Aaron Judge is out, and the Yankees keep putting crooked numbers on the board anyway.
The record without Judge is 8-4. You do not accidentally go 8-4 while waiting for one bat to save you.
Tuesday was the loud version of that point. The Yankees hung 12 runs on the White Sox, piled up 16 hits, and did it with production coming from all over the lineup.
Hold up. This is not about pretending Judge does not matter. It is about admitting the rest of the roster has stopped acting like his absence is a free pass.
That is why the panic always felt lazy. When a team can score double digits for the eighth time and get length from Gerrit Cole, the conversation has to move past one missing superstar.
Eight and four says enough
The cleanest receipt is the simplest one: the Yankees are 8-4 since Judge went down with a stress fracture in his right rib. Fans can complain about the lineup on paper, but the actual games are saying something else.
They are not surviving on smoke and mirrors either. At 44-27, this team is still stacking wins because the offense has found different ways to function, even without the guy who usually covers every flaw.
Here is the part that matters. When Judge is out, everybody else has to stop waiting for the three-run bailout. Lately, they have.
This was a full-lineup punch, not a one-man show. Cody Bellinger had three hits and flipped the game with a go-ahead two-run single in the third. J.C. Escarra doubled and reached base three times. Ryan McMahon added an RBI single.
Then came the power. Ben Rice launched his 20th homer in the fourth, making it a second straight 20-homer season. Paul Goldschmidt went deep in the same inning for his 10th, and he has now homered twice in three games after matching last season’s total from 146 games.
Spencer Jones got in on it too with his first Yankee Stadium homer in the second, then drew a bases-loaded walk in the third. That is the point. Judge was not there, and the Yankees still had answers in every section of the order.
They buried a starter fast
Davis Martin came in at 9-3 with a 4.34 ERA. The Yankees treated that like background noise. He lasted 3.1 innings, gave up eight hits, nine earned runs, three walks, and three homers.
Make no mistake, that is not some routine bad night. Martin had allowed only three homers across his first 13 starts, and the Yankees matched that total in one outing while tying his career worst for runs allowed.
Even the inning distribution tells you how hard they pressed. They scored in four different frames, including a four-run third and a six-run fourth. This was never really about one big swing. It was constant traffic.
Cole gave them the usual
The offense gets the headlines, but Cole did his part by keeping this from becoming annoying. He went six innings, allowed three hits and two earned runs, walked two, struck out six, and threw 90 pitches.
Chicago managed only four hits all night. One was Andrew Benintendi’s first-inning homer, and another run came on a Luisangel Acuna RBI single in the sixth. That was basically the damage.
Ryan Yarbrough handled the last three innings for his second save, allowing one hit and striking out three. That kind of finish matters because it keeps the bullpen from getting dragged into a game the offense already won.
Fans need to stop this one habit
Yankees fans, this is for you. Every time Judge misses time, too many people jump straight to funeral music for the season. Stop doing that when the team keeps handing you evidence to the contrary.
No, nobody is saying the lineup is better without him. That would be stupid. The point is that a serious team does not fold because one star is unavailable, and these Yankees are showing they can still bludgeon opponents and pitch clean games.
Next up is another chance to keep proving it, with lefty Anthony Kay set to face Carlos Rodon on Wednesday night. If the Yankees keep attacking like this, the missing-bat excuse is going to look weaker by the day
Born in Manhattan, New York, Felix Pantaleon is a Dominican-American digital content creator and the founder of NYYNEWS, one of the first and longest-running independent New York Yankees content creator platforms, active since 2005.
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