NEW YORK — Aaron Judge came into Sunday’s 2-0 Yankees win over Tampa Bay in a 1-for-24 slide. His batting average had slipped to .246, his lowest mark since 2023.
For 11 games, Aaron Judge had not hit a home run or driven in a run. It was the longest power drought of his career had dragged on through 55 plate appearances and two weeks on the calendar. The Yankees had lost seven of his last 11 games as he searched for a swing he could trust.
Three days before Sunday, Judge had described his at-bats with the line, “I’m not doing nothing at the plate.”
But Aaron Boone took the opposite tack, telling reporters earlier in the week that Judge would get through it and “somebody will pay the price real soon.”
On Sunday, the early innings did not offer a clean road back. Judge singled in the first, which stopped an 0-for-15 skid. But he was doubled off first base when he misread a Ben Rice line drive to right-center. It was a rare mistake from a player whose decisions usually look as steady as his production.
One swing ends everything
Aaron Judge cleaned everything up by the ninth.
Trent Grisham worked back from an 0-2 count and drew a leadoff walk off Kelly. Max Schuemann came in to pinch-run. Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snyder walked to the mound, said his piece, walked back to the dugout. Then Judge stepped in and ended the afternoon on the first pitch.
Max Schuemann entered as a pinch runner, but the Yankees captain made the extra speed irrelevant.
Kelly’s first pitch was a sinker near the inside part of the plate. Judge drove it the other way into the right-center field seats.
The Yankees poured out of the dugout as Judge rounded the bases. The swing gave the Yankees a 2-0 win, ended their three-game losing streak and delivered their first victory of the season against Tampa Bay.
Boone had waited for the correction. The swing arrived in the biggest spot of the afternoon.
“That’s just a great swing from him,” Boone said.
The home run was Judge’s 17th of the season. It was his first homer and first RBI since May 10, tying him with Chicago’s Munetaka Murakami for the American League lead. It also became his fourth career walk-off homer and his first since July 28, 2022, when he beat Kansas City in a 1-0 Yankees win. It was his eighth career walk-off hit.
And in a stat that pulled in some serious Yankees history, the swing made Judge the only player in Yankees history to hit multiple career walk-off homers in games tied 0-0. The other one came on July 28, 2022.
MLB.com listed the drive at a Statcast-projected 363 feet and noted that it would have been a home run in only three major league parks.
The crowd of 41,396 chanted “M-V-P” as Judge rounded the bases. Grisham, Austin Wells and Chisholm needed two coolers to soak the 6-foot-7 Yankees captain. The Yankees finished the homestand 3-3 and headed for Kansas City on Monday with their captain, finally, swinging the bat like himself again. The math is simple, and the Yankees have proven it again and again over the past two weeks. The Yankees do not win when Judge does not produce. On Sunday, Judge produced, and the Yankees won.
Glove keeps Yankees alive
In the eighth inning, with the game still scoreless and a Rays runner on second base with one out, Jonathan Aranda lifted a fly ball to right field. Judge ranged in, went to the turf, and came up with the ball. Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Grisham gave him grief in the dugout, calling it more of a fall than a dive. The runner held at second. The Yankees got out of the inning without surrendering a run, which they almost certainly do not do if the ball drops.
After the game, Judge waved off the idea the catch was anything special. He framed his afternoon around contribution rather than power numbers.
Judge was asked whether the home-run and RBI droughts had been getting to him.
“There’s no frustration. I got a job to do,” Judge said. “Obviously I want to get the job done and help the team win and we weren’t winning, so I was mad about that. But no homers, RBIs, you can find other ways to help your team win. So that’s what I was trying to do.”
The catch was one of those ways. So was the sharp single he laced to left in the bottom of the first. The misread off Ben Rice’s liner right after was not.
Judge drifted halfway to second on what turned out to be a routine flyout off Rice’s bat, and Tampa Bay doubled him off first. Boone said later he had turned to bench coach Brad Ausmus on the Yankees bench and said he had never seen that from his captain.
Judge took the blame for the baserunning gaffe directly. The Yankees captain did not soften the language on his own mistake.
“It’s a bad look,” the Yankees captain said. “I just got to clean that up.”
That catch became part of a tense inning that kept the game at 0-0. It also helped deny Tampa Bay the kind of late opening that had burned the Yankees on Friday.
Drought gives way to history
Judge’s latest walk-off moved him into familiar Yankees company. The club’s historical walk-off homer list in the game materials shows him now tied with Joe DiMaggio and Reggie Jackson at four. The moment carried sharper weight because his July 28, 2022 shot against Kansas City also came with the Yankees in a scoreless game.
Judge said the personal drought did not bother him as much as the team’s losses. His answer explained why the catch and the homer belonged in the same story.
“There’s no frustration, I got a job to do,” Judge said. “Obviously I want to get the job done and help the team win and we weren’t winning, so I was mad about that. But no homers, RBIs, you can find other ways to help your team win. So that’s what I was trying to do.”
Yankees get the version they needed
The Yankees did not suddenly fix every offensive concern. They managed only seven hits and still needed Tim Hill to strand two runners in the ninth before Judge came up.
But the Yankees did get the version of Judge that changes a game twice. He turned in the right-field catch when Tampa Bay threatened. He then ended the afternoon with the kind of opposite-field power few hitters can show in rough weather.
Judge called the walk-off a reward for the grind the Yankees had carried through a difficult week.
“It’s a special moment,” Judge said.
For one afternoon, the Yankees did not need a long rally. They needed their captain to stop a cold spell, save a run and finish a game that had no room left for delay.
Can Aaron Judge go past 55 home runs this season? What do you think?
