Best thing Yanks have day in and day out? Simple, it's Judge

Big stories are already coming at us in baseball -- and coming at us fast -- before two weeks of the season have been played. The biggest one right now is the Rays winning their first nine games, and not just winning them, but winning them by a lot. The way they have rolled so far is by rolling everybody.

But the big man continues to be Aaron Judge.

It means that over the first nine games his Yankees have played, this season already looks a lot like last season. And you know what happened last year. Judge towered over the sport -- and not just because of his size -- the way Babe Ruth once did 100 years ago.

You wondered if there might be some sort of hangover, because how could you not wonder about that after Judge had hit 62 home runs, more than any Yankee including Ruth had hit and more than Roger Maris’ 61 back in ’61? Only now he has hit four homers in those first nine games as the Yankees have won every series they’ve played, despite a lot of bad things that have happened with their starting pitching. Judge hit two more in Sunday's 5-3 win against the Orioles -- just because he always seems to him them against the O's (37 and counting for his career) -- and the Yankees ended up taking two of three in Baltimore.

So one other thing hasn’t changed for No. 99, at least so far:

He is still carrying the Yankees the way he did last season -- in good times and bad -- even when the Yankees became a .500 team in the second half and it looked as if Judge was all they had.

“He’s the best player going right now,” Judge’s manager, Aaron Boone, said on Sunday.

You would say the same thing if you were sitting where Boone is sitting, watching what he has been watching with No. 99 since he became the Yankees manager. You would say that even in a world that has Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in it, and also at a time when both Ohtani and Trout have come out of the blocks mashing for the Angels. You would say that even coming out of a baseball spring when Ohtani and Trout gave us that moment -- Ohtani pitching and Trout trying to hit him -- at the very end of the World Baseball Classic.

For now, the Rays are the best team going, as they prepare to play four against the Red Sox in St. Petersburg and the Yankees begin a series against the Guardians, against whom they went five hard games last October in the American League Division Series. But it is Judge who remains the best moment in baseball every time he steps into the batter’s box. It is Judge, coming off 62 and starting off this season better than he started off last season, who remains the most compelling at-bat in his sport.

“I feel like there’s always a good breeze, a good wind blowing out,” Judge said Sunday about Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

But he must feel at this point as if the wind is always blowing out everywhere, even when he’s playing indoors. He is still in a cycle -- one season rolling over into the next -- when he just keeps hitting them, even when he thinks he’s missed one. Judge thought he’d gotten under a pitch from Tyler Wells on Sunday. When he looked up the ball was over the center-field wall and had traveled 416 feet, according to Statcast, and the Yankees were on their way to being 6-3.

Of course, it hasn’t been all bluebirds and lemonade for the Yankees this April. Carlos Rodón, the starter who was their big free-agent play over the winter, still has not thrown a pitch. Luis Severino -- stop me if you’ve heard this one before -- is hurt again. Harrison Bader, the Bronxville, N.Y., kid who showed you just flash and pop during the postseason of ’22, still hasn’t played this season because of an oblique injury.

But the kid at short, Anthony Volpe, jump-started the Yankees’ Saturday night victory over the Orioles with a triple. Franchy Cordero, whom the Red Sox didn’t want and the Orioles released despite a pretty big Spring Training for them, has now hit a couple of homers as a Yankee. Giancarlo Stanton, healthy so far, has already hit three homers of his own to Judge’s four. Gleyber Torres has a couple of homers, and he's hitting .357 to Judge’s jazzy .364. Something else that hasn’t changed? As much as the Yankees love to talk about pitching and defense, every single year, they are still going to rise and fall with home runs.

It means everything still revolves around All Rise Judge. He began the season by hitting a home run against the Giants at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day, very much giving the people what they wanted. Two more on Sunday. There are so many talented, valuable players in baseball right now, some obviously more valuable than others. Not one of them is more valuable to his team than Aaron Judge is to the Yankees.