Yankees Mag: Stars and Pinstripes

As he sat at a table in the Globe Life Field outfield the day before the 2024 All-Star Game in Arlington, Texas, Aaron Judge serenaded a swelled media throng with a recitation of the baseball studs in town for the weekend. Over the course of nearly an hour, he spent time dwelling on mega-talents such as Shohei Ohtani. Certainly Bryce Harper. Gunnar Henderson, the exciting division rival? Judge had plenty of thoughts. Perhaps Bobby Witt Jr. and Tanner Houck heard their names pass through the Yankees captain’s lips, too, as -- you’d hope -- did Judge’s teammates in Texas, Juan Soto and Clay Holmes.

Judge spent plenty of time answering questions about Paul Skenes, the rookie starting pitcher for the National League. Just 11 starts into his big league career, and just a year removed from having been the top pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, the Pirates right-hander was the talk of the town, and Judge -- hitting cleanup for the Junior Circuit -- hoped that one of the three players ahead of him would reach base so that he could face the phenom during his likely lone inning on the mound.

“He’s going to be one of the top pitchers in this game for a long time,” Judge said of the mustachioed yet baby-faced 22-year-old, the youngest pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Dwight Gooden in 1986. “It’s going to be exciting to get a chance to face him in his first one, and I know he’s going to have multiple All-Star Game starts for years to come.”

Anyone who stood before Judge hoping to hear him answer a question about the outfielder’s own achievements hadn’t been paying attention for the past eight years. Precious little has changed since Judge commanded center stage at the 2017 All-Star festivities in Miami, winning the Home Run Derby and sending his national profile into the stratosphere. The only time that the uber-cool, omni-capable Judge appears flustered is when you ask him to talk about himself. He’ll turn his head a bit, ear creeping down toward his shoulder, a smirk and some blush red crossing his face. He’d much rather opine on the studs to his left and right during All-Star Week media availability, offering paeans to everyone from the game’s most legendary sluggers to the somewhat anonymous, yet occasionally unhittable, middle relievers.

Yet there was something almost silly about listening to Judge offer unending notes of regard and awe for his peers at baseball’s showcase event, all but crowning Ohtani as the face of the game and giving his hypothetical AL MVP vote to Soto. Because anyone who watched the first half of the 2024 season knows that Judge is everything he sees in others.

“I mean, Judge right now is an absolute cheat code,” said Mets slugger Pete Alonso. “He’s making pitchers pay when they miss in the middle of the zone. He’s working counts. He’s walking. And then the balls that he doesn’t hit out of the yard are off the wall or down the line for extra bases. So, what he’s doing right now, it’s insane. He’s a cheat code.”

Soto was no less amazed by the video game-like numbers his teammate put up. “I don’t think I can even do that in MLB The Show,” he said. “It’s just crazy -- literally crazy -- to see all those homers, all those RBIs, taking great at-bat after great at-bat.”

Soto, of course, garnered plenty of his own acclaim. The Yankees’ two All-Star outfielders ?-- both voted in as starters -- have more than their share of fans in the Bronx and throughout the world, and you can count some of baseball’s best players among them. Indeed, so many of the high points from the 2024 season’s first half were reflected in the two superstar Yankees outfielders hitting back-to-back for the American League.

***

The Midsummer Classic really tickles the imagination. All the stars of the game assembled under a perfect summer sunset (or, in the case of Arlington, Texas, mercifully gathered in an air-conditioned facility under the world’s most necessary roof). The lineups are beyond comprehension. Imagine being a pitcher and having to face Juan Soto and then Aaron Judge in succession. Only in the All-Star Game, right?

“I already did that!” said Atlanta Braves left-hander Max Fried, who tossed a scoreless second inning for the Senior Circuit. Pitching in Yankee Stadium on June 23, Fried twirled six masterful innings, limiting the Yankees’ No. 2 and No. 3 hitters to just one single each in six combined at-bats. That registers as near-perfection in 2024.

There are infinite charms to the All-Star Game, but so much of the joy comes from the mix-and-match qualities that define the proceedings. We collect players in a random American city, assign half of them to dress in semi-uniformity in a clubhouse normally home to a league rival, and watch as they try to create baseball history over the course of one unforgettable night. Dominant starting pitchers warm up in the bullpen in the third inning to come in and throw a single inning of relief. Closers pitch the fifth. Superstars bat ninth.

But Juan Soto and Aaron Judge hit back-to-back, much the same as it was throughout the first half, same as it would be three days after the All-Star Game, when the Yankees would host the Rays in the Bronx.

