Another year, another postseason exit for the New York Yankees.
While this current baseball world is run by the Los Angeles Dodgers, someone in the American League needs to take the spot in the opposite corner to get pummeled. You wouldn’t have gotten any sideways glances during spring training if you put your money on the Yanks. You’d get some glances if you said they were going to be champs, but it wasn’t insane to think they’d be the AL representative.
And yet, here we are.
The broomsticks have been broken out in the Bronx, and Tampa Bay finished off a three-game sweep at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees have been seen as the Big Bad of the baseball world for many years now, a team with prestige, history, fans around the world, and seemingly bottomless pockets to dole out huge contracts. They’re the Evil Empire, or at least the Evil Empire that’s been having a hell of a time conquering anything lately.
There is a glaring issue present with this season, and one that also plagued the 2023 Yankees. They’re missing the big guy in the outfield, Aaron Judge.
Judge is a truly generational talent in the batter’s box, with the statistics to back up that claim. There are very few players walking this planet who can be counted alongside Shohei Ohtani, and Judge is one of them. We were robbed of seeing that talent this year, with a fractured rib and a calf strain removing Judge from the lineup for a large portion of the regular season and the entire postseason. He played just 66 games in 2026.
There is plenty of talent present within the Yankees organization, so much so that it was genuinely shocking how lost they looked against the Rays. These players are not bums. Bellinger, Schlittler, Stanton, Fried, Chisholm, Grisham (at times), Cole, and Rice have name value and the statistics to back it up. However, without Judge, the bottom completely fell out in the ALDS.
Now, it’s not like the Yankees were completely helpless without their captain. They still finished 93-68, even sweeping the Boston Red Sox in the Wild Card Series. They went 41-25 with Judge in the lineup and 52-43 without him. But when you’re playing meaningful baseball in October, being pretty good doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot if you can’t get over the hump. Against Tampa Bay, the Yankees managed just five runs in three games.
It got me thinking. Judge can seemingly take the Yankees from a good baseball team to a legitimate championship contender. Has there ever been another player who made such a massive difference within his organization? And how did those teams fare when that player was suddenly removed from the equation?
I want to explore several examples of teams losing their major stars and how those teams adapted. Some adapted incredibly well, and some adapted incredibly unwell. It’s something that no team really can or knows how to prepare for. You don’t even want to speak something like that into existence.
So when the chips are down, these are the stories of organizations and players who took a massive left hook, and whether they were able to continue fighting.
The 2011 Indianapolis Colts
You can’t think Colts without thinking of Peyton Manning.
He was the quarterback and captain of some of the most potent offenses that we have ever seen. The wide receiver tandem of Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, though Harrison was retired by this point, the prototypical receiving tight end in Dallas Clark, some really impressive offensive lines, and the consistent backfield hands of Joseph Addai made this team an offensive dynamo. That isn’t even going into the stars on defense like Robert Mathis and Dwight Freeney.
Manning was initially given the franchise tag during the offseason, a way for teams to retain a player on a one-year contract while negotiating a longer-term deal. The two sides eventually agreed to a five-year, $90 million contract in July 2011. The Colts had their franchise quarterback locked down.
There was just one fairly significant problem. Manning’s neck was a mess.
This wasn’t a simple strain or something he could fix with a couple of ice packs and some stretching. Manning had dealt with neck problems and multiple procedures before ultimately undergoing spinal fusion surgery in September 2011. His future in football was genuinely uncertain, and the surgery would prevent him from playing a single snap that season.
Coming off a 10-6 record in 2010, it was expected that the Colts would be somewhere within that realm again in 2011. Without Manning, the team plummeted to an abysmal 2-14 record behind the arms of ageless wonder Kerry Collins, largely untested Curtis Painter, and Dan Orlovsky. The season even included a 62-7 shellacking at the hands of the New Orleans Saints.
Sixty-two to seven. That’s a score you’d expect from a college powerhouse playing a directional school that agreed to get beaten senseless for a nice payday.
