NEW YORK— The chants from the loyal Yankee Stadium fans began the moment Aaron Judge entered the batter’s box in the first inning, each syllable feeling like a desperate plea for No. 99 to remember what he had accomplished this season. This was an intervention at the end of October, in which the 49,368 paying customers tried to bring their hero back to life.

“MVP!”

“MVP!”

“MVP!”

This was the first World Series game in the Bronx in 5,472 days, and any optimism on the margins was quickly replaced by the fear of an early two-run deficit. Of course, Judge could change that mood with one big swing. The outfielder could make everyone – starting with himself – forget that his batting average had fallen below the Mendoza line for the first time during the postseason.

That’s right. Judge was a .199 hitter in the playoffs when he came to the plate to start this game, a statistic that was not the product of a sample size. The best hitter in the American League looked unrecognizable for most of this October, but the sight of the bunting around his home ballpark and that short porch in right field would certainly set him apart. Right?

Wrong. Judge struck out on a cutter far from the plate for his first at-bat, the first of four weak at-bats that doomed his sleepwalking team to a 4-2 loss. The Yankees are one loss away from a four-game sweep in this supposed matchup between baseball’s biggest franchises, and if it ends this way, their biggest star will be the biggest reason for the failure.

“He’s Aaron Judge,” manager Aaron Boone said when asked what gave him the belief that his best player would emerge from this slump. But Judge is now hitting .140 (6-for-44) with two home runs, a double and six RBI in 12 postseason games this fall. He has 20 strikeouts and on the rare occasions when he comes onto the plate with a chance to do some actual damage, he is 0 of 10 with runners in scoring position.

It’s hard to reconcile this Judge with the player who led the American League in home runs (58), RBIs (144), walks (133), on-base percentage (.458) and slugging percentage (.701). Judge will easily win his second MVP award for his regular season performance, but unless something changes dramatically in the coming days, his no-show in October is what many fans will remember.

“It definitely eats away at you,” Judge said before the Yankees left Los Angeles this weekend. “You want to contribute and help the team, but that’s why you have to keep working and keep swinging. I can’t sit here and feel bad for myself. No one feels sorry for me.”

Look, Judge certainly isn’t the only reason the Yankees are in this hole. Game 3 starter Clarke Schmidt slid a meatball across the plate to Freddie Freeman, who gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with another home run. Giancarlo Stanton, the only Yankee to consistently deliver at the plate, looked like he was dragging a dogsled behind him when he tried to score from second on a single in the fourth inning and was easily thrown out.

Then, of course, there’s Boone, who said he thought long and hard about the lineup changes on the flight back from Los Angeles on Saturday night and decided to do…well, almost nothing. If the Dodgers close out this series in Game 4, it will be only the sixth time in more than a century of baseball that the Yankees have been defeated in a seven-game series. Boone will have two of those on his resume in the last three years. That certainly won’t keep the fans off his back.

But Judge is the superstar, and fair or not, the playoffs will determine his place in franchise history. Remember, Judge stayed with the Yankees for the opportunity to produce results in moments like these. Before signing a nine-year, $360 million contract in 2022, he realized his legacy would be incomplete if he removed the pinstripes for good without bringing championship No. 28 (or more) to the franchise.

It’s hard not to wonder if all that pressure, something that never seemed to phase the 32-year-old slugger during his rise to the top of his sport, is starting to affect his performance as the bad at-bats pile up in the postseason. . Is the judge applying pressure?

“He’s as good as I’ve ever seen at dealing with big league life,” Boone said. “He will break out at some point. Hopefully it’s today. And as he continues in his career, he will have great runs. There is no doubt in my mind.”

Suddenly there is doubt From the judge mind? It certainly looks that way. On a night when the Bronx faithful tried to remind their superstar of all he accomplished in the regular season, the likely MVP once again came up small when it mattered.

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Steve Politi can be reached at [email protected].