Yankees’ Aaron Judge ready to turn page, focus on World Series run

On the 56th and final day, Aaron Judge was able to rest and reset. The season began with drama for him and ended with intense pressure. Judge declined an extension offer that was worth $230 million and essentially bet on himself. He made history on the second to last day of the season, becoming the only man in American League history to hit 62 home runs and the first in MLB since the steroid era of the late 1990s and early 2000s.The Yankees slugger has had a great season by any measure.And on Wednesday, the last day of the season and the first game he had off in the last 56, Judge didn’t see it that way. Without a World Series title, Judge sees the 2022 season as a disappointment.“I think historical or not, you want to finish with that,” Judge said of winning the title that has eluded him. “I think that’s what the regular season is, all it really is, is just getting prepared and ready for the postseason. So now we got the regular season out of the way, it’s time to go out there and have fun and play our game like we’ve been doing here.”Aaron Judge and the Bombers get a chance to rest up before starting title chase. (LM Otero/AP)The Yankees won their first division title since 2019 and by finishing with the second-best record in the American League, they earned five days off. They await their AL Division Series opponent as the Guardians took a 1-0 lead over the Rays in the Wild Card Series and hope to get healthy.The Pinstripe ExpressWeeklyThe Daily News sports editors handpick the week’s best Yankees stories from our award-winning columnists and beat writers. Delivered to your inbox every Wednesday. “Obviously, Tampa we know really well. And they know us well,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “So, we’ll obviously be watching the series closely. Cleveland has been one of the really good stories this year as far as to see their young roster come of age and really just dominate the central down stretch to win that division. They always pitch well, they’ve got an elite closer at the back end. Good starting pitching. A team that’s really adept at putting the ball in play and they’re athletic. They do a lot of different things.“So hopefully it goes three games and they beat each other up a little bit. At this point in the season, whoever it’s going to be a challenge and you have to play well to win so we’ll await that … the downtime serves us well,” Boone continued. “Hopefully we can strike that balance between staying sharp and getting guys rested. And hopefully that serves us well going into that series.”[ Mike Lupica: For a franchise defined by the home run, Aaron Judge walks tall with Babe Ruth and Roger Maris ]Judge is eager to turn the page from all the focus on him and his chase of 62 and back to the only thing that will matter to him.“Everybody in this room was excited once we clinched the division in Toronto and kind of started looking ahead at what’s to come. It’s an exciting time of the year and this is what we’re looking forward to,” Judge said. ”In Toronto, we were able to get that first step out of the way clinching the division and now it’s time for guys to rest up. … Hopefully we get some guys back from the [injured list] and that is the fun part of the year. So I think this is gonna be a fun group of guys to go to battle with here down the stretch.”[ Here’s what the Yankees ALDS roster should look like for Aaron Boone’s squad ]The Yankees have a lot of questions about that group of guys heading into ALDS. They are optimistic they will get slugger Matt Carpenter (fractured foot), reliever Clay Holmes (shoulder strain) and reliever Wandy Peralta (spine tightness) back from the injured list in time for Tuesday night’s series opener. DJ LeMahieu, who is dealing with a foot issue, is still proving to Boone that he can be impactful enough to be included on the roster. The Yankees need to decide how many pitchers they will carry and how they are going to lineup up their rotation.But LeMahieu is pretty confident that he can be part of a group that fell just short of the World Series in 2019.“I think it’s very similar,” LeMahieu said. “Going into the postseason with the starting rotation we have now, it’s the best since I’ve been here in the last four years. Where you feel like our starters can match up with anybody. So it’s a special group with a special group and just excited to see what we can do.”



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