NEW YORK — This Yankees loss does not rest on the impossibly broad shoulders of Aaron Judge.
In a way, none of them really does.
Judge, the all-world, homer-clubbing captain of this grand franchise, never truly deserves to be the scapegoat of any single defeat. The Yankees are where they are and might go where they hope to go in massive part because Judge is a generational force. Blaming the golden goose seems somewhat ungrateful, misguided.
But fair or not, Judge’s run of playoff underperformance — which continued Monday in a dispiriting 4-2 loss to the Royals in Game 2 of the ALDS — summons a narrative both lazy and unavoidable.