ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
NEW YORK — Aaron Judge thought he had struck out again. It was his first at-bat during a Wednesday night matchup with the Oakland Athletics. The 99-mph fastball was at the knees, over the outside corner. A clear strike. No argument. The towering slugger began his slow walk back to the dugout, Juan Soto left standing at first base. Another wasted opportunity.
Until — a break. Finally, a break. The pitcher, A’s right-hander Joe Boyle, hadn’t come to a full stop. A balk. Soto advanced, and Judge was given another chance. The next pitch was another fastball in nearly the same spot. Judge was ready, and he launched the baseball over the right-field wall for a two-run home run.
The New York Yankees‘ dugout erupted. Judge bashed forearms with teammates. All rose at Yankee Stadium for the second time this season. The sequence was the kind of break that has eluded Judge for most of the season — but was it proof that Aaron Judge, the perennial MVP candidate version, is back?
“It’s not back yet,” Judge said. “It’s always a work in progress.”
TWO THINGS CAN be true: One, that a month is a small slice of a season, and two, that Judge has looked uncharacteristically off in the batter’s box for most of this one. After Thursday’s loss to the A’s, Judge is batting .186 with four home runs and a .693 OPS. The low came last Saturday when he earned a golden sombrero against the Tampa Bay Rays and, after the fourth strikeout, was booed at home.
“It’s a long season,” Judge said after hearing the fans’ displeasure. “I’ve had seasons where I start off worse than this in my career. I’ve had seasons where you start off hot and then you always hit a rough patch where you hit about .150 in a whole month … You gotta keep working, gotta keep improving and we’ll get out of it.”
Two key series against the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers and then the Baltimore Orioles, their stiffest competition for the AL East title, loom. And Judge isn’t the only Yankee slow out of the gate — Gleyber Torres was slashing .189/.288/.211 through Wednesday. Anthony Rizzo began the A’s series batting .235 with one home run (he hit two homers over the next two nights). Austin Wells, one of the unluckiest hitters in the majors based on hard-hit rate, was batting .132 even after a two-hit effort Wednesday.
The Yankees tend to score in bunches, which has also meant long droughts have been common. They have already been shut out four times this season. The driving force behind their 17-8 start has been, surprisingly, the pitching staff, even without Gerrit Cole.
“We’re missing the best pitcher in baseball and the staff is still able to do that,” Judge said, “it speaks volumes of the guys we got.”
All they’ve needed is some support — the Yankees are 13-1 when scoring at least five runs — and it’s Judge, along with his new teammate Soto, who hold the heaviest expectations to deliver. This year, new T-shirts — topical in this, another presidential election year — have appeared in the Yankees’ clubhouse.
JUDGE SOTO 2024 MAKE THE YANKEES CHAMPIONS AGAIN
Judge and Soto, arguably the most dangerous one-two punch in the majors, are the ticket the Yankees visualize riding to their 28th World Series title. Soto has done his part, bursting onto the scene with six home runs and 22 RBIs in his first month in pinstripes. Meanwhile, the Yankees have been waiting on Judge to produce to his usual level.
After missing time with an abdominal injury in spring training, Judge’s MRI came back clean, and he’s insisted that he’s healthy. So the 2022 AL MVP has started every game for the Yankees this season — 20 in center field and five as the designated hitter. Yankees manager Aaron Boone has used the DH spot as a chance to occasionally give the 6-foot-7 Judge a day off his feet, after Judge admitted in February that the toe he injured last season will require regular maintenance for the rest of his career.
Boone has stressed he isn’t worried about Judge. He has highlighted Judge’s patience — he ranks in the 94th percentile in walk rate — and work behind the scenes. The track record, he’s said, is too good.
“Just a matter of time,” Boone has repeated for weeks.
JUDGE’S EARLY STRUGGLES have prompted external examination. On Tuesday, MLB Network aired a segment breaking down the difference in Judge’s mechanics between previous years and 2024. The analyst concluded Judge’s hands have started higher this season, and he’s been falling off with his swing on pitches away rather than down and through.
That afternoon, Yankees first-year hitting coach James Rowson emphasized that he sensed Judge was on the brink of breaking out.
“He gets it,” Rowson said. “You come into the game and sometimes there’s some pitches that you might just miss or you get a count where you don’t quite square the ball up. So little things like that happen. Right now, they’re just happening a lot for him and you see them happening together.
“But, for the most part, I like where he’s at. I like the way he’s been working lately. And I feel like, you know, we’re gonna see Aaron Judge be Aaron Judge here pretty soon. So I’m not that concerned.”
In his first at-bat that night, Judge took a sharp slider down and away from A’s right-hander Paul Blackburn for a ball. The next pitch was another slider down and away. Judge took again for ball two.
