Aaron Judge in historic Yankees company after rewarding Aaron Boone’s patience

SAN DIEGO — Aaron Judge has no longer just rebounded from a slow start to the season.

To say that might imply that the Yankees captain has come back up to sea-level to arrive at league-average production, with the good balancing out the bad.

Except Judge zoomed past that stage a while ago on his dominant offensive tear and entered Friday’s series against the Padres as one of the game’s most productive hitters through the first two months of the season.

The cold parts of his first 27 games were not nearly as cold as the hot parts have been hot in the next 25 games since, making Judge’s April just a distant memory .

“It’s amazing, but at the same time, it’s the Judgey that we know,” Oswaldo Cabrera said Thursday. “I’m not impressed because this is the captain that we know for all the years. We love when he’s hot like this.”

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Coming into Friday, Judge was batting .276 with a 1.026 OPS, 15 home runs and 17 doubles on the season.

That alone is one of the best starts to a season a Yankees hitter has ever had.

He is just the third Yankee in franchise history to record at least 15 home runs, 15 doubles and a 1.000 OPS through his first 52 games of a season, joining Roger Maris (1960) and Lou Gehrig (1930 and 1934), according to Stathead.

What makes that feat even more remarkable is the fact that through his first 27 games of the season, Judge was batting just .178 with a .674 OPS, four home runs and six doubles.

In his last 25 games before Friday, Judge was batting .393 with a 1.445 OPS, 11 home runs and 11 doubles.

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“I don’t want to take him for granted,” manager Aaron Boone said after Judge homered in a second straight game Thursday. “I looked up [at the scoreboard] and I said to [bench coach] Brad [Ausmus] in the middle of the game, ‘He’s over 1.000 OPS now.’ Just really good. … Just great at-bat after great at-bat. As good as it gets.”

Throughout Judge’s slow start to the season — his quietest 27-game stretch (by OPS) since 2017, when he still hit 52 home runs and won AL Rookie of the Year — Boone preached patience and the small sample size, insisting that he would eventually turn the corner.

When he did, Boone had said, “look out.”

Opposing pitchers are now paying the price, especially having to deal with both Judge and Juan Soto, two of the game’s most feared hitters who were both clicking as the Yankees began a 10-day, nine-game West Coast road trip.

“It’s gotta be a little daunting for the other side,” Boone said. “I’m sure knowing they’re back-to-back, left- and right-handed, probably constantly on your mind as the lineup’s getting ready to turn over, knowing what they’re capable of every time they come to the plate. I’m certainly glad they’re on our side.

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“It’s been fun to watch those two guys connect, grow together, be back-to-back in the lineup every day and feed from each other, learn from each other and really perform to create quite a tandem.”

Judge’s 3.0 bWAR was tied for sixth-best in the majors to go with the fourth-highest OPS and tied for the third-most home runs and second-most doubles.

Soto, with a 2.5 bWAR, ranked fifth in OPS (.972), 12th in batting average (.312) and tied for fifth in home runs (13).

Recently, whenever Judge has been asked about catching fire — he had clubbed nine home runs in his past 17 games before Friday — he has chalked it up to “just not missing the ball” while also crediting Anthony Volpe and Soto for setting the table before him.

But there may be another simple explanation as well.

“I think you just gotta play all 162,” Anthony Rizzo said. “At the end of the year, he’ll be Aaron Judge. When he’s scuffling, it’s obviously headlines. It’s been a while since he really scuffled. But it’s why we play 162.”

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