Opening Day was a good one for the New York Yankees, beating the San Francisco Giants. However, Yankees slugger Aaron Judge had an Opening Day to forget.
According to Bryan Hoch of MLB.com, Judge made unfortunate history in the Yankees’ opener against the Giants.
“Judge became the first reigning Most Valuable Player to strike out four times in an Opening Day game, including three punchouts against San Francisco starter Logan Webb,” Hoch wrote.
People are going to make this a lot more than it has to be, just because it’s Judge and the Yankees. A 0-5 day with four strikeouts is far from ideal, but let’s calm down a bit.
The conversation was bad then and it’s bad now. Stephen A. Smith, on First Take, had some ridiculous comments to make about it.
“The reality is that when you look at Aaron Judge, who I absolutely love, who’s a monster, and I’m happy to have him as a New York Yankee, the problem is too many moments he has had in his career where this Goliath of a man and a baseball player comes up considerably and conspicuously small,” Smith said.
“Yesterday was Opening Day. You’ve got 161 games to go. But it looked like a pretty good moment. It was on Netflix. It was opening night. You’re the only game in town. You saw the fans up there. It looked like an electric environment. And everybody around him came up big but him,” Smith continued. “Yeah, see, that’s the kind of stuff that gets Yankee fans worried because we’re looking for it and we’re saying the postseason is moments.”
Fair or not, Judge is looked at differently. However, there’s no way we can be serious and say that a guy who won three MVP Awards isn’t clutch or something because he had a bad Opening Day.
Judge could go 0-5 with four strikeouts every game for the next 161, and I still wouldn’t worry about him figuring it out. It’s early, he had a bad game, and that’s all we need to leave it at. Expect him to get back at it and do what’s needed in the coming days.