BRONX, NY — Time was running out, and this was one of Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees’ last chances to save their season.
Once down 6-1 while facing elimination in Game 3 of the ALDS after the Toronto Blue Jays poured four on Carlos Rodon in the top of the third, Judge pulled one back with an RBI double in the bottom of that very frame before Giancarlo Stanton’s sacrifice fly halved New York’s deficit.
With it, they drove Blue Jays starter Shane Bieber from the game, allowing them to get to a susceptible bullpen that showed cracks even during Game 2, when a 12-0 Toronto lead ended with a 13-7 scoreline.
Mason Fluharty, who got the last out in the third by getting pinch-hitter Amed Rosario to pop out to the catcher, struck out Anthony Volpe to lead off the fourth. Austin Wells then popped a ball up behind third base — a can of corn for the second out.
But Addison Barger misplayed it, scrambled to get under it, then dropped the ball, allowing Wells to get to second. Fluharty then walked Trent Grisham, bringing Judge, who represented the tying run, to the plate.
The change
Blue Jays skipper John Schneider went back to his bullpen to bring on fireballing right-hander Louis Varland to face the Yankees captain. Judge had not seen Varland in over two years when he was a starter for the Minnesota Twins. The track record was good enough: 2-for-5 with two home runs, but a quick crash course was needed.
Enter Giancarlo Stanton.
“Big G saw him in Toronto [while I was out injured], so I kind of asked [about him],” Judge said. “I just wanted to brush up on him. I’ve seen all the videos and all his appearances, but it’s a different perspective when you step in the box and kind of see it live. So I was just talking to him about what certain pitches looked like.”
The challenge
Varland started Judge out with an offspeed, 90.1 mph knuckle curveball on the outside corner of the plate that was fouled back. Then came the heat.
Toronto’s reliever reared back and blew a 100-mph fastball middle-middle past Judge to get ahead 0-2 and inch that much closer to the next big postseason moment that the highly-scrutinized star whiffed on.
But as he stepped back into the box, Judge nodded, seemingly to himself, which indicated that he had the timing of Varland’s fastball down.
“Varland’s got a great fastball that can run up to 101, 102 mph,” Judge said. “You just trust your eyes, trust your swing. I feel I can get to every pitch in the zone, so I think the biggest thing is being ready on time. I think it’s all the time, and that’s what a lot of hitting comes down to. If you’re not ready to swing and ready early, you’re not going to hit anything. So after he blew my doors off the pitch before, I just said, ‘Hey, just be ready. If you see your pitch, just drive it.'”
Defying logic
Varland was going right back to the well and was ahead in the count to waste one, or at least not put it in the zone.
In theory, that’s what he did. The righty buzzed a 99.7-mph fastball 1.2 feet from the center of the strike zone. Since the pitch-tracking era (2008), no player had ever homered on a pitch that fast and that far inside (h/t Sarah Langs). That is, until Tuesday night.
Judge somehow got his hands in and turned on it, sending a 103.1 mph screamer down the left-field line.
“I get yelled at for swinging out of the zone, now I’m getting praised for it,” Judge joked. “I don’t know… I was just up there trying to put a good swing on a good pitch, and it looked good to me.”
Everybody freeze
“When the ball was in the air, it was kind of silent,” Judge said. “You just got a lot of unknown.”
Off the bat, the liner was hugging the left-field line, and doing so long enough for Judge to step out of the batter’s box, turning his body up the third-base line with two hands on his bat in front of him, and wait.
More often than not, a ball that begins on that trajectory hooks foul. But given just how far inside that pitch was and the way it came off his bat, there weren’t enough revs guiding it further left.
“I thought it was really going to go over the foul pole and they were going to make the wrong call,” Jazz Chisholm admitted.
“I was screaming at it to stay fair,” Rodon, who was at the top step of the Yankees’ dugout, said.
“It held right away,” manager Aaron Boone added. “I have such a good angle from where I sit on fair/foul down the left-field line. So I was kind of giving it some body language, but I felt like it was going to hold. But the wind… had the ball carrying to left. But when I looked up, the flag was dead.”
Perfect timing.
The ball stayed on course and clanked off the left side of the foul pole, mere inches inside fair territory to provide Judge with one of the biggest swings of his career and a lifeline for a Yankees team that appeared cooked just a half hour prior.
“You just never know with the wind if it’s going to push it foul, if it’s going to keep curving or not,” Judge said. “But I guess a couple ghosts out there in Monument Park helped keep that fair.”
Bedlam
Judge dropped his bat and, with an extended right arm, jogged down the first-base line, beginning to point toward the dirt beneath his feet in an almost “this is our house” sort of moment.
The sound, however, did not turn back on for him until he approached third base.
“There was just so much adrenaline pumping and I was so locked in on the moment,” he said. “You really don’t hear anything.”
His teammates certainly did.
“You could feel it in your bones,” reliever Tim Hill, who pitched 1.1 scoreless innings in Game 3, said. “It was crazy. It was amazing.”
It was those teammates that Judge was ultimately focused on, and the ones who created the indelible moments within a signature play for a future Hall of Famer.
“I’m just looking at my teammates and all the guys that have been battling with me all year long and battling for this moment to get back in the game,” Judge said. “They were out there grinding all game long, giving their all. So that’s kind of the first people that I looked to, and seeing their excitement was pretty special.”
With momentum back in their corner, the Yankees ran away with it. Chisholm homered, Wells knocked in one more with a single in the fifth, and Ben Rice’s sacrifice fly in the sixth ultimately cemented the 9-6 final score line.
But this night belonged solely to Judge, who not only provided the big swing with four RBI, but also made two stellar catches in right field to keep Toronto at bay, stayed in a run-down long enough to advance Cody Bellinger to third before he scored New York’s third run of the night on a sac fly, and came around to score his squad’s ninth run of the game after being intentionally walked in the sixth.
“It was ‘best player in the game-type performance,” Judge said. “It was special, when obviously we’re backs against the wall and then some in a Game 3 situation… He’s the real deal. As beloved a player as I’ve ever been around by his teammates. They all admire him, look up to him, respect him, want his approval. That’s just a credit to who Aaron is and how he goes about things.”
