Why Blue Jays’ John Schneider isn’t sweating that game-changing Aaron Judge home run: ‘Give him credit, man’

In the sports world, even the best competitors get beat sometime. At times, there are reasonable explanations of things that could have been done differently in the situation. Others, a player did everything asked of him and someone else just did their job better. When that happens, it’s generally best to acknowledge that sometime you get beat and that’s part of sports. 

Credit to Blue Jays manager John Schneider on this front, who did just that on Aaron Judge’s game-changing, three-run home run off reliever Louie Varland in Game 3 of the ALDS Tuesday. That home run tied the game, 6-6, and the Yankees would eventually win 9-6 (box score), extending the best-of-five series to Game 4 on Wednesday. 

That pitch is high and off the strike zone inside the plate to Judge at 100 mph and he still turned it around and kept it fair. That’s just lunacy. 

“I don’t know, man,” Scheider said after the game when asked if they could have pitched Judge any differently. “He puts the fastball by him, and you can go one of two ways. You can try to go up and in like he did. You can try to bury a breaking ball. Again, give him credit. You got to make pitches, sometimes you have to make really good pitches. It’s not like you’re waiting for that to happen, but you understand the talent he does possess.

“He’s someone you’re always aware of. We’re always aware where he is, and I think they’ve done a good job of putting good players in front and behind him in the lineup too. So there’s times where you just don’t want him to swing. There’s times where you say, OK, let’s get after him. I’ll take 100, 101 with some nasty breaking stuff executed any day of the week, and it just didn’t work out today.
Hopefully he gets a bad night’s sleep and has some bad food tonight or something like that. Give him credit, man, that was a ridiculous swing.”

Yes, it was. 

Again, props to Schneider for just straight up saying, basically, that Judge gets the credit credit instead of searching for a place to assign blame. He also said Judge is “one of the best players, if not the best player in Major League Baseball.” 

That’s true too. And Judge stepped up when his team needed him most in Game 3 of the ALDS, facing elimination. Judge went 3 for 4 with a double, home run, four RBI and three runs scored. He did what superstars are supposed to do. Schneider, then, did what adults with good self-awareness do: he gave credit to the opposition and acknowledged that sometimes you just get beat.