Suddenly over the last two weeks, the Yankees have begun to look like the best team in baseball, even without Gerrit Cole -- the team's best starting pitcher -- still on his way back from a Spring Training elbow injury. There are so many good things happening for the Yankees right now, all their way to their closer, Clay Holmes, who has 12 saves and an ERA of 0.00, which seems pretty solid if you ask me.

But the biggest reasons the Yankees are looking like this kind of powerhouse are Juan Soto, the new guy, and Aaron Judge, the big guy, who are looking like exactly what the Yankees hoped they would when they made the trade to get Soto from the Padres.

Like 1-2 punches, left and right, that might turn out to be the best in baseball, even in a world with Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani in it. Like the best 1-2 combination the Yankees have had since Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were hitting all those home runs more than 60 years ago. They were known as the M&M Boys. Now the Yankees are building all their hopes around Juan and Judge. The JJ guys.

Soto has the been a show from the jump, looking as if he has been in a Yankees uniform, and been in New York, his whole career. He hits, he hits for power and average, he gets on base. Soto has been everything the Yankees expected him to be and hoped he would be, even if his batting average has seen a slight dip lately. But when that happens with Soto, that means the average is down to .302.

And now Judge has joined the party in such a big way over the past couple of weeks. It wasn¡¯t so long ago that his own batting average was still under .200, and he actually heard boos at Yankee Stadium after a four-strikeout day. When he wasn¡¯t striking out, he was popping up balls he used to hit to the moon. There was even the suggestion that manager Aaron Boone might move him up or down in the batting order, even as Boone kept saying over and over that it was ¡°only a matter of time¡± before Judge busted out.

Then, just like that, he busted out. Then May 2024 looked a lot like the summer of ¡¯22, when he was on his way to hitting 62 homers, which means more than Maris (61) and Mantle (54) hit back in ¡¯61, and more than Babe Ruth ever did in a season for the Yankees. Judge had four extra-base hits against the Twins on Wednesday night. He hit one ball at Target Field that went 467 feet and tried to break the third deck.

It happened big and fast for the big guy, but it happened, and he is back to looking every inch like the most dangerous hitter alive. Judge has 11 home runs now. He has raised his batting average 62 points, to .262, since May 2. He has the top slugging percentage on the Yankees, at .555. He has the best OPS, at .948. He has knocked in 29 runs, scored 25, walked 34 times and has an on-base percentage of .393.

Right behind him is Soto, who has nine homers of his own, 34 RBIs, an OPS of .920, 30 walks, 30 runs, a .403 on-base percentage and a .517 slugging percentage. That is not just a lot of power the two of them are creating, it is an awful lot of traffic on the bases, making life a lot easier for Giancarlo Stanton (nine homers of his own) and Anthony Rizzo behind them.

Maybe the best part of all is this stat for Judge, who missed two months last season because of a toe he injured at Dodger Stadium the first weekend in June: He has appeared in all 45 Yankees games this season. So has Soto. Buck Showalter has an expression for that, for guys who are there every day the way Pete Alonso was for the Mets when Buck was managing in New York. Buck talks about ¡°posting up.¡± In addition to everything else Judge and Soto are doing for the Yankees, that matters as much as anything, especially with Judge.

"We're getting there,¡± Judge said earlier this week in Minneapolis. ¡°Not there yet. Hopefully we get there when we're talking in November.¡±

It¡¯s not just the duo of Judge and Soto. Anthony Volpe, the kid at short, isn¡¯t a classic leadoff man, but has done well since Boone moved him up there. Stanton really has hit moonshots and Rizzo is back to looking like the hitter and player he was before he suffered a concussion in a collision at first base last season. Gleyber Torres has started to come on over the past couple of weeks. The starting pitching, absent Cole, has been terrific. So has the bullpen, where Holmes has turned into the best closer, so far, the Yankees have had since Mariano Rivera.

But whatever the Yankees can be this season -- and they really do look like the best team in the bigs right now, even if the Phillies have a better record heading into the weekend -- will start and end with No. 22 and No. 99. Any two-week snapshot from the long season is just a snapshot, of course. This is still been some picture with the JJ guys in it these days. The Yankees are hoping, and mightily, it turns out to be the big picture.