I know what your immediate answer will be: they should call up Spencer Jones (which they did).  They should also hope Jasson Dominguez and Giancarlo Stanton can recover from their injuries soon.  I totally get that, but I am focusing on the more philosophical perspective.  Without Aaron Judge and his 50+ Home Runs a year, should the Yankees still be the Bronx bombers?  My answer might surprise you.

2026 Yankees have sort of been the Bronx Bombers

The Yankees currently lead baseball with 89 home runs as a team in 62 games.  The Braves are second with 88 home runs in 63 games, so the lead is small.  The Yankees’ team leader in home runs to date is Aaron Judge, but he is also tied with Ben Rice (they both have 17). Outside of those two, though, only Cody Bellinger is on pace to hit over 20 home runs.  Last year’s Yankees had 7 players with over 20 home runs (and Volpe hit 19).  This year’s Yankees will almost assuredly end up with fewer players hitting 20 home runs.  Only Ben Rice is a solid bet to exceed that number, along with Aaron Judge, if he returns in August.  It is safe to assume, for example, that Austin Wells will not reach this number.

2026 Yankees like to run

 I previously wrote about the fact that the last Yankees team to steal one base per game was the 1976 Yankees, and that was the only time in the past 100 years that the Yankees reached this mark (they didn’t even do it with Rickey Henderson).  This year’s Yankees team has 61 stolen bases in 62 games, so they are right there.  Jose Caballero and Jazz Chisholm Jr. are on pace for close to 40 steals each, but several others are a threat to steal bases. Anthony Volpe, for example, should end up around 20 steals, and Spencer Jones has consistently stolen about 30 bases per year in the minors, so plugging him in for Aaron Judge should lead to more steals.

2026 Yankees do not bunt

 The Yankees are dead last in baseball with just one sacrifice bunt.  It wasn’t always this way.  20 years ago, the Yankees were 18th in sacrifice bunts (and they had a lot of sacrifices that year as teams bunted more twenty years ago).  More recently, when they went to the World Series in 2024, they were tied for 14th in sacrifice bunts.  That means that Aaron Boone hasn’t always been allergic to moving runners up.  In fact, Jose Caballero is a skilled bunter.  The tools are there to advance the runners; they just have not been used.

So what exactly am I getting at here, you ask?  I am saying that without Aaron Judge, the Yankees are going to have to rely on their Top 5 starting rotation and learn to scratch out runs.  The Yankees are currently 5th in runs scored, but without Aaron Judge in the lineup, that is surely going to drop (especially until Stanton returns).  The Yankees are going to have to rely on the fact that they are one of the speediest lineups in the league and take the extra base.  They are also going to have to move runners-up.  In other words, they are going to have to take this opportunity to play like a National League team (or play like this year’s Tampa Bay Rays).  If the Yankees want to keep their playoff hopes alive, they will need to adapt.  Perhaps, from the Bronx Bombers to the Bronx Bunters!