“That’s a really good sign on just picking up the baseball early, seeing spin, recognizing, and being able to lay off,” YES Network color analyst John Flaherty said on the television broadcast. “You’ve seen Aaron through this tough stretch, even when he takes a pitch, that left hip is leaving. It’s a whole lot better tonight.”
Judge then saw an 89-mph cutter over the plate, a pitch he’s demolished over the years. Instead, he fouled it back. Boone had said earlier that missing those mistake pitches has been the foundation for Judge’s slow start.
“For me, it’s just about when you get your pitch, making sure we do damage with it, and get your swing off,” Boone said. “So he’s just been a tick off in these first few weeks.”
Tuesday, Judge recovered. Two pitches after that, he topped a sinker down the third-base line for a double. Moments later, Giancarlo Stanton smashed a two-run double. The Yankees had a 2-1 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
The next night, Judge’s home run put the Yankees ahead 2-0. It was the 261st homer of the Yankees captain’s career, and with it he passed Derek Jeter, the longest-tenured captain in franchise history, for ninth on the Yankees’ all-time list.
Judge hit the ball hard all game. He snuck a 99.9 mph groundball through the right side for a single in his second at-bat. He pummeled a 106.3 mph lineout to center field in the fourth inning. He smacked a 98.1 mph groundout in the sixth. He ended his night by grounding into a double play in the eighth. Exit velocity: 105.4 mph.
It was Judge’s first multihit game since April 13. With Soto’s sixth home run of the season in the sixth inning, the victory marked the first time the duo has homered in the same game as teammates. Boone joked that watching the tag-team homer made him feel “warm and fuzzy.” His captain is confident it won’t be the last time he has that feeling.
New York Mets left-hander Sean Manaea has been shut down for a few weeks due to a right oblique strain and will likely start the season on the injured list, manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters Monday.
Manaea, who is projected as the team’s No. 2 starter, went 12-6 with a 3.47 ERA with 184 strikeouts with the Mets in 2024, leading to a three-year, $75 million deal in December.
“The good news is … the tendon is not involved, the rib cage is not involved,” Mendoza said of the MRI results for Manaea. “It’s just straight muscle, so he’s going to be shut down for a couple of weeks — and then we’ll reassess after that. We’ve got to build him back up again. Safe to say that he’s probably going to start the season on the IL. … Once he’s symptom-free, he’ll start his throwing.”
The Mets have also lost reserve infielder Nick Madrigal for an extended period after he suffered a fractured left shoulder during Sunday’s spring training game against the Washington Nationals.
Madrigal, who is fighting for a roster spot, fell to the ground while throwing to first base after making a bare-handed play on a ground ball. He was originally diagnosed with a dislocated shoulder but further tests revealed the fracture in his non-throwing shoulder.
Mendoza told reporters that Madrigal, who signed a one-year deal with the Mets in January, will have a CT scan and will be sidelined “for a long time.”
TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees will play Frank Sinatra’s version of the “Theme From New York, New York” only after home wins instead of after all games in the Bronx, going back to the original custom set by owner George Steinbrenner in 1980.
The Yankees said players and staff were tired of hearing a celebratory song following defeats.
After Sunday’s 4-0 spring training loss to Detroit at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees played Sinatra’s 1966 recording of “That’s Life,” a 1963 song by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon. The change occurred two days after the team ended the ban on beards imposed by Steinbrenner in 1976.
The team said various songs will be used after losses.
“New York, New York” first was played at the end of Yankees wins after Steinbrenner learned of Sinatra’s version from a disc jockey at Le Club, a Manhattan restaurant and disco, former team public relations director Marty Appel told The New York Times in 2015.
The song, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, was first sung by Liza Minnelli for the 1977 Martin Scorsese film “New York, New York” and Sinatra performed it in a Don Costa arrangement for his 1980 recording “Trilogy: Past Present Future.”
For several years, the Yankees alternated the Sinatra version after wins and the Minnelli version following defeats. In recent years, the Sinatra rendition has been played after all final outs.
The Yankees said Friday that they were ending their ban on beards, fearing the prohibition might hamper player recruitment.
Hal Steinbrenner took over in 2008 as controlling owner from his father, who died in 2010.
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the Washington Wizards from 2014 to 2016 and the Washington Nationals from 2016 to 2018 for The Washington Post before covering the Los Angeles Dodgers and MLB for the Los Angeles Times from 2018 to 2024.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Mid-February live batting practice sessions are usually forgettable, but the one held on the main field at Clover Park the day after Valentine’s Day was different for the New York Mets.
Kodai Senga, the presumed ace a year ago, faced four hitters. He threw 16 pitches, touched 96 mph and didn’t appear compromised from the shoulder injury that kept him out for all but 5⅓ innings during the 2024 regular season. Afterward, he shared laughs with catcher Luis Torrens and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner.
“I saw a smile on his face,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “That’s a good sign.”
