Mike Lupica: Time for Steinbrenner and Cashman to step up and do right by Yankee star Aaron Judge

Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman aren’t just caretakers of the Yankees and who they still are, even if they aren’t the world beaters and world champions they used to be. But Steinbrenner and Cashman are also caretakers of Aaron Judge, great Yankee, now in his 8th full season. No. 99 is 32 now, and showing the whole wide world all over again what his baseball prime looks like, did it again by trying to break Fenway Park with that home run to center on Friday night. Judge might hit 50 homers again for the Yankees this season, which would be the third time he’s done that. Babe Ruth did it four times. Ruth famously hit 60 homers once. Judge hit 62 two years and there’s still a chance he can get to 60 again with a third of the season left to play, if he gets pitched to, anyway.

The larger point here is that Judge is clearly as dangerous a hitter as he has ever been, the East Coast Shohei Ohtani, as much the face of baseball right now as Ohtani is.

The two of them also have this in common:

Neither one of them has been to the World Series yet. Ohtani never had a chance when he was still with the Angels. But he’s with the Dodgers now. They came out of Friday night with a record of 62-43, which had them just two games better in the standings than the Yankees. But you tell me which of the two teams you think has the better chance to still be playing baseball deep into October and even into November this year.

There is still plenty of time for the Yankees to turn things around, and at least look something like the team that started out 50-22 this season before going 10-23 immediately after that. They blew another game on Friday night after leading the Red Sox 7-4 in the late innings. But the Orioles, who have issues of their own, also lost again. The Yankees didn’t lose more ground. But it won’t matter what the Orioles are doing if the Yankees don’t stop looking like the worst team in baseball after looking like the best in the season’s early innings.

If the Yankees don’t turn things around, aren’t serious players in this year’s postseason the way they were absolutely supposed to be when Cashman swung his big deal for Juan Soto and Steinbrenner signed off on it, it will mean that this will be another season of Judge’s career and another season of his prime when he will be the great Yankee who hasn’t played an inning in the World Series.

It doesn’t mean Judge will end up being Don Mattingly, the great Yankee who never played in the Series or even got close. It will just mean that Judge will be another season closer to being Mattingly, who was 34 when he retired, having just made it to the postseason for the one and only time in his career in October of 1995, on his way out as Derek Jeter was on his way in. When Jeter was 34, he was on his way to playing the fifth World Series he’d play after Mattingly was gone.

Jeter had perfect timing, as it turned out. Mattingly did not. And Mattingly’s teams were never the consistent regular-season winners that Judge’s have been, or even close. Judge has already played in the American League Championship Series three times, losing all three to the Astros, making it as far as Game 7 in Judge’s rookie season of 2017. But this was supposed to be the year. This was the year when Judge would have Soto hitting in front of him, and Gerrit Cole, the Yankees’ ace, coming off a Cy Young season. It meant the ‘24 Yankees had the best starting pitcher in the game and, at least arguably, two of the best three players. This was the year when the Yankees were going to at least make it back to the Series for the first time since 2009.

And something else would happen, if the Yankees did finally put Aaron Judge in the Series: Their fans would believe once again in the firm of Steinbrenner & Cashman.

Can these Yankees still validate the vision and judgement of the two most powerful men in the operation? As bad as they have looked over the past six weeks, there is still too much baseball left to be played to write them off. If the Mets can go from 11 games under .500 to putting together the best record in the sport since then, there is still plenty of time for the Yankees to stop being the team that went from 50-22 to what we’ve been seeing, all the way through Friday night at Fenway when Judge tried to save them and could not.

This is what Cashman said last winter, as all Yankee fans recall, when he was defending himself and the people with whom he works in baseball ops:

“We’ve got good people. I’m proud of our people, and I’m proud of our process. Doesn’t mean we’re firing on all cylinders, doesn’t mean we’re the best in class, but I think we’re pretty f–king good, personally, and I’m proud of our people.”

The ’24 Yankees were firing on all cylinders until they weren’t. Lately they’ve started to make last year’s 82-80 team suddenly look like the ’27 Yankees, or Joe Torre’s Yankees, in comparison. Now they are on the threshold of another trade deadline, one that didn’t look nearly as crucial to this Yankee season as it did six weeks ago. If you’d only watched them play since the middle of June, you’d think you were looking at a team that should be sellers instead of buyers.

“We’ll see what up-top does,” Judge said the other day about the deadline. “As a player, all we can do is go out there and play, so they’ll make the right moves to put us in the best position because we’ve got a great team here. We’re a game-and-a-half out of first place in our division [two games after Friday night], the toughest division in baseball. So I think upstairs, they’ll do their thing and put us where we need to be.”

If the Yankees do end up where Judge thinks they need to be and where he deserves to be, it will be the first time in his career, and the first time in 15 years. Judge and his new bestie, Juan Soto, sure have been doing their jobs. Now we see if the up-toppers can do theirs, do them a lot better in an Upstairs Downstairs Yankee season than they have so far with the down-low part of the Yankee batting order.

COLE HAS TO BE BETTER VS. SOX, YANKEES PAID A KING’S RANSOM & ANOTHER SELF-ABSORBED A-ROD …

Imagine what the Mets are going to look like when Pete Alonso hits the way he can.

As talented as Gerrit Cole is, as much of a horse as he is and as much of a gamer as he clearly is, there is one thing the Yankees always expect from their ace:

He’s supposed to beat the Red Sox.

And he’s supposed to beat the Mets.

Since joining the Yankees, Cole is 5-4 against the Sox, with an ERA of 5.16.

And has been hammered twice this season by the Mets, most recently Wednesday night.

My Boston College guy, Michael King, is 8-6 for the Padres this season, ERA of 3.28, 135 strikeouts in 120 innings.

King, of course, was part of the Soto deal.

You have to give up something to get something, and the Yankees had to give up a talented pitcher like King.

You know when Friday night’s game with the Red Sox was really over?

When LeMahieu came up with two on and one out in the top of the 9th, even before Volpe made the last out right after him.

Once the Yankees did get ahead 7-4 in that one, they just looked like they were waiting to lose.

With the year that Scottie Scheffler is having, and with Xander Schauffele now having won two majors, you have to say that we’re leading the league with guys whose last names start with those three letters.

Hey, this is information you can use.

We could get Nadal vs. Djokovic in the second round of tennis at the Olympic Games of Paris, and if you love tennis the way I do, it would be a cool thing watching a match like that at Roland Garros, even in the twilight for both of them.

Even with the way he won the U.S. Open, Bryson DeChambeau is now reminding everybody that he really is as annoying as he ever was.

J.D. Vance is having a lousier few weeks than the Yankees have had.

No kidding, it looks like he ended up on the ticket because somebody lost a bet.

It did reach the point on Friday where the cauldron lighting at the end of the Opening Ceremonies in Paris seemed to go on longer than the Tour de France.

For a team that’s gone the longest in the NFL without a playoff appearance, you don’t find the Super-Bowl-or-bust chatter about the Jets at least a little bit amusing?

By the way?

In the same way I feel like I know everything I need to about how Saquon ended up with the Eagles, I feel as if I’m equally up to speed on Rodgers’ Egyptian vacation.

Sometimes the Jets’ A-Rod is as self-absorbed as the Yankees’ A-Rod used to be, no kidding.

Which you know is saying plenty.

I just want Jerry Jones and Dak Prescott to be happy.

Is that so wrong?

Hard to Kill, the new Jane Smith novel written by James Patterson and  Mike Lupica, goes on sale July 29.