get more pressure from their defensive line. Breece Hall is elusive.
But little of this matters if the Jets do not have their quarterback of the future. The Jets’ season finally will get started in Pittsburgh.
For once, bad luck misses the Mets
Mets are 1 ½ games ahead of the Braves, and the three-game series in Atlanta that looms next weekend likely will decide the NL East winner.
The Mets won’t have to face star Braves starter Spencer Strider. And if the Mets see the Dodgers in the postseason, there is a chance they would dodge starter Dustin May.
Nobody is cheering for injuries, but injuries have struck at the wrong time for two of the National League’s heavyweights.
Strider, a front-runner for Rookie of the Year, has been the Braves’ best option behind Max Fried and probably would have started the Braves’ second game of the postseason. But the mustachioed 23-year-old will not throw another regular-season inning after he was shut down with a left oblique strain. The Braves hope he will be able to recover in time to pitch at some point in the postseason, but it is hard to imagine a fully stretched-out Strider starting a game before a theoretical World Series.
Ditto for May, who was placed on the injured list Saturday with lower back tightness. May had pitched 30 innings in six starts since returning from Tommy John surgery and showed the same triple-digit heat and often unhittable curveball that had turned him into a young star before the surgery.
The Dodgers will get a first-round bye in the postseason, so he will have some extra time to recover, but Los Angeles does not know what it can expect from May. The loaded Dodgers can turn to Andrew Heaney or Tyler Anderson as a fourth starter, but their ceilings are lower.
The Mets, meanwhile, announced Sunday that Starling Marte’s right middle finger showed “improved healing” in his latest CT scan. The Mets, with Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom at the top of the rotation, are getting healthy at the right time.
