Aaron Judge's Latest Homer Links Him With Alex Rodriguez As Yankees Enter Massive Visit To Toronto

Forbes

a day ago

New York Yankees' Aaron Judge (99) hits a solo home run against the Atlanta Braves in the first ... More inning of a baseball game, Sunday, July 20, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Alex Rodriguez and Aaron Judge will always be linked together not for the way they achieved their lofty numbers but the timing of their stints in the last two-plus decades of Yankees history.
Rodriguez's final game with the Yankees was Aug. 12, 2016, about two weeks after he turned 41. It was his final game because of a massively declining bat that left him with a .200 batting average.
When Rodriguez played his final game in 12 seasons with the Yankees, he finished his eventual time in the Bronx with 351 homers. Those were achieved in 1,509 games, 6,520 plate appearances and 5,557 at-bats.
As Rodriguez was being celebrated for his career, Judge was playing in Triple-A and found out he was heading to the Yankees the next afternoon.
After a long car ride, Judge homered in his first plate appearance and first at-bat. And other than injury interruptions in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2023, he has hardly stopped hitting home runs and his power eventually caught up to Rodriguez's totals.
Judge reached 350 homers last Saturday on the same day Matthew Boyd reached double-digit wins for the first time. He matched Rodriguez in his first at-bat Sunday when the Yankees played a clean game and left Atlanta with two wins after a disastrous return from the All-Star break.
Judge reached Rodriguez's home run total with the Yankees in his 1,092nd game. He is up to 351 homers in 3,928 at-bats, or once every 11.1 at-bats, compared to Rodriguez hitting a homer once every 15.8 at-bats with the Yankees. If Judge maintains that rate, he would be approaching 500 homers by the time his at-bat total with the Yankees matches Rodriguez, who accumulated those totals in his age 28 through age 40 seasons.
Judge matching Rodriguez contributed to one of the neater wins of late for the Yankees, who will return to Toronto with a three-game deficit in the AL East and their pitching lined up in the preferred way.
The Yankees are still looking up at Toronto because of recent uneven events. They were 35-20 after sweeping the Angels. After winning seven of 12, they went 30 innings without scoring during a six-game losing streak, followed it up with six wins in 10 games before losing four straight in Toronto as part of a second six-game skid.
The Yankees won five straight after the six-game skid fueled by bad pitching and highlighted by Cody Bellinger's defense and his three-homer game but went into the break with two straight sleepy losses where they could do little at the plate off Boyd and Shota Imanaga.While the All-Star break provided a four-day break from the discourse about uneven play, the mood did not lighten amongst nervous fans.
Around the middle of Friday afternoon as the Yankees returned from four days off during the All-Star break following an uneven first 96 games, news surfaced the pitching plans involved a bullpen game against the Atlanta Braves.
While plenty of teams win bullpen games, the word of a bullpen game seemed like a scheduled loss for the Yankees and hours later they trailed by six on the way to a 7-3 loss defined by a young third baseman making a baserunning gaffe between second and third base against Ronald Acuna Jr's sterling arm.
A day later after the Mets honored David Wright by retiring his number and then lost to the Reds in a game with a few key mistakes, the Yankees fell behind by five and YES Network cameras caught Will Warren punching the dugout roof in a similar way as Gerrit Cole in Aug. 2022 against the Toronto Blue Jays with the exception being the young pitcher was looking at his hand.
Things seemed dire at that point but then the Yankees turned it around highlighted when Trent Grisham's grand slam gave them a 12-9 slugfest win.
The clutch win was followed by Judge matching Rodriguez and a nice six innings from Marcus Stroman that essentially reset their relief arms heading into a massive 10 games against Toronto, Philadelphia and Tampa Bay leading into a trade deadline that figures to be eventful to fill the gaps the Yankees did not during the offseason or solve some of the issues the Yankees did not necessarily anticipate going into this season.