The most damaging walk for the Yankees wasn’t the one Gleyber Torres took to first base the other day, assuming a home run and finishing with a single and shortly after a message sent by Aaron Boone to the bench.
These are all the intentions Aaron Judge is accumulating…
Unless Austin Wells, Giancarlo Stanton and the rest of the hitters behind Judge do something to make this strategy regrettable.
“We’re going to see more and more of him,” Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker said. “He’s in such good shape right now that it’s going to become a regular occurrence.”
And Walker said that before Sunday’s game. Before he and manager John Schneider decided to intentionally walk Judge three times — twice in unconventional locations, but not as rare as the one given Saturday.
Walker, before a pitch was thrown in the deciding game of this three-game series, said: “You might see that when you walk him and you put yourself in a position where a single beats you, but you’re just not going to let him swing that bat. You’re just going to take your chances with the next guy. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see that a lot. It could happen more than once.”
That’s what happened Sunday, when Judge became the first Yankee to intentionally walk three times in a game since Bernie Williams on Sept. 26, 1999. And he joined Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez as the only major leaguers to intentionally walk three times in a game in the past three seasons.
The Yankees failed to score in any of the three innings in which Judge was walked, but still managed to beat Toronto 4-3 on a game-winning single by DJ LeMahieu.
Even in defeat, Toronto provided a model of what the Yankees should expect late in games as the importance of games grows. Basically, opponents will try to minimize the chances of seeing “All Rise” moments.
Judge has been playing above the game since May; he’s basically playing like Barry Bonds in the early 2000s — he doesn’t see many pitches to hit, but can’t help but homer on the ones near the plate.
He hit a first-inning home run on Friday and Saturday, and Schneider had enough. Judge tied the Yankees (and Babe Ruth) with 16 first-inning home runs in 2024 and 41 overall, eight more than anyone else.
Judge was intentionally walked with two outs and no man on base in the second inning Saturday. It was the first time a player was intentionally walked in the first two innings of a bases-empty game since Aug. 10, 1972 — and it was light-hitting catcher Glenn Borgmann to bring in a pitcher. Saturday, it was to bring in the terrific-hitting Wells.
But there’s a difference between being great and being supernatural — and Judge is a baseball alien, which is why Aaron Boone said before Sunday’s game, when asked how long it had been since anyone had been treated the same way: “Oh, so it goes beyond the Bonds treatment. Now we call it the Judge treatment.”
Judge is actually a better overall hitter than he was in 2022, when he hit a Yankees-record 62 home runs — and was never intentionally walked three times in a game that year.
“I know our thought process. [Saturday] and watching him this series and watching the video from this year, it’s just he’s in a different place right now. … I know we haven’t done this since I’ve been coaching anybody, and I’ve been a pitching coach for 12 years,” Walker said. “And I know [manager John Schneider] “I was pretty adamant about it. I can’t think of anyone else we would have even considered doing it for.”
On Sunday, Judge was effectively grounded out with runners on first and second in the first inning, but singled in the third. He was then intentionally walked with no free bases — a runner on first and one out — in the fifth inning. Just after a Soto home run gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning, Judge was walked to put a runner on first with no outs. More traditionally, he was walked with second and third base and two outs in the eighth inning of a tie game.
Judge now has 11 intentional walks, including four in the last two games. That’s not counting the unintentional intentional walks that are part of his MLB-record 92 walks (along with Soto). Those two, of course, are on base all the time. The question will be whether there’s any damage behind them.
Even though Wells has played at a high level since late June, Yankees cleanup hitters entered Sunday with the lowest batting average (.217), second-lowest on-base percentage (.277) and third-lowest hitting percentage (.340). To give you an idea of why teams will avoid Judge, he entered Sunday 9-for-16 (.563) with three second-half homers with runners in scoring position. The rest of the Yankees were 22-122 (.180) with five homers.
“Every team, every pitching coach, every strategy, every advanced pitching meeting, you pick the guy you’re not going to let beat you. And he beats you,” Walker said. “I know the strategy is not to let him hit anything, but he hits it anyway. And those are big hits. It’s unbelievable. He’ll take the hit to right field and if you make a mistake inside, he’ll hit it 470 feet. He’s a complete hitter.”
Toronto got tired of seeing that, so it let Judge go — and the Yankees can’t make a run for the Canyon of Heroes unless his teammates make their opponents pay for that strategy.
