NEW YORK — Never were the questions of Aaron Judge‘s fitness for October particularly fair, but that’s life for the biggest man in the biggest city whose biggest failures had come at the biggest times. The burden of greatness is heavy. The burden of greatness in New York is planetary. And for those unleashing screeds on Judge’s postseasons — on hot take shows and sports-talk radio and in bars and at family dinners and everywhere, really, that anyone talks about the Yankees — it was never about whether they were fair. After all, his performances had been undeniably foul.
Judge never paid any of this any mind because he does not wire himself to do so. He cares about winning. He cares about success. He cares more than anyone who criticizes him, mocks him, derides him, leans into his past performances as if they’re predictive of an unknowable future. Judge always separated those struggles, not just because he needed to but because it is how he lives, purposely boring and boringly purposeful. He believed the moment would present itself and he would meet it. And why wouldn’t he think that? Every other endeavor in his baseball life had treated him that way.
Regardless of how the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays breaks, what Judge did Tuesday night was the sort of thing that should put to rest questions about his October aptitude. It won’t, because it never could, but the wide-eyed, wonderstruck, childlike gawking of everyone in the Yankees’ clubhouse told the story of Tuesday night’s season-saving 9-6 victory against the Blue Jays in which Judge left jaws agape.
Poor Louis Varland. The right-handed reliever entered in the fourth inning to protect the Blue Jays’ 6-3 advantage in a game that could have clinched their spot in the AL Championship Series. He fooled Judge on a 90 mph curveball and then blew a 100 mph fastball by him and then threw another fastball at 100, up and in. Like, really in. Like, 5.9 inches off the inner corner of the plate, at triple digits, with tremendous carry, an absolute nightmare of a pitch for any hitter at any time in the game’s history to touch, let alone punish.
Nearly 400 feet later, when the ball banged off the left-field foul pole — the one place in Judge’s world where something foul is indeed fair — no one on the field could believe it. The absurdity of it all — manipulating his 6-foot-7, 282-pound body to so thoroughly alter his standard bat path, turn on 100 and keep it fair — was not lost on Varland, the Yankees who kept watching replays of the swing in the dugout, or the 47,399 at Yankee Stadium who bore witness.
“He made a really good pitch look really bad,” Varland said.
All postseason, Judge has been doing that. His 11 playoff hits lead MLB. For all of the ugliness of striking out with the bases loaded in Game 1 of this ALDS, his at-bats have been competitive all October. What he did to Varland was the culmination, precisely what the Yankees needed to see another day.
“You could feel it like in your bones,” Yankees reliever Tim Hill said. “It was crazy. It was amazing. I mean, just the pitch that he hit. All that. I’m sure my guy over there on the other side is questioning everything.”
Yes, pitching to Aaron Judge is the sort of thing of which existential crises are made. Before Tuesday, he had never hit a pitch 100 mph or faster for a home run. He hit 53 home runs this season — and none on a pitch outside the rulebook strike zone. Before Tuesday, the Blue Jays were 39-0 this season in games during which they led by at least five runs, too.
It’s impossible to overstate how out of character this was for Judge. He prides himself on good swing decisions because he knows how important they are. On pitches in the strike zone this season, Judge batted .400, 40 points higher than the next-best hitter. He slugged .867, 115 points higher than Shohei Ohtani. In his 214 plate appearances this year that ended on pitches outside of the rulebook zone, Judge batted .109 and drove in one run. All year. He didn’t have a single extra-base hit on such pitches.
One of the biggest home runs in the career of a two-time MVP favored to win a third this year was on something he never does. And if a willingness to exit his comfort zone and in the process do something that few in the history of baseball would be physically capable of doing doesn’t show that Judge isn’t just capable of success in October but destined for it, well, nothing would. And that’s fine with him. He knows emotion is the fuel that feeds the prognostications of inevitable letdown, not consistency or logic.
“I get yelled at for swinging at them out of the zone, but now I’m getting praised for it,” Judge said. “It’s a game. You’ve got to go out there and play. I don’t care what the numbers say or where something was at. I’m just up there trying to put a good swing on a good pitch, and it looked good to me.”
Inside the Yankees’ clubhouse, they’ve been yearning for Judge to have a game like this, to further validate their unflinching belief in him. The past is indisputable. Judge’s postseason OPS is more than 250 points lower than during the regular season. The Yankees haven’t won a championship during his 10 years in the big leagues. It’s real, and it’s regrettable, and it’s part of his legacy. It is also not the ink with which the future is written, which is why Aaron Boone, the Yankees’ manager with whom Judge is extremely close, said: “I don’t worry about Aaron and his state, even understanding all the outside noise.”
From Boone’s perch atop the dugout, he had the perfect view of the left-field foul pole. As the ball carried through the night, Judge stood near home plate. He didn’t pull a Carlton Fisk, trying to wave it fair. He just waited for it to land.
And when it did, helping raise his batting average this postseason to .500 and his OPS to 1.304 — nearly 300 points better than his career regular-season OPS, for the record — Judge uncorked a mini-bat flip and started his jog around the bases. When he got back to the dugout, teammates lined up and greeted him with a full high-five line.
“He’s the real deal, and as beloved a player as I’ve ever been around by his teammates,” Boone said. “They all admire him, look up to him, respect him, want his approval, and that’s just a credit to who Aaron is and how he goes about things.”
