Don't look now, but the Yankees may cost Judge the MVP.

 

Ah, what a difference a week makes! 

 

Just a few days ago, we were all oohing and ahhing over the feats of our Rabelaisian slugger, surely en route to one of the greatest seasons in major-league baseball history, approached only in his awesomeness by his fellow caped crusader, Juan Soto. 

(Courting jujusian vengeance, of course, some idiots actually decided to drape Judge in a literal cape, aping the stupid antics of lesser teams in lesser dugouts. I don't think he has homered since.)

But I digress. The heights our superheroes might reach for the season seemed beyond previous imagination. It looked as though Judge could actually break his own (real) major-league record for home runs in a season. He also seemed a lock for 100 extra-base hits on the year, not to mention 140-plus RBI, and, with a little luck, even a Triple Crown.

Soto’s numbers were nearly as stunning, and the fire he brought to the team was even better. With 37 homers under his belt, it seemed possible that he and Judge could be the first Yankee combo to each finish with over 50 home runs since you-know-who and you-know-who, too. (I won't besmirch their names here, as they actually played for an organization interested in winning.)

How different things look now, with both players in a nosedive at the worst possible time. Soto’s game—in the field and on the bases, as well as at bat—seems to have suddenly run ragged. Is he hiding an injury? Who knows. But whatever the reason, a slump down the stretch will give Cashman all the camouflage he needs to let the most dynamic player in pinstripes for years drift over to Flushing—for which we will never, ever forgive the rotten little ---t.

The fact that Aaron Judge seems to be bookending his season with slumps, dissolving again into a welter of double-plays and strikeouts, is doubly sad. 

It seems more likely than ever now that his legacy is going to be that of some of the game’s greatest players—men like Ted Williams, or Ernie Banks, or our own Donnie Baseball—who were known as much for what they missed, as for what they did.

For Judge there has already been the Stolen Pennant (and probably an MVP, too), lost to Yer Cheating Heart Astros in 2017. The 2018 loss to Boston as Stanton swung like a mechanical man and The Gleyber ran a 10.7 to first base. The Repeat Cheat in 2019, the Aroldis Meltdown in 2020, the Cole Collapse in Fenway in 2021; the 2022 Choke at the Trade Deadline…

The list goes on and on, and in the years to come we will imagine them filling out Judgie’s sad but proud plaque at Cooperstown. 

It’s very possible that said plaque won’t even include an MVP for 2024, thanks to the incompetence of his teammates and the selfishness of his management. KC’s Bobby Witt is currently leading the AL in batting at .341, and is on pace to compile a 30-30 season, as well as playing an outstanding shortstop. 

Is it possible that Witt will surpass Judge amongst The Usual Suspects, a.k.a., the MVP voters, should Kansas City surpass the Yankees in the postseason? You bet it is, and that surpassing is highly likely.

The Kansas City Royals are another underfinanced, small-market team. But they are a scrappy bunch, who come to play every day, and are not run by morons, vanity cases, and an owner whose vast, inherited fortune is matched only by his vast indifference to the team he was also bequeathed. 

Meanwhile, even as we enter September, the Yankees insist on perversely playing as if they were still in spring training…while at the same time refusing to give their most talented minor leaguers a shot. 

New acquisition Jazz Chisholm is being forced to learn a new position during a pennant race, while head cases such as Gleyber Torres, Anthony Volpe, and Anthony Verdugo are never so much as questioned, much less benched. 

(And from the department of "It Can Always Get Worse" comes the shuddery opinion of The Venerable Keefe, in his excellent blog, keefetothecity, that the main reason why these flops are handled with such kid gloves is that re-signing Torres and Verdugo, at least, is Cashman's "back-up" plan for when Soto takes the 7 train. Substitute, "real plan" for "back-up plan," and I believe you have the Yankees' strategy for 2025 and years to come. Meet the new team, same as the old team.)

Meanwhile the Yanks' greatest lacks—for pitching, starting and closing—remain completely unaddressed. The Royals have, on the other hand, a neat little starting four that has performed more consistently than the Yankees’ starting staff has, all season long. 

Will they beat the Yanks in an October match-up? I wouldn’t bet against it, though who knows if our boys will even make it to Kansas City. They might take a train, they might take a plane, they might...breakdown on a state highway somewhere outside of Baltimore.

Wherever it begins and ends, I think it is all too easy to picture how our playoffs will go. With Judge, a lifetime, .211 hitter in 44 postseason games, once again flailing and failing as he tries to do too much. The Yankees’ closer failing once again, or maybe one of our sub-standard starters taking us out of a key game right from the outset. 

 

What awaits us is a culmination of failure, weeks of absolute fury over the failure of Brian Cashman and Hal Steinbrenner to provide us with pitching, to bring up Jasson Dominguez for September and October—under the outrageous pretext that this will save his eligibility for the rookie-of-the-year award in 2025—and then the decision to let Juan Soto go start the Metassance, over in Queens.

 

But worst of all will be what we’ve done to Judge, a great player who will be known most for being almost.