You guys are probably sick of me. If you aren’t, you should be.
It’s been two and a half years and 34 columns. If you are still reading, thank you. I sincerely hope I’ve turned at least a few of you into New York Yankees fans by now.
But due to unfortunate circumstances — namely, my graduation — this is my last edition. Game 162.
I’ve written about everything by now. Consider my uniquely diverse range of topics: the Yankees, players on the Yankees, players who have hurt the Yankees and players who I wish were on the Yankees. I think there were even a couple of columns in which I didn’t mention the Yankees — for some reason.
Perhaps we can call this final column my senior thesis. And would it truly be a swan song if it wasn’t about Aaron Judge?
We know that Judge is good. Understatement. We also know that the rest of the New York Yankees’ lineup is… less good.
But, as every thesis needs a research question, here’s mine: To parrot the LSAT, we know that Judge was necessary for the Yankees’ 2025 success — but was he sufficient?
Let’s find out.
What if a team’s lineup consisted of one Judge and eight … rocks? No, not Dwayne Johnson. Actual rocks.
Rocks don’t have arms or legs, so they can’t hit or run, which is inconvenient. However, rocks are quite short and cannot chase pitches outside of the strike zone. That means they probably walk — roll? — quite a bit.
Let’s assume rocks have the best walk rate in baseball. Funnily enough, this belonged to Judge himself last year, at 18.3%. Let’s also include Judge’s HBP percentage, as rocks can get plunked, too. So the rocks reach first base at around 19.29%.
But rocks cannot drive in runs. Not unless they walk with the bases loaded — an unlikely possibility.
As for Judge? He can only drive in runs by hitting a home run, or by reaching base when runners are already on base. Therefore, we need to figure out how often Judge bats with runs on base.
Okay. Math time. Warning: this is about to get complicated.
A negative binomial calculates the probability of a number of failures in a sequence of independent occurrences before a specified number of successes occurs. Here, “successes” are outs, and that number is 3. The probability of a rock making an out is 80.71%. How many “failures to get outs” happen before 3 outs?
In baseball-ese, how many rocks reach base before the inning ends? If you solve this equation yourself, I’ll give you a cookie.
Just kidding, I did it. When Judge comes to bat, here is the probability that a given number of runners are on base:
- Bases empty: 52.5%
- Runner on first: 30.4%
- Runners on first and second: 11.7%
- Bases loaded: 3.80%
And how often will Judge have the opportunity to drive in these runners?
If I wanted to be lazy, I would just assume that Judge would have 679 plate appearances, as he did last year. But that’s wrong —since everyone around Judge will be so bad, he will have fewer opportunities to hit. Let’s account for that.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend Judge plays on the (atrocious) 2025 Colorado Rockies. Their left fielder Jordan Beck, who I’ve never heard of, led the team in PAs last year with 588. He did so in a team-high 148 games played.
Let’s say Judge plays all 162 games, as the Rock-ees can’t afford to bench him. So Beck’s 588 PAs in 148 games translates to 644 PAs in 162.
If we map Judge’s 2025 statistics onto the probability that he bats with a runner on base and calculate his statistics over 644 PAs, Judge would drive in a grand total of — drumroll, please — 97 runs. That is an atrocious 0.6 runs per game. Whew.
I fear the Rock-ees would win approximately zero games.
So contrary to what I declare on an almost-daily basis, the rest of the Yankees’ lineup does not consist of rocks — except, perhaps, for Ryan McMahon. He might just be a rock.
Perhaps my findings will motivate the real Yankees to win a game or two in the near future — but that might be too much to ask.
The Yankees opened the 2026 season 8-2. They then proceeded to cough up five games in a row — four of which were by 1 run. As of April 13, they sit just one game above .500.
I hope that the Yankees’ annual mid-season collapse simply came early this year — that come November, this stretch of the season will be the part in the World Series documentary when the protagonist faces some obstacles.
Maybe, you’ll even think back to Out of Left Field when you see Judge hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy at the parade. A girl can dream.