Last spring, Senga, coming off an outstanding rookie year, was supposed to be a sure thing. Instead, he was shut down with a shoulder injury before appearing in a Grapefruit League game and started just the one game in July.
The Mets thrived without him, even with a rotation full of newcomers and uncertainty, completing an 89-win campaign capped by a trip to the National League Championship Series. But as they look to improve on that finish after a monster offseason, questions around the rotation remain.
Can Senga stay healthy? When will Frankie Montas, shut down for up to eight weeks with a lat strain, return? Will Clay Holmes, exclusively a reliever the past six seasons, successfully transition back to starting games? Will Sean Manaea continue where he left off last season after a midseason delivery change produced elite results? Was David Peterson’s career year — he posted a 2.90 ERA in 21 starts — an aberration?
“I will say, I feel much better about our starting pitching depth sitting here today than I did a year ago,” Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said days before Montas sustained his injury during his first bullpen session of camp. “We made that a priority of our offseason. We brought in a number of players at all levels of free agency.”
All levels but one: proven ace-level starting pitchers.
The Mets’ offseason will be remembered for bookend investments in All-Stars to fortify their lineup: Juan Soto in early December and Pete Alonso the week before pitchers and catchers reported for camp. For the second offseason under Stearns’ direction, though, they had holes to fill in the rotation and did not acquire any of the premium starters available.
A year after their long-term bid for Yoshinobu Yamamoto fell short, the Mets did not aggressively pursue the three top starters available in free agency: Max Fried, Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes. (Fried strengthened an already-strong rotation strength across town, signing with the New York Yankees on an eight-year, $218 million deal.)
Instead, they made low-risk, high-reward short-term investments with an emphasis on depth. They re-signed Manaea to a three-year, $75 million contract. They signed Holmes, a two-time All-Star closer, to a three-year, $38 million deal to become a starter. They added Montas, an injury-plagued right-hander who recorded a 4.84 ERA in 2024, on a two-year, $34 million deal. They signed Griffin Canning, a former top prospect, to a one-year, $4.25 million deal after the right-hander pitched to a 5.19 ERA and surrendered 31 home runs last season, the second-most in baseball, for the last-place Los Angeles Angels.
The additions join Senga, Peterson, Paul Blackburn and Tylor Megill to round out the options for a six-man rotation, which the Mets plan to deploy in large part to accommodate Senga.
“I think our pitching is going to surprise people, even though there’s a lot of talk about starting pitching,” Mets owner Steve Cohen said. “And another thing is we’re flexible. If we have to make changes or improve the team during the year, you saw what we did in ’24 and we’ll do it again in ’25.”
For all the offensive fireworks and Grimace-engineered vibes the 2024 OMG Mets produced, extracting value from the starting rotation was the foundation for their success. Luis Severino, signed to a one-year, $13 million deal, recorded a 3.91 ERA over 31 starts last year after posting a 6.65 ERA with the Yankees the year before. Jose Quintana registered a 3.75 ERA in 31 starts in his age-35 season on a $13 million salary. Manaea dropped his arm slot in his 21st start and pitched to a 3.09 ERA over his final 12 outings before the playoffs.
“[We] want to be a team that can improve players,” Cohen said. “And I think from a pitching perspective, we’re able to do that.”
Hefner pointed to Severino’s jump from 89⅓ innings in 2023 to 182 innings last season as evidence that, with the required work ethic, a successful sizable workload increase is possible.
“I feel like our performance staff does a good job of monitoring guys and not just putting reins on them,” Hefner said. “They’re very much like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s push. How far can we take them?’ As long as they’re recovering and they’re honest with us and they’re staying on top of their programs, we have full confidence that a guy could make a big jump in innings.”
In Holmes, the Mets will attempt a more extreme escalation.
The Yankees’ former closer has totaled 337⅓ innings over his seven-year career, including 63 innings each of the past two seasons. He hasn’t started a game since September 2018. To get through a lineup two or three times, Holmes said he plans on incorporating a changeup — a pitch he started tinkering with in bullpens last season — for the first time and using his four-seam fastball more often to complement his sinker (his best pitch). The goal is to build up to 90 pitches by Opening Day.
“I would say now it’s starting to get a little different,” Holmes said last week. “I threw three innings the other day. It was probably the first time I’ve done that in a while.”
Relievers have successfully made the jump to starter. Hall of Famer John Smoltz famously converted from starter to closer back to starter. For the Mets, a club with World Series aspirations, it’s a risk they decided is worth taking.
Of course, that risk won’t matter if they can’t keep their starting pitchers healthy — and that starts with Senga, who, alongside Manaea, will top a rotation the Mets hope will help lead them back to October.
“He just needs to be healthy,” Mendoza said. “As long as he’s taking the ball. But we got some good options. And we talked to him about that. He doesn’t have to be the hero, feeling like he’s the ace of the staff, because we got some options. And we like those guys at the front end of the rotation.”