{"id":664836,"date":"2026-04-05T15:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T15:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664836\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T15:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T15:54:19","slug":"the-yankees-are-more-than-just-aaron-judge-and-a-bunch-of-scrubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/664836\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yankees are more than just Aaron Judge and a bunch of scrubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Yankees\u2019 road to the postseason is clear. They either get a full, healthy, good season from Aaron Judge, in which case they should skate in, or they don\u2019t, in which case things get a lot darker. It isn\u2019t just local radio hosts saying that the Yankees are relying heavily on Judge; in his writeup<\/a> of the Yankees\u2019 2026 ZiPS projections, FanGraphs\u2019 Dan Szymborski also claimed, \u201cThe offense, of course, starts, ends, and runs through Aaron Judge.\u201d This isn\u2019t to say that the Yankees aren\u2019t a good team as currently constructed\u2014they are\u2014but it is concerning that so much of their hopes are tied to just a single player.<\/p>\n

Well, leave it to baseball to make prognosticators look like fools. The Yankees received very little contributions from Judge in the first six games of the season, with the gargantuan slugger only able to muster a .125\/.160\/.375 slash line across 25 plate appearances. And yet, they ended the first road trip of the year with a 5-1 record. So much for \u201cAs Judge goes, so do the Yanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Granted, it\u2019s only six games, so we shouldn\u2019t be drawing any sweeping conclusions from this sample about this team. If Judge\u2019s OPS still begins with a 5 six weeks later from now, the Yankees\u2019 record probably will look a whole lot worse. But the Yankees winning two series despite their captain largely being a non-factor is a good reminder of the quality of this team. Sure, Judge is far and away the best player on this squad. But don\u2019t mistake these Yankees for the prime Mike Trout-era Angels. This is a good team from top to bottom, and they have the tools to withstand cold spells from their franchise player.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s talk about the offense. Over the first six games of the season, the Yankees collectively hit .227\/.287\/.359, good for a team wRC+ of 89. That sounds awful, but when you account for the fact that Judge\u2019s 50 wRC+ is dragging that down, it looks somewhat better. Leading the charge were regulars Giancarlo Stanton (266 wRC+), Ben Rice (264 wRC+), and Cody Bellinger (135 wRC+), with Paul Goldschmidt also making the most of his two starts (148 wRC+). Now, none of them are going to maintain that level of production for the whole year, but these are all good hitters, and in the case of Stanton and Rice, both have enough slug in their bat to carry an offense for a series or two at a time.<\/p>\n

And the Yankees don\u2019t need to ride on their backs for the entire season. Even outside of Judge, several bats went cold during the Yanks\u2019 first two series. Austin Wells and Jazz Chisholm Jr., two lineup mainstays, both recorded wRC+ marks below 30. It hardly needs saying that this isn\u2019t reflective of their true talent. Chisholm has been an above-average bat for the past four seasons, and he has enough pop to go berserk in any given series. Wells has yet to live up to the offensive potential that evaluators saw in him as a prospect, but he still owns a career wRC+ of 99, far from a black hole. If these two can provide something closer to their career norms going forward, which isn\u2019t an unreasonable thing to bank on, the Yankees\u2019 lineup will be plenty deep even when Judge is slumping.<\/p>\n

If you still have reservations about this offense, then may I offer my second point: The Yankees don\u2019t need to score five runs every game, because the pitching is more than capable of holding up its end of the bargain. Andr\u00e9s already provided an excellent summary<\/a> of the Bombers\u2019 superlative pitching in his reaction to the first road trip of the year, but the numbers are so gaudy they bear repeating: the starting corps owned a 0.53 ERA, 0.68 WHIP, and 35 punchouts in 33.2 innings. The bullpen was quietly elite too, with the exception of one bad inning from Paul Blackburn in the Yanks\u2019 only road trip loss: a 1.83 ERA and 2.07 FIP over 19.2 innings. Yes, they\u2019re pitching out of their minds at the moment, but it\u2019s not like this is a ragtag group that\u2019s randomly overperforming. FanGraphs\u2019 Depth Charts projections had the Yankees\u2019 starters at 10th-best in MLB, and ranked the bullpen even higher at No. 7. This is a strong collection of arms that\u2019s having a fantastic start to the year, and the returns of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rod\u00f3n, and Clarke Schmidt should offset any regression coming for the current staff.<\/p>\n

So, the conclusion is clear: the 2026 Yankees are far from being a one-man show. Aaron Judge remains the centerpiece of the squad, but that\u2019s more a testament to his otherworldly talent rather than an indictment of his teammates. Yes, I\u2019d like to see Judge post a third consecutive 10 WAR, 200 wRC+ season and have a postseason for the ages. But even if Judge doesn\u2019t quite live up to those standards, his surrounding cast is well-equipped to pick up the slack. Judge doesn\u2019t need to carry this team. It can stand on its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Yankees\u2019 road to the postseason is clear. They either get a full, healthy, good season from Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,4,1690,62,2548,2547,142,38989,39160],"class_list":{"0":"post-664836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkyankees","14":"tag-yankees","15":"tag-yankees-analysis","16":"tag-yankees-editorials-reactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116352913860981886","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}