Across the 2024 season, Aaron Judge was by far the league's best player. The Yankees slugger engineered one of the greatest offensive campaigns in league history, recording a .322/.457/.701 slash line, 223 OPS+, and a league-leading 10.8 bWAR to help power New York's playoff push.
It was always going to be hard to recreate that level of play in the postseason, even for a player of Judge's caliber. He was tasked with facing the best pitchers from the best teams in the land — an unenviable sight for any batter.
The breadth by which Judge toiled through the postseason proved especially disconcerting, however. While Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton raked when the lights were at their brightest, Judge — statistically one of the greatest right-handed hitters MLB has ever produced — was quiet, falling victim to an odious mix of weak contact, whiffs, and plain old rotten luck.
The World Series housed Judge's worst outings. His prowess for strikeouts intensified throughout the five-game set. The result? New York's World Series defeat.
Here's what you need to know about Judge's World Series struggles as the Yankees fell three games short of immortality.
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Aaron Judge World Series stats
| AVG | HR | RBI | H | BB | Ks |
| .222 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 7 |
Judge entered the postseason already carrying the reputation of a playoff underperformer. He did little to dispel that notion throughout the Fall Classic, posting a wretched .083 batting average and .237 OPS across 13 World Series at-bats heading into Game 4. After recording a league-best .458 OBP, Judge got on base twice in his first three World Series contests.
While he reached base four times in Game 5, it was simply too late by that point.
The likely AL MVP was subjected to the same obstacles that Soto, Stanton, and other elite batters faced in postseason play — namely, improved pitching. But Judge struggled to adjust, instead falling into bad habits that defined aspects of the early parts of his career.
Judge was a free-swinger during his younger years, a high-risk, high-reward strategy that proved effective when he made contact but led to plenty of whiffs. He's worked hard to buck that trend, establishing himself as one of the league's more patient hitters. His struggles throughout the 2024 World Series seemed to have Judge in his head, evidenced by his heightened chase and whiff rates compared to his regular season averages.
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“Yeah, definitely,” Judge said after Game 3. “You want to be getting the hits. You want to be going out there, doing your job. I'm not doing my job right now. I've got to pick it up.”
Judge mashes fastballs, particularly those that fly into the zone in early counts. Opposition pitching took notice, feeding Judge a steady stream of breaking balls, leading to deeper counts and more strikeouts.
It wasn't as if Judge wasn't getting pitches to hit. Walker Buehler misfired on a first-pitch curveball to Judge in Game 3, a seemingly fatal error for any hurler dealing to Judge during the regular season. The ball fell harmlessly into Teoscar Hernandez's glove in left field, instead.
“If you get that one out of the park, things change,” Judge said.
Judge attempted to employ a more patient approach to hitting as the series wore on, but it was too little, too late. And as Los Angeles frolicked across the mound following its Game 5 win, the cost of Judge's World Series toils were laid bare for all to witness.
Aaron Judge career playoff stats
Stats updated through Game 3 of the World Series.
| Games | AVG | HR | RBI | H | OPS |
| 58 | .205 | 16 | 34 | 45 | .742 |
Judge's career postseason numbers leave much to be desired. A .742 OPS is considered fairly average in today's offensive environment. For Judge, however, it's dire — nearly 300 points lower than his career regular season mark.