After slapping the last hand, Judge took one more step toward the end of the dugout. There awaited a television camera. Judge looked at it, pointed and turned around. He then pirouetted back and gave the audience one more stare. This was not an accident. Nothing Judge does is. It was a message, a reminder, a siren for everyone that didn’t believe.
The Yankees were still alive. And as long as that’s the case, he plans on carrying them. Even in October.
The Bank of England sees trouble ahead for global financial markets if investors U-turn on the prospects for artificial intelligence (AI) ahead.
The Bank‘s Financial Policy Committee said in its latest update on the state of the financial system that there was also a risk of a market correction through intensifying worries about US central bank independence.
“The risk of a sharp market correction has increased,” it warned, while adding that the risk of “spillovers” to these shores from such a shock was “material”.
Money latest: ‘I want to create the Nike of lingerie’
Fears have been growing that the AI-driven stock market rally in the United States is unsustainable, and there are signs that a growing number of investors are rushing to hedge against any correction.
This was seen early on Wednesday when the spot gold price surpassed the $4,000 per ounce level for the first time.
Analysts point to upward pressure from a global economic slowdown driven by the US trade war, the continuing US government shutdown and worries about the sustainability of US government debt.
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US government shuts down
The political crisis in France has also been cited as a reason for recent gold shifts.
Money has also left the US dollar since Donald Trump moved to place his supporters at the heart of the US central bank, repeatedly threatening to fire its chair for failing to cut interest rates to support the economy.
Jay Powell’s term at the Federal Reserve ends next spring but the White House, while moving to nominate his replacement, has already shifted the voting power and is looking to fire one rate-setter, Lisa Cook, for alleged mortgage fraud.
She is fighting that move in the courts.
Financial markets fear that monetary policy will no longer be independent of the federal government.
“A sudden or significant change in perceptions of Federal Reserve credibility could result in a sharp repricing of US dollar assets, including in US sovereign debt markets, with the potential for increased volatility, risk premia and global spillovers,” the Bank of England said.
British government borrowing costs are closely correlated with US Treasury yields and both are currently elevated, near multi-year highs in some cases.
It’s presenting Chancellor Rachel Reeves with a headache as she prepares the ground for November’s budget, with the higher yields reflecting investor concerns over high borrowing and debt levels.
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‘Is the Bank worried about recession risk?’
On AI, the Bank said that 30% of the US S&P 500’s valuation was made up by the five largest companies, the greatest concentration in 50 years.
Share valuations based on past earnings were the most stretched since the dotcom bubble 25 years ago, though looked less so based on investors’ expectations for future profits.
A recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 95% of businesses that had integrated AI into their operations had yet to see any return on their investment.
“This, when combined with increasing concentration within market indices, leaves markets particularly exposed should expectations around the impact of AI become less optimistic,” the statement said.
Amazon is launching prescription drug kiosks at some One Medical offices in Los Angeles, the company announced Wednesday, in a move that could disrupt brick-and-mortar pharmacy businesses.
The kiosks are operated by Amazon Pharmacy and work similar to a vending machine, disbursing prescriptions for patients “within minutes” of their doctor visit, the company said.
Each machine can stock hundreds of prescriptions, such as antibiotics, inhalers and blood pressure treatments, with inventory that’s tailored to specific locations.
“We know that when patients have to make an extra trip to the pharmacy after seeing their doctor, many prescriptions never get filled,” said Hannah McClellan, Amazon Pharmacy’s vice president of operations. “By bringing the pharmacy directly to the point of care, we’re removing a critical barrier and helping patients start their treatment when it matters most — right away.”
The company is deploying its prescription vending kiosks as pharmacy chains, including Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens, have struggled with falling drug margins. They also face growing competition for sales of higher-margin items like candy and paper towels from players such as Amazon and Walmart.
Rite Aid last week closed all of its remaining stores after more than 60 years in business, while Walgreens and CVS have also shuttered locations in recent years.
Amazon has for years worked to push deeper into multitrillion-dollar U.S. health-care industry, which is notoriously complex and inefficient.
The company in 2018 acquired online pharmacy PillPack for about $750 million, and launched its own offering two years later called Amazon Pharmacy. It then bought primary-care clinic One Medical in 2022 for $3.9 billion, the third-largest acquisition in its history. Amazon also experimented with its own telehealth service before shuttering it in 2022.
Earlier this year, Amazon restructured its health-care businesses into six units “to move faster and continue to innovate,” after a handful of top health executives departed, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon will start rolling out the kiosks at One Medical clinics in downtown LA, West LA, Beverly Hills, Long Beach and West Hollywood. The company said it expects to add more One Medical offices and other locations “soon after.”
“Over time, we see real potential for this technology to extend to other environments — anywhere quick access to medication can make a difference,” McClellan said in an email.
Amazon pharmacy kiosk.
Courtesy: Amazon
Before patients can use the kiosk, their provider must first send a prescription to Amazon Pharmacy, where it’s verified by one of the company’s pharmacists. Users complete their order in the Amazon app, then scan a QR code at the kiosk.
A remote pharmacist completes a final check of the order before the medication is dispensed, the company said. Patients can also speak with the pharmacist through the kiosk via video or phone call.
McClellan said the kiosks aren’t meant to replace pharmacists “but to bring their expertise closer to the point of care.”
“This model keeps pharmacists at the center of the care experience while expanding how and where they can support patients,” she added.
At launch, the kiosks won’t be available to telehealth patients, only those who receive in-person care at One Medical. Patients aren’t required to be a One Medical member to use the kiosks.
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