Safe to say, this was a team that was either completely unprepared to lose Manning or was so reliant on a single player that the entire operation collapsed when he was removed. There were other issues with the roster, certainly, but it’s hard to look at that precipitous drop and not think that Manning was holding the whole damn thing together with duct tape and audibles.
The 2011–2012 Chicago Bulls
Couldn’t talk about stars going down without mentioning one of the greatest “what ifs” in basketball history, Derrick Rose.
If you didn’t have the pleasure of watching Rose in real time during his prime, look up some of his highlights online. Few basketball players could absolutely take over a game in the same way he could. He was lightning in a bottle, an absurd combination of speed, athleticism, and body control that made some of the best defenders in the world look like they were playing in work boots.
The Bulls were a formidable team built around him. Flanked by the two big men in Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer, the abilities of Luol Deng, and a bench group featuring Taj Gibson, Omer Asik, Kyle Korver, and a young Jimmy Butler, Chicago was well-rounded outside of Rose. His individual dominance was recognized with the NBA Most Valuable Player award in 2011, making him the youngest MVP in league history.
What’s the worst that could happen?
After winning 62 games the previous season, the Bulls cruised to a 50-16 record in the lockout-shortened 2011–12 season, claiming another number-one seed in the Eastern Conference. Facing off against a Philadelphia 76ers squad that featured Lou Williams, Andre Iguodala, Jrue Holiday, Elton Brand, and Jodie Meeks, the Bulls were heavily favored.
The Sixers weren’t a collection of random guys pulled off the street. Iguodala was an All-Star, Holiday was developing into a quality point guard, and Williams could score in bunches. But this was still an eighth-seeded team facing the best record in the Eastern Conference. This should have been a simple warm-up series where the Bulls worked out the kinks before taking on some actual championship contenders.
Game One was a win for the Bulls but a massive loss for the franchise, as Derrick Rose tore his ACL near the very end of the game. Chicago had already built a comfortable lead, making the injury feel all the more unnecessary and cruel.
The Sixers would then win three straight games, with a Joakim Noah ankle injury further complicating matters for Chicago. The Bulls fought back to win Game Five, but Philadelphia finished the upset in six games, shocking the NBA world.
And just like that, the Chicago Bulls went from a team with legitimate championship aspirations to a team whose future was suddenly in question. Rose would suffer more serious knee injuries in the following years, and the explosive player who had terrorized the NBA would never quite return in the same form.
The Bulls didn’t suddenly become a collection of scrubs. They still had talent, coaching, and a defensive identity. But without Rose, the ceiling had been lowered considerably. A team that looked destined to compete for championships was suddenly just another good basketball team.
Sound familiar?
The 2008 New England Patriots
The football Evil Empire, the New England Patriots, were a dominant force for a long, long time.
Head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady would torture opposing defenses and ruin the playoff dreams of other franchises. Worst of all, this was a team that had just gone completely undefeated in the regular season, finishing 16-0 before losing in the Super Bowl to the greatest quarterback we have ever seen, Eli Manning.
Hey, another Manning noted in this article. That’s neat. Anyway.
Physical freak Randy Moss would return, along with slot ace Wes Welker, a talented offensive line, and a defense capable of stifling even the most potent offenses. The team wasn’t quite as stacked as it had been in 2007, but when you go completely undefeated in the regular season, you can only take steps back.
With Brady at the helm and the magic he could perform in the pocket, this was a team poised to return to the mountaintop and avenge the embarrassment suffered at the hands of the New York Giants.
In the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs, Bernard Pollard went low on a tackle attempt, and Brady tore his ACL.
Well, shit.
At this point, the backup quarterback was a man named Matt Cassel. Something fun about Matt Cassel was that he hadn’t started a football game at quarterback since high school. He was a perennial backup at USC behind legends of the game for different reasons, Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart.
In four seasons at USC, Cassel completed 20 of 33 passes for 192 yards, no touchdowns, and one interception. He was a seventh-round flyer pick by the Patriots, and now he was being thrust into one of the brightest spotlights in the NFL.