“They’ve been two of the best hitters in all of baseball for basically the entire season,” said the Phillies’ Trea Turner. “I’m glad I’m not pitching, I can say that. I got a chance to play with Juan [in Washington], and I know what he’s capable of. And then when you pair him with Judge, who’s probably the best hitter in the game right now, it’s terrifying.”

“Terrifying” was the word of choice for several All-Stars. “Oh, it’s got to be terrifying,” said Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman, trying to imagine facing them from the pitcher’s mound. Alonso settled on “insane.” And as Rangers All-Star Marcus Semien put it, “That combination is pretty lethal.”

Who needs a thesaurus when you’ve got a big league superstar?

“For them to be able to do that in-season,” said Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who pitched six seasons in Tampa Bay, “and then come to the All-Star Game and do it, too? It’s amazing.”

The Yankees were not the only team to see a familiar combination translate to the spotlight of the All-Star Game. Baltimore’s Corbin Burnes started for the American League, throwing to his teammate, Rutschman. Over in the NL dugout, Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo wrote Philadelphia’s Turner and Bryce Harper into the three/four lineup spots, then hit William Contreras and Christian Yelich of the Brewers in the five/six holes. Another Phillie, Alec Bohm, hit seventh.

As statistician Greg Harvey pointed out after the starting lineups were announced, not since 1962 had the AL and NL both seen their Nos. 3 and 4 hitters come from the same team, when the Junior Circuit sent up Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, and the National League turned to Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda.

But looking at the 2024 standings, what did the Yankees, Phillies, Orioles and Brewers have in common? They were a combined 79 games over .500. All four were comfortably in playoff position. All four spent the first half earning the right to be saluted with a degree of representative accuracy.

So, when baseball fans salivated at the idea of a Skenes/Judge matchup but worried that the phenom might get through the bottom of the first inning 1-2-3 and thereby deny the people what they wanted, Soto, the No. 3 hitter, understood the assignment. After working a seven-pitch walk that featured two 100 mph four-seamers and a 94 mph sinker, he pointed at the guy in the on-deck circle -- his teammate on this day and every day in 2024 -- ready to watch the show he has had a front-row seat for all year long.

“I was trying to take [Skenes] deep!” Soto said after he was pulled from the game, following his two-run double in the third inning off Logan Webb. “I was trying to work the at-bat because I wanted to make sure [Judge] got to face him. I got my job done.”

“He said he was going to get on for me, and he did,” Judge added.

Alas, Judge knocked the first pitch he saw, another triple-digit heater, to third base for an inning-ending fielder’s choice. So it goes in the All-Star Game, where every pitcher is up to almost every task.

***

Of course, it’s hardly fair to the state of pitching in MLB right now to talk only about the All-Star hurlers. Every day is a battle in the big leagues, with bullpens deeper than ever before and managers less likely to send tired starting pitchers out for an extra turn through the lineup. A big league hitter in 2024 can’t expect any freebies.

“When I came up, it was, ‘Hey, let’s try to work the starter as best as we can and get to the bullpen so we can maybe beat up on some bullpen arms,’” Judge said. “But you don’t want to see some of these bullpen arms that are coming out of here. It’s just impressive how the league’s developed over the past couple seasons, even the past three years. You’re seeing guys out of the bullpen, every guy you see, even if you don’t know that much about him, he’s 95 to 98 with some nasty offspeed pitches. Every at-bat is tough. You don’t have too many at-bats where you’re like, ‘OK, this is going to be a little easier one. I can take it easy or a little simpler approach.’ No, it’s every guy you face is bringing their A game with elite stuff. So, that’s definitely been a change.”

And you have to feel for Judge, because it clearly has affected him. At the All-Star break, Judge was batting .306 and leading the Majors with 34 homers and 85 RBIs. He already had 6.4 bWAR, with an OPS of 1.112 and an OPS+ of 207, meaning that his offensive output was approximately 107% better than the average MLB hitter. (Judge’s OPS and OPS+ in 2022, when he set the American League single-season home run record, were 1.111 and 210, respectively). Is he having a better season than his MVP campaign? Maybe. At worst, he’s matching it.

So, if the pitchers are getting more punishing and the game is getting harder for hitters, what does it mean that Judge -- who got the most All-Star votes of anyone in the sport -- is getting better? It probably has at least a little to do with the guy that Judge thinks should be the MVP when the season is said and done.

