ESPN insiders rip Yankees fans for booing Aaron Judge

ESPN MLB insiders Buster Olney and Jeff Passan are among noteworthy members of the baseball community displeased with New York Yankees fans who booed All-Star slugger and team captain Aaron Judge this past weekend. 

"I must say, having covered the Yankees, when you get players who drop in from the outside...they expect they will be booed at sometime," Olney explained during the latest edition of the "Baseball Tonight with Buster Olney" podcast, as shared by Jimmy Hascup of NJ Advance Media for NJ.com. "Derek Jeter, I heard was booed early in his career. Mariano Rivera was booed in Yankee Stadium in the middle of his career. Even cast against those standards, I find Aaron Judge to be booed in Yankee Stadium when the team has started well as, that’s really silly."

While the first-place Yankees began Monday with an impressive record of 15-7, Judge's slow start to the season largely continued through the third full weekend of April. He posted a .183 batting average with a .674 OPS, three home runs and 11 RBI across his first 22 games of the campaign. 

Judge was booed as he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts in Saturday's 2-0 extra-inning loss to the Tampa Bay Rays at Yankee Stadium. He said following that defeat that he'd "probably do the same thing in [the fans'] situation." 

Judge earned American League Most Valuable Player honors for the 2022 season but heard boos from home crowds on multiple occasions that fall as the Yankees failed to complete a trip to the World Series. He signed a nine-year, $360M deal to return to the Yankees in December of that year, and he said during spring training in 2023 that he "had no problem with getting booed" because "that’s what happens when you don’t come through." 

Meanwhile, Passan insisted during the podcast episode that "it is completely absurd and entirely expected" Yankees fans have already taken to booing Judge this spring. 

"Aaron Judge could go bat .180 for the rest of the season, as he has so far, and not warrant a single boo from Yankees fans for all the things he has done," Passan added. "You would think that enough goodwill would be built up to give the man some patience, but patience is in short order in the Bronx. It’s what happens when it’s been a decade-and-a-half since you last won the World Series." 

Specifically, the Yankees haven't even appeared in a World Series since they won the 2009 Fall Classic. As of Monday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the Bronx Bombers third among the betting favorites at +800 odds to win the World Series this coming fall. The 13-11 Los Angeles Dodgers topped the list at +360 odds.