The Yankee bats continued to be silent in a 7-2 loss to the Orioles on Thursday night, while Aaron Judge was hitless again to drop his season batting average to .197.
Keith, who opined that Judge may not be the hitter he once was earlier in his prolonged slump, doesn’t feel good about being right, but he believes he just might be.
“I don’t like being right about Judge…what I said was, we’re never going to see the dominant Judge from 2022 again,” Keith said.
“But now that he has the $40 million a year contract, before he got the captaincy, that was before he ran into the wall at Dodger Stadium. It’ unfortunate for us as Yankee fans. It just seems like you sign a Jacoby Ellsbury, he’s hurt, he’s MIA. You sign Aaron Hicks, he falls off a cliff…even Giancarlo Stanton. He’s not completely washed, but think about what we thought we were getting.”
Judge signed a nine-year deal after his historic 2022 season, and appeared to be on track for another historic campaign in 2023 before his toe injury in Los Angeles, and Keith worries that the contract will be all downhill from here.
“It just looks like it’s not gonna be a good contract, and I’m worried about the guy,” Keith said. “I know what he is, but right now, it’s what he isn’t…something is up.”