Aaron Judge heard plenty of silence over the past few weeks — namely every time an opponent threw a pitch to him at Yankee Stadium as he chased 62 home runs.
But a different kind of silence has motivated the Yankees slugger throughout the season, and his chance to make sure he doesn’t hear it again any time over the next month will begin Tuesday night in the ALDS.
“The worst feeling in sports besides having to walk off that field [after the final postseason game], either getting walked off or losing the game, is coming back into the clubhouse and just having that silence,” Judge said Monday, on the eve of Game 1 against the Guardians. “Like, you don’t know what to say, you don’t know what to do. It’s like, I’ve been working my butt off since November of the year before to get to this spot and all of a sudden now you’re telling me it’s over with and I’ve got to go home?”
Judge has experienced the feeling in each of his last five postseasons: after Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS, Game 4 of the 2018 ALDS, Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS, Game 5 of the 2020 ALDS and in the 2021 AL wild-card game.
“Feeling like you let down your teammates,” Judge said. “Feeling like you let down the city, the team.”
This season, in the midst of an MVP-caliber and record-breaking campaign, Judge has often put the Yankees on his back to make sure they got to the postseason, especially as the AL East champs with a bye into the ALDS. They’ll play their first two games at Yankee Stadium in a playoff atmosphere that Judge described as “heaven.”
But now their work will begin anew. They need 11 wins to avoid the silence that has fueled Judge, who could be entering his last postseason as a Yankee with free agency awaiting this offseason.
“You’ve got to learn from those downfalls,” Judge said. “You have to learn from the sleepless nights, and you’ve got to take what you can from it and turn it into a positive and just get ready for the next year.
“This year we have put ourselves in a great position and we have got a great team to go out there and kind of close this thing out.”
For the first time in at least a few weeks, Judge might have a chance for a more normal at-bat Tuesday night, except the stakes will be higher from a team perspective. The pressurized plate appearances that Judge experienced on the way to hitting 62 home runs during the regular season might have just been a warm-up for the postseason.
“I’m relieved that it’s over with so that we can kind of go back to focusing on playing the game and winning a ballgame,” Judge said. “I think the past couple weeks of going through that and having this whole team kind of be there and witness that whole situation, I think it prepared us for what’s to come here in the postseason.”
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