Consistency should not lower appreciation for what the Yankees have accomplished over the last decade-plus, and there is no better time than in a late-season series against the Mets to point that out. The Mets have been throwing money at their problems for a few years now, and somehow new problems keep coming up. That advantage that benefits both of these teams only goes so far, and if we look back on their campaigns in 2026, it’s interesting to see how each team handled the absence of their top
player.
Juan Soto and Aaron Judge have combined to miss 136 games this season, a total of 51 for Soto and a whopping 85 for Judge. Although each offense is unique, it is reasonable to argue that the burden of the team’s production placed on these two is relatively similar. Judge theoretically should mean as much to the Yankees’ attack as Soto means to the Mets.
Before getting into the details, the one number that actually counts leans heavily in favor of the Yankees, as they went a very respectable 46-39 without Judge on the field in 2026. Meanwhile, the Mets basically owe their status as a below-.500 club and complete irrelevance in the NL playoff picture to Soto’s absence, possessing a putrid 20-31 record without their star hitter.
Strictly speaking, in terms of pure offensive production, the gap between these two teams in 2026 is not as large as the one that their record would seem to indicate. The Mets entered play on Saturday with a 97 OPS+, slightly worse than the Yankees’ 100 mark. Accounting strictly for the time without these gigantic hitters, the Yankees had a .684 OPS without Judge, while the Mets were at .673 without Soto. Part of what has hindered the Mets’ season even further is that Francisco Lindor has also missed a healthy chunk of time, playing only 90 games to this point — although we should note that this doesn’t create an incredible disparity in the comparison between the time without Judge and Soto since there was minimal overlap in the missed time of the two Mets stars.
It’d be a neat narrative if we could come here and talk about how the Yankees’ offense dealt with missing Judge in a far superior manner than the Mets handled Soto’s absence. That isn’t necessarily the case, even with the best efforts of Ben Rice. The Yankees’ offense without Judge had to lean heavily on their pitching staff to get those wins, often scoring just barely enough to make it. Only one of these pitching staffs possesses the tools to take over and carry a team, and the numbers back that up. It’s not