The Yankees almost certainly will not qualify for the postseason, are wrapping up a season that GM Brian Cashman called a “disaster” and have turned September games into open tryouts for next year.
But 39,143 fans showed up in The Bronx on Friday anyway, arriving with hopes the biggest attraction — which we mean literally — would deliver.
Aaron Judge again answered the call.
The captain came through with his second, three-home-run game of the season — becoming the first player in Yankees history to have multiple, three-homer games in one year — in a 7-1 win over the Diamondbacks that reminded both of Judge’s heights and his club’s plunge.
On Thursday, the Yankees were reminded that they have wasted a prime season of Gerrit Cole, who has positioned himself well for the American League Cy Young Award.
A night later, it was Judge who provided a reminder that — even with plenty of time lost due to his hurt big toe — this kind of dominance should not be squandered.
The right fielder has blasted 35 home runs in 100 games, which, when extrapolated for a full season, would round to a 57-homer year.
He played two games in June and three games in July, yet finished play tied for third in home runs in the AL.
A season after setting the all-time Yankees and American League record with 62 dingers, Judge is nearly doing it again.
This season will be remembered, though, as incomplete after the superstar missed about eight weeks with a torn ligament in his right big toe suffered in early June.
He left a 35-25 team and returned to a 54-48 club that kept sliding until it was out of the playoff chase.
The Yankees (78-76) are mathematically still in the hunt, but just barely.
Judge played as if his breaths alone were keeping this season alive.
The right fielder went 4-for-4 with six RBIs, his worst at-bat resulting in a first-inning double.
He wound up stranded, then ensured that could not happen again.
With two on base in the third inning, Judge got a first-pitch sinker from Brandon Phaadt and demolished it 420 feet to right-center, putting the Yankees up three in a game they would not trail.
In the fifth inning, it was a middle-of-the-plate fastball from Pfaadt that Judge crushed into the same area in right-center for a 6-0 lead.
In the seventh, it was a different pitcher and the same story.
Slade Cecconi’s fastball was reversed, 108.4 mph off Judge’s bat, into the second deck in right field for a solo shot that brought a loud Stadium to its feet again.
The next batter, Gleyber Torres, used a timeout that allowed the team’s captain to take a curtain call on a night he blasted an estimated 1,182 feet of home runs.
Pitcher Luke Weaver, who was claimed on waivers earlier this month, shut down the Diamondbacks for 5 ⅓ innings.
The Yankees’ only non-Judge RBI came off the bat of Estevan Florial, who had spent his season in Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
This season has been a failure, but Yankee Stadium was packed regardless Friday because that failure has not been team-wide.