Aaron Judge could add a level to Yankees legacy by reversing playoff woes, winning World Series

Aaron Judge’s list of regular-season accomplishments and brushes with history has grown longer than a CVS receipt.But the Yankees captain would likely crumple them up like one of those receipts and throw it in the trash in exchange for the one big thing missing from his résumé: a ring.Judge is coming off another historic season, and yet, just about every time he notched another feat this year, he downplayed it and talked about his desire to win a championship.Now he finally has another chance to lead the Yankees there.“It eats at me every time we don’t finish the job,” Judge said Friday night at Yankee Stadium after the team held one last workout before Game 1 of the ALDS against the Royals on Saturday.“I take a lot of responsibility for that, being on the team, and if we don’t win it all, I feel like it’s my fault.“We’ve got a good group, though.Like I’ve been saying, we’ve got good chemistry, got a good group of guys in here, battled through a lot.

So we’re definitely excited to re-right the ship and go out there and do our thing.We’ve just got to take it one game at a time, and if we take care of our business and do what we gotta do, we’ll be where we want to be.”As he stood in a champagne-drenched clubhouse last week, after the Yankees locked up the AL East, Judge mentioned being one win away from going to the World Series as a rookie in 2017 and expecting to be in that position every year.

But the Yankees have not gotten that close since then, with the wait for the franchise’s 28th title only growing longer.As dominant as Judge has been in the regular season over the years, his Octobers have left something to be desired.Across 44 games and six playoff runs, Judge has hit .211 with a .772 OPS, though much of that production came in his first three postseasons.

Since the 2020 playoffs — a smaller sample size of 17 games — Judge has hit .143 with a .565 OPS and 25 strikeouts.Fans have let him know how they feel about it, to...