Aaron Judge's Return Is About More Than Just Saving Yankees Offense

Just so everyone remembers the stakes ahead of Aaron Judge's return, it's really weird to behold an all-time New York Yankees great who lacks a World Series ring.

The Yankees have activated Judge ahead of Tuesday's game against the Colorado Rockies. Out since May 31 with a right rib injury, he had signaled his readiness for action by taking live batting practice at Yankee Stadium on Monday. With no plans for a rehab assignment in place, his activation was the next logical step.

The Yankees don't necessarily need the three-time MVP to hit the ground running right away. It would be hard to lose a 9.0-game edge in the Wild Card standings with just 19 games left. Per Tankathon, the Yankees also have the second-easiest remaining schedule of any AL East team. Heck, they might even erase the Tampa Bay Rays' 4.0-game lead in the division.

However, there's also this:

• Yankees with Judge: .610 W/L%, .770 OPS
• Yankees without Judge: .536 W/L%, .681 OPS

Nine teams have won more games than the Yankees since Judge went down, and 26 have a better OPS. You don't need to strain to see the inference that they can only be an elite team if they get back the same Aaron Judge who's on track to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Aaron Judge Proves Even Hall of Fame Resumes Can Be Lacking

That last part isn't controversial, is it? Surely we can all agree that Judge is on the path to Cooperstown.

The 34-year-old is one of only 13 players to win as many as three MVPs, and he has a legitimate case as the best right-handed hitter to ever live. Among righty hitters with at least 5,000 plate appearances, Judge leads all with a .611 slugging percentage and a 176 wRC+.

And yet, there is the complication of how to place Judge in the pantheon of Yankees GOATs.

According to rWAR, he's the sixth-best hitter the Yankees have ever had behind Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Derek Jeter. It feels like appropriate company for Judge… until you realize that those other five guys each won at least five World Series rings.

The best defense of Judge is that he plays in a different era. Before 1968, the best teams in the AL and NL went straight to the World Series. When Jeter was winning his five rings, he and the Yankees only had to survive a four-team AL playoff field between 1995 and 2011.

Judge has never known anything smaller than a five-team field. There's just so much more that can go haywire in his era. To wit, that wasn't your imagination: the Arizona Diamondbacks really were in the 2023 World Series.

Yet to absolve Judge of his ringlessness based on this argument is to miss the mark like he missed that catch in the 2024 World Series.

Bringing that up would be a cheap shot if it wasn't just so darn in theme with Judge's playoff résumé. Whereas he has a 1.022 OPS for his career in the regular season, his playoff OPS is just .822. That's a 200-point difference.

Demons? Demons. Judge will either slay them or he won't, and his legacy will or won't change accordingly.

Aaron Judge and the Yankees May Never Get a Better Shot

Even with all of that said, what if Judge is about to rejoin a Yankees team that is the favorite to represent the American League in the World Series?

In the context of the 2026 World Series race, the Yankees being the AL favorite is hardly beyond the pale. Both FanGraphs (10.1%) and FanDuel (+800) have the Yankees down as the favorite to survive the American League. It doesn't hurt that this year's AL field is not much more than a pillow fight.

Even this late in the season, two of the AL's division leaders aren't even 10 games over .500. Only four of the league's six projected playoff teams have a positive run differential, and the Yankees' (+117) is 70 runs better than that of the Rays (+47).

If this is the gateway to a "Why Not the Yankees?!" rallying cry, let's turn up the volume with these stats:

• Starting Pitching: Leads MLB with a 3.34 ERA
• Bullpen: Leads MLB with a 3.05 ERA
• Offense: Leads AL with 193 HR

With respect to Cam Schlittler, Max Fried and company, that last one is even more key to the Yankees' World Series chances than the first two.

The Yankees have all those homers even though they have gotten just 17 from Judge, who has four different 50-homer seasons on his record. They stand to become more powerful with him, and thus better equipped to dominate an October landscape where nothing moves the ball forward like the long ball.

The AL field feels like a throwback to 2024, when a middling 92-win Cleveland Guardians team ultimately stood between the Yankees and the World Series in the ALCS. Except this time, they may not have to worry about finding a Los Angeles Dodgers juggernaut on the other side.

The back-to-back World Series champions are 31-27 since July 1, and the only player who's been on Judge's level in recent seasons is on the fritz. Shohei Ohtani is unlikely to pitch again before 2026 is over, and he had been slumping at the plate (i.e., .703 OPS, 4 HR) for 24 games before Dave Roberts finally gave him a break from hitting duties.

Will Aaron Judge Be Up to Carrying the Yankees?

Even if the Yankees plus a healthy, productive Judge is a championship-caliber recipe on paper, there's one issue: Even if they know he's healthy, they don't know how productive he can be yet.

He's been on the sidelines for three months, and the only bright side of that is that it's not his first rodeo with a long absence in the middle of a season. He's previously had three other IL stints that lasted at least a month, and here's how the before/after looks in retrospect:

Year	Injury	Before	After
2018	Wrist fracture	447 PA, .947 OPS	51 PA, .675 OPS
2019	Oblique strain	89 PA, .929 OPS	358 PA, .920 OPS
2023	Toe ligament tear	213 PA, 1.078 OPS	245 PA, .965 OPS

Data from Baseball Reference

That Judge's OPS dropped off after all three of these injuries stands out, but there are asterisks on all three. The 2018 and 2019 injuries concern lopsided plate appearance comparisons. While he wasn't as good after his toe injury in 2023 as he was before, nobody ever objected to a .965 OPS.

So, let's get down to what really matters: The Yankees will know when Aaron Judge is Aaron Judge again when he starts creaming fastballs.

Between 2022 and 2025, no hitter was as dangerous against any pitch as Judge was against four-seam fastballs. We're talking a Run Value of +110, whereas the next-best for any hitter was Juan Soto's +83 against four-seamers.

This largely held true at the outset of this year… until the pain apparently became too much. After originally hurting his rib on April 26, Judge's production really began to slip on May 7. Before then, he had an .818 SLG and 23.2 Whiff% against four-seamers. After, he slipped to a .250 SLG and a 35.1 Whiff%.

Again, the Yankees don't need Judge to save their season. The remainder of the regular season can function as a de facto ramp-up, hopefully setting him up to go full Judge in October. If he does, the history books are going to need rewrites.

If he doesn't, the road ahead will consist of an all-but-certain lockout and Judge turning 35 years old on April 26, 2027. Even on a generally old Yankees roster, that age is still going to stand out as, well, kind of ancient.

Clearly, "Wait till next year" is not something Judge or any other Yankee will want to be saying when 2026 is over.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.