All Rise or all sit?
Why Aaron Judge’s 2021 season will determine the trajectory of his career and the Yankees’ direction forward
As the old adage goes, ‘the greatest ability is availability.’
Aaron Judge, the gargantuan slugger and face of baseball’s most visible franchise, is an athlete without much precedent. His combination of size, strength and athleticism has drawn comparisons to Dave Winfield, the former 6–6 right fielder who spent nearly a decade in Yankees pinstripes.
But that’s where the comparisons between the two stop. Winfield, who amassed 465 career home runs, was one thing Aaron Judge is not: consistently healthy and ‘available.’ Winfield averaged 147 games per season from 1974–1990, his age 22 through age 38 seasons, while Judge has averaged just 81 games per season over the over the past three seasons, including the shortened 2020 season.
This isn’t to blame Aaron Judge, of course. Injuries happen — to some athletes more often, to some less. But while a bad string of injuries isn’t Judge’s fault, it is his reality, and that factor alone will largely determine how we remember his career.
Aaron Judge was viewed as baseball’s next big thing following his breakout 2017 season in which he led the American League in home runs (52), walks (127) and runs (128), garnering Rookie of the Year honors while finishing second in MVP voting. Since then, his lack of availability, combined with an influx of young talent across the sport, has relegated him to less notoriety, and rightfully so.
In an era of baseball flush with jaw-dropping, youthful talent— think Soto, Acúna, Tatís, Bieber, Bellinger, etc — the stage of stars is suddenly crowded (a good problem, for sure). On talent alone, Judge belongs amongst those names. On results, however, he does not — not because he doesn’t fill the stat sheet, but because he’s only available to do so about 81 times per year, or half the 162-game schedule.
Of course, Aaron Judge turns just 29 years old this April, so it might seem rushed to forecast his legacy already. But the 2021 season is truly a fork in the road for number 99.
A healthy, productive season — even if not quite his 2017 numbers — would be a welcomed sight for Yankees fans and baseball as a whole. It would also lend confidence to fans and ownership alike that Aaron Judge is worth a long-term investment, and maybe even a ‘C’ on his jersey — a distinction no Yankee has earned since Jeter retired in after 2014.
On the flip side, another injury-riddled season of fragmented availability would largely be ‘same old, same old,’ making it fair to question whether Judge is part of the Yankees’ nucleus going forward.
Then there’s the whole winning thing. Memories of the Yankees last World Series title in 2009 have faded, and the 2010s marked the first decade since the 1910s that the Yankees didn’t appear in a World Series. If that World Series drought, by Yankees standards, is to end any time soon, the road there can likely only be paved with Judge in the lineup more often than not.
-ZM
