How Aaron Judge broke out of the biggest slump of his career: 'There's no panic in him'

NEW YORK — Aaron Judge is a big believer that, in baseball, success is accompanied by failure.

"If you hit .300 or get on 40% of the time, you're a beast," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "You know what that means? You do a lot of failing along the way."

Even a superstar like Judge, one of the most influential faces of the sport, didn't become a master of his craft until he first made mistakes. The way Judge sees it, he doesn't triumph over adversity. Challenges and hard times are a part of his success; it's the philosophy that drives Judge's game. His unique relationship with failure is part of how, in just the span of a couple of weeks, Judge went from getting booed by the same fans that call him captain, to being the hottest hitter in Major League Baseball.

"Today, I might do everything right and be 0-for-4, or I could be 4-for-4," Judge told FOX Sports. "You never know what's going to happen. But as long as I'm focused on keeping it simple — flush the bad days, don't sit too high on the good days. Then that's when you can look down the road in November, and look back and be like, alright. I had a bad stretch here, I had a good stretch there. But right now? It's just even-keel."

Boone didn't learn anything new about Judge as he battled what was, statistically, the worst start to a season in his career. Really, no one in the Yankees organization saw a different side of the five-time All-Star outfielder while he struggled. Judge recorded a .754 OPS in March and April, which was the lowest such mark through his first 31 games of a season. But the way he carried himself around his coaches and teammates, he could've recorded a 1.000 OPS during that stretch and no one would've known the difference. 

No matter how Judge is