Aaron Judge Explains Himself After Cheating Allegations But Fans Aren’t Buying It

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New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge had an historically good season in 2022 en route to winning the American League MVP Award.

Judge hit .311 with 62 home runs and and 133 RBI, grabbing two legs of the AL triple crown in the process.

But it wasn’t without controversy.

An in-depth report following the season showed that Judge and the Yankees routinely had juiced baseballs for their games at a rate far higher than the rest of the league.

Judge has started the 2023 season well. But he’s still not close to the pace he set a season ago. The outfielder is hitting .274 with 10 home runs and 24 RBIs. That would shake out to a 47 home run place and 114 RBIs. Still, a pretty darn good season.

But Judge once again found controversy on Monday night during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Judge hit a pair of home runs in the contest.

How, Blue Jays announces caught Judge peering into the Yankees dugout before one of them. The Jays announcers picked up on this and quickly intimated that Judge was stealing signs.

“He’s obviously looking in that direction for a reason,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said after the game. “And I think (we’ll) dive into it a little bit more tonight and tomorrow and just make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to not make ourselves susceptible to tendencies or location or pitches or anything like that, but it was, yeah, kind of odd to see him looking over there right before a pitch came.”

But Judge claims he was just trying to get the Yankees dugout to settle down.

“It was kind of a lot of chirping from our dugout,” he said, according to a clip posted to Twitter by the YES Network, “which I really didn’t like in a situation where it’s a 6-nothing game and I know (Yankees manager Aaron Boone) got tossed. I was trying to save Boonie by calling a timeout, like, ‘Hey, hold up here. Let me work here.’ I was kind of trying to see who was chirping in the dugout.

It’s 6-nothing. Boonie got tossed, let’s go to work now.”“It was kind of a lot of chirping from our dugout,” he said, according to a clip posted to Twitter by the YES Network, “which I really didn’t like in a situation where it’s a 6-nothing game and I know Boonie got tossed. I was trying to save Boonie by calling a timeout, like, ‘Hey, hold up here. Let me work here.’ I was kind of trying to see who was chirping in the dugout. It’s 6-nothing. Boonie got tossed, let’s go to work now.”

Fans didn’t buy that explanation.

Suuuureee Aaron. You were definitely just trying to get your dugout to settle down.