“It’s definitely Juan Soto,” Judge said of his MVP choice. “I’ve been getting a chance to see him do his thing day in and day out and just the impact he’s had for this team from Day 1. You go all the way back to that [season-opening] Houston series, going into a hostile environment, and for us to go out and sweep a great ballclub, he’s an MVP in my book, man. He gets on base, he drives people in, works great at-bats. He’s playing great defense for us out in right field. So, he definitely has my vote.”

Holmes, who earned the second All-Star selection of his career but didn’t pitch in the game, enjoyed a light moment during the media availability on Monday when a representative from the Topps trading card company stopped by and placed a pack of the new Series 2 cards on his table. Encouraging the pitcher to break open the pack and hopefully find himself, Holmes instead looked at the guy whose picture graces the wrapper and noted that he might prefer to pull a Soto card.

“There’s never an at-bat that’s easy or off,” Holmes said of his teammate, whose at-bats have a tendency to verge on torture for opposing pitchers. “He’s not going to just chase normally. He’s not going to get himself out. The pitcher has to get him out. And then, obviously, he’s got the power to hit opposite-field homers.

“Some of his at-bats may not just strictly wow you, but it’s like, he does that every single day, and those things add up. He hangs in with some of the tough lefties. It’s just impressive. You just see it day after day. Man, this guy never takes an at-bat off, you know? And I think once you really start to see that every day, it’s really impressive.”

Soto has been everything advertised and more since the offseason trade that brought him from the Padres to the Yankees. Every at-bat is a battle, but more than that, they all seem to set Judge up perfectly for his own success. And as much as Judge and Soto clearly enjoyed each other’s company during the All-Star festivities, including during the third inning, when they were mic’d up for the Fox broadcast, cracking jokes and offering insight into their processes (and, less happily, watching Ohtani’s 400-foot three-run bomb sail over their heads), they weren’t the only ones enjoying the show.

In the Yankees’ final series before the break, the team played an intense three-game set in Baltimore. The Yankees and Orioles seem destined to spend the entire second half vying for position in the AL East, and if the first half’s final weekend was any indication, it will be a battle. The series included a dugout- and bullpen-clearing dust-up after a hit by pitch, and all three games were emotional seesaws.

The Midsummer Classic, though, creates strange bedfellows.

“I like talking to them,” Rutschman said. “When you’re facing them, you’re trying to win. But in this setting, it’s really nice to talk to guys and just chat outside of the game setting, get to know guys on a more personal level. They seem like really nice dudes.”

Added Rutschman’s teammate Henderson: “It’s definitely a quick turnaround. But it’s going to be fun because we get to see those guys a lot in the AL East. Being able to hit right there with them is going to be pretty fun.

“Embrace the fun times.”

All of it seemed 180 degrees from the fracas at Camden Yards the Friday night before. But it wasn’t just the Orioles relishing the rare opportunity to potentially benefit from the Soto/Judge tandem.

“We’re sharing locker rooms,” said Tampa Bay’s Isaac Paredes, another rival-turned-temporary-teammate. “We play against them all the time. But now it feels good to be on the same side as them because they’re really good players.”

***

Baseball likes to call its midsummer festivities All-Star Week. In reality, the stars of the show are in town for just about 48 hours. A lot of the players are already at the airport within minutes of the final out, hoping to salvage at least a little bit of rest time from their supposed “break.”

Three days after the AL’s 5-3 victory, the league’s 10th in the last 11 seasons, Soto and Judge were once again batting back-to-back against another AL East rival, when Paredes and the Rays came to New York for a four-game set. Once Tampa Bay skipped town, Alonso and the Mets came over from Queens for a two-game visit.

The full story of the 2024 MLB season won’t be completed for months yet, but as an indication of what had happened thus far, you couldn’t get a much better summary than the lineups that Bruce Bochy and Lovullo drafted for the All-Star Game. And any good tidings could be shared amongst All-Stars in Texas were long in the past once Gerrit Cole threw the Yankees’ first pitch of the second half.

At least one All-Star, though, knew that his experience wouldn’t be fleeting, that the idea of watching -- and rooting on -- the Yankees’ two remarkable sluggers would continue over the months to come.

“We know how special it is to have those two guys in our lineup hitting back-to-back,” Holmes said. “But I think it kind of hits a little different when they’re doing the same thing in the All-Star Game. It’s not just the two best guys in our lineup. It’s the two best hitters in the game.

“Obviously, they’re special, and I’m glad it’s our lineup that they’re in.”

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the August 2024 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.