Aaron Judge’s bat woke up. He made a fantastic leaping grab in the outfield. But it was the play he didn’t come up with that will haunt him this offseason.
He was unable to come up with a Tommy Edman line drive with a runner on and nobody out in the fifth inning, an error that led to a five-run frame for the Dodgers in their World Series-clinching, 7-6 Game 5 victory over the Yankees in The Bronx on Wednesday night.
Judge had company in the fifth. Anthony Volpe made an error immediately after and with a chance to get out of the inning unscathed, Anthony Rizzo bobbled a slowly-hit grounder by Mookie Betts.
The floodgates opened from there, but it all started with the Judge drop, as five unearned runs would cross against Gerrit Cole.
It wiped away an otherwise big night from the almost-certain American League MVP. He reached base four times, and got the Stadium revved up with a two-run first-inning blast to right-center field.
“M-V-P” chants followed for Judge, who had struggled for much of the postseason. He doubled in the eighth with one out and the Yankees down a run. Lately, he had begun to look better at the plate. He was chasing less and not getting himself out, as he had so frequently this month.
“I thought he did a good job of that [in Game 4],” manager Aaron Boone said before the game. “I thought he got a lot of good swings off. I thought he controlled the zone. Again, a lot of times that’s mechanical too. … Everyone’s a little bit different in how they get there. But you get into strong positions, and usually that’s when you’re able to make your best swing decisions.”
In the fourth, Judge made a big-time play, corralling a Freddie Freeman drive as he crashed into the fence in center field at full speed. It saved a run. But then came the fifth. The Edman drive that Judge couldn’t catch, an error that seemed to wake up the Dodgers.
Instead of getting ready to board a plane back to Los Angeles, the Yankees’ season ended Wednesday night. Who knows how Game 5 goes if Judge doesn’t drop that liner.
It was an unfortunate ending to a forgettable postseason for Judge.
He’s clearly one of the top two or three players in the sport.
But October success has proven elusive for him. That trend continued Wednesday night.
