All Rise for the Judge: How an Ejection Turned the Yankees Captain’s Season Around

Yankees megastar Aaron Judge went through an extreme cold streak to start the 2024 season. Judge, the 2022 Major League Player of the Year and American League MVP to go along with five all-star games and three silver sluggers, batted just .208 through March and April. This led to the Yankees captain being booed on his very own bobblehead day. Shockingly, some fans on “X” even went as far as to say that the Yankees should send Judge down to the minor leagues. However, his season may have been saved by his first career ejection. 

In the 10 games since getting ejected, Judge is batting a staggering .457 with five home runs and a 1.692 OPS. Similarly, in the month of May, he’s batting .378 with a 1.367 OPS. His on-base percentage during this hot streak is sitting at a crisp .500. His OPS on the season has risen to more of an Aaron Judge level at .948, which surpasses the newly acquired Juan Soto. Soto has been recognized as the Yankees best player so far this season, which he has been, but Judge surpassing Soto’s OPS mark in what seemed to be a blink of an eye is a testament to how dominant of a player he really is, Judge getting hot and Soto getting cold have flip-flopped, as Soto is in a 3-27 slump himself. 

Both Judge and Soto are consensus top five players in the entirety of the MLB and hitting back-to-back is one of the scariest things an opposing pitcher has to face. Many fans believed that a reason for Judge’s early struggles was because of having another superstar in the lineup, but that doesn’t seem to be impacting his performance anymore. The Yankees have been extremely hot to start the season, as they are sitting at 30-15 and have sole custody of first place in the American League East. Now that Judge is back to his old ways, it’s going to be exciting how the Yankees play as we head into the dog days of summer.