You would think this would be a repeat of the earlier story involving the Colts, but the Patriots refused to let their season go to waste.
Cassel stepped into the role of starting quarterback and shined, completing 63.4% of his passes for 3,693 yards and 21 touchdowns. Wes Welker earned a Pro Bowl selection, Randy Moss remained a productive receiving threat, and Cassel performed well enough to eventually earn a starting opportunity with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Unfortunately for the Patriots, the odds weren’t on their side, and they ended up missing the playoffs on tiebreakers. However, the fact that this team finished 11-5, including four games where they scored at least 40 points, is a testament to the roster as a whole and the coaching staff’s ability to adapt to losing their franchise player so early in the season.
There’s something fascinating about the fact that losing Tom Brady didn’t immediately turn the Patriots into garbage. It turns out that having an excellent coach, a functional roster, and an organization capable of adapting to adversity is pretty helpful when your superstar suddenly disappears.
Who knew?
Where Does Aaron Judge Fit In?
Now, I could go on with several other examples. Kobe Bryant ruptured his Achilles in 2013, and the Lakers followed with a miserable 27-55 season, though there were plenty of other problems in Los Angeles. David Robinson suffered back and foot injuries during the 1996–97 season, and the Spurs lost 62 games, although they did end up landing Tim Duncan in the draft. Green Bay watched its playoff hopes disintegrate after Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone in 2017.
In reviewing these stories and the history of these sports, we see a lot of bad outcomes and very few good ones.
So, where does Judge fit in here?
The 2026 Yankees weren’t put into the fight-or-flight survival mode of the 2011 Colts or the 1996 Spurs, where a team went from greatness to the cellar. They were able to maintain competitiveness, like the 2008 Patriots, and actually make the postseason without their star player.
But where the 2008 Patriots demonstrated their ability to absorb a catastrophic loss, the Yankees ran into a wall when the competition became more difficult. They could beat Boston without Judge. They couldn’t find a way to beat Tampa Bay.
That puts them most firmly in the category of the 2011–12 Bulls.
The Bulls won plenty of games without Rose during the regular season, just as the Yankees won plenty of games without Judge. But when the lights were brightest and the microscope was focused on the smallest intricacies of their teams, they couldn’t overcome the loss of their most important player.
Could the Yankees have played better against the Rays? Absolutely. This wasn’t a team consisting of Aaron Judge and 25 beer-league softball players. There was enough talent on the roster to put up more than five runs in three games. You can point to the coaching, the roster construction, the supporting cast, or a series of exceptionally poorly timed offensive performances.
And the Rays deserve some credit, too. They were a better team throughout the regular season, not some collection of lucky nobodies who stumbled into October.
But that doesn’t change the underlying frustration.
The Yankees were good without Judge. They were good enough to win 93 games, good enough to beat Boston, and good enough to make fans think that maybe, just maybe, this year would be different.
They just weren’t good enough when it mattered most.
When you look at the New York Yankees, an organization that has never been shy about bringing in massive talent on even more massive contracts, how in the hell does a team become so dependent on one bat? Injuries are bad luck, but building a roster that can’t overcome the loss of a single player when October rolls around is something else entirely. I would argue that the lion’s share of the blame needs to fall at the feet of the people writing the checks and deciding where those checks go. Something about putting all your eggs in one basket, I think is how that saying goes? Although, with the Yankees’ payroll, you’d think they could afford a second basket.
I don’t know that Aaron Judge is the most indispensable player in professional sports history. Manning and Robinson provide some pretty compelling arguments against that idea. But I do think the Yankees have demonstrated how one player can fundamentally change the expectations of an entire organization.
Like those Bulls, the removal of the biggest piece of the equation turned a potential championship contender into something resembling fool’s gold. The talent was still there. The wins were still there. The belief was still there.
The player who made it all seem possible wasn’t.
At least there’s always next year.
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