Yankees Birthday of the Day: Aaron Judge

As he would do so often in his career, Judge made history in his first big league at-bat. Coming to the plate after Tyler Austin, also making his debut and having made use of the short porch to notch his first career home run, No. 99 deposited one off the sports bar above Monument Park — the first time in baseball history that two players went back-to-back in their first career plate appearances.

That would be Judge’s only true highlight from his 2016 cup of coffee, as he would post a meager .179/.263/.345 slash line and strike out a whopping 42 times in 84 at-bats before an oblique strain ended his season. Fortunately though, one last time, the cycle would repeat itself: Judge worked with his own personal coaches to retool his swing, closing a hole exploited by major league pitchers, as he went on to put together arguably the greatest rookie season of all time. His 8.1 bWAR and 52 home runs led the league, while his 171 OPS+ trailed only a still-in-his-prime Mike Trout. Judge’s breakout was a major reason the 2017 Yankees, who had sold at the deadline the previous season, came out of nowhere to end just one game away from a World Series matchup with the Los Angeles Dodgers, losing to the Houston Trash Cans Astros in seven.

From 2018 to 2021, Judge established himself as one of the league’s premier hitters, but thanks to a parade of injuries — a broken wrist in 2018, a strained oblique in 2019, a fractured rib and collapsed lung, plus a pair of calf injuries, in 2020 — he seemed well on his way to the Hall of Very Good. And then, truly healthy for the first time since 2017, Aaron Judge decided to go nuclear in his contract year. After slumping a bit out of the gate, not hitting his first home run until the sixth game of the season, Judge spent the summer piling up home runs — and remaking the record books. On September 20th, he became just the third American League batter to hit 60 home runs in a season, joining Babe Ruth and Roger Maris (making the list consist entirely of Yankees right fielders until Cal Raleigh joined the club last season). A little over a week later, he tied Maris for the AL home run record, and finally, more than a week after that — partly due to a mini slump, partly due to pitchers pitching around him in an attempt to avoid becoming the answer to a trivia question — came number 62.

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The exuberance of the regular season, unfortunately, did not last long, as the Yankees fell to the Houston Astros in the ALCS for the third time in six seasons with Judge only mustering a .490 OPS that postseason before hitting free agency. Those three months were a nightmare, one which sent Yankees fans into a full-on panic when Jon Heyman infamously tweeted “Arson Judge appears headed to Giants.” In the end, though, Hal Steinbrenner, who was on vacation in Milan, spoke with Judge on the phone, asked him what needed to happen to make No. 99 a forever Yankee. The next morning, as my phone buzzed as I began to teach first period history, the news broke: Judge had indeed re-signed.

After injuries limited the Captain to “just” 37 home runs in 2023, Judge returned with a vengeance in 2024. Despite giving the rest of the league a month head start on the AL MVP race — he had a .207/.340/.414 slash line at the end of April — he cruised to his second MVP. Hitting behind Juan Soto, he carried the Yankees to an American League-best 94 wins, and while he struggled to truly get going in the playoffs, without his regular season performance, they don’t get the so-called “easy” path to the World Series that they did.

Despite losing Soto, Anthony Rizzo, and Gleyber Torres in free agency, Judge put together yet another stellar campaign, becoming just the fourth player to have four 50+ homer seasons en route to his third career American League MVP (oh, and his first career batting title as well). And although the Yankees failed to return to the Fall Classic, that was most certainly not his fault: the Captain silenced critics who said he could not hit in the postseason, posting a .500/.581/.692 slash line and hitting a big home run in Game 3 against the Blue Jays to keep the series alive.

Now, one month into the 2026 season, Judge has shown once again why he is the greatest right-handed hitter, and arguably the greatest hitter overall. How long will he continue to be Superman? Who knows — Father Time is, after all, almost undefeated (Mariano Rivera being the sole exception). But in the meantime, though, let us enjoy the show, content in the knowledge that, when our hair has turned grey, we will be able to say to our children and grandchildren, “I got to watch Aaron Judge play.”

See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.