Hints of progress arrived in the eighth, when Aaron Judge was more disciplined.
Against Ryan Brasier, he swung through two borderline pitches and the crowd grew disgruntled, ready to boo the Yankees captain with one more whiff.
But Judge laid off three straight sliders that slid outside the zone, reaching base on a walk that showed the process might be improving.
But “process” is for April and May and June. In October, results matter, and Judge has not found nearly enough.
Maybe his approach improved Monday, but he reached base one time in four plate appearances. Judge has stepped to the plate 13 times in the World Series.
He has gone back to the dugout unhappy 11 times. Seven of those times have been strikeouts in a series in which he is hitting .083.
The best hitter in at least the American League and perhaps the world has stopped hitting in the games that mean the most, with one single to show for three of the most disappointing contests of the club’s season.
Judge again went quietly in Monday’s 4-2 loss to the Dodgers in The Bronx that put the Yankees in a 3-0 hole, a defeat away from not just a series loss but a series embarrassment.
The Yankees have scored seven runs in three games, and their offensive ineptitude begins with their most powerful slugger. If Judge does not awake, severe slumps would bookend his 2024 and cast a pall over one of the greatest offensive seasons the baseball world has seen in between those slumps.
Judge had four more chances in Game 3 and wasted three of them.
He stepped to the plate with Gleyber Torres on first base in the first inning and left him there.
With a sellout crowd on its feet that tried to will Judge out of this funk, screaming for the club’s captain and chanting “MVP,” Judge again was undone by uncharacteristic impatience, chasing a Walker Buehler cutter off the plate for strike three.
He only saw one more pitch from Buehler, a knuckle-curve in the middle of the plate in the fourth, and flew out.
Judge had another opportunity with a runner on base (Giancarlo Stanton on first) in the sixth, but fireballing Brusdar Graterol induced a weak comebacker that he knocked down and threw to second, where Tommy Edman made a nice play to record the lead out.
In his final try, Judge worked a one-out walk that was followed by strikeouts from Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr.
It is not that Judge is failing but that he is failing in the biggest moments of the biggest games: During this postseason, he is 3-for-22 (.136) with runners on base and 0-for-10 with six strikeouts with runners in scoring position. In all, the presumptive AL MVP is 6-for-43 (.140) across 12 playoff games.
An empty postseason is following a historic regular season, Judge’s 1.159 OPS the best in baseball (as were his 58 home runs and 144 RBIs), becoming the fourth player in MLB history to log multiple seasons of at least 58 dingers.
He began slowly, bringing just a .207 average and .754 OPS into May, before pasting together five of the best months a player could imagine.
But then October hit, and Judge hasn’t.
Aaron Boone has committed to Judge remaining in the No. 3 slot for the rest of the series — but the rest of the series might consist of one more game because his No. 3 hitter is not hitting.
