One of the cruelest playoff performances of all time

The New York Yankees are down 3-0 against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. In the minds of many it is already over. Aaron Judge, who had one of the best offensive regular seasons of all time, has shrunk under the lights of October.

The slugger is 1 for 12 with seven strikeouts in the Fall Classic. In three playoff rounds, he is 6-for-43 (.140) and has fanned 20 times. That decline has put him in the crosshairs of one of the toughest media markets in the world, and the criticism has spread to areas that baseball is typically ignorant of.

How First recordingwhere Stephen A. Smith took aim Tuesday morning.

“This is one of the most horrific performances we've ever seen from a baseball player, from a hitter, in the postseason in the history of baseball,” Smith said.

Make no mistake. The judge wasn't great. In fact, he's been catastrophically bad considering how dependent the Yankees are on him. But he drove in eight runs in the postseason and hit two home runs in the American League Championship to help his team get to this point. One can certainly argue that having the Yankees play in the World Series can't be the worst thing ever.

But beyond that, if that's truly a statement worth considering, Judge's production this postseason isn't even bad historically. He ranks 45th among all batters in OPS (.580) in this year's playoffs. That's one spot behind teammate Alex Verdugo (.600) and six spots ahead of Dodgers catcher Will Smith (.542). Jazz Chisholm is more than 100 points behind Judge at .475 and Austin Wells has a .315 mark. If you compare Judge to last year's postseason, he would also be ranked 54th, right between Jonah Heim and Leody Taveras of the World Series champion Texas Rangers.

Judge's hitting of bats is a big story and will likely be a big reason why the Yankees don't reach the ultimate prize. However, to say that he was worse off than everyone else in October is not even remotely true. He's definitely held to higher standards than pretty much everyone else, but it's not like he didn't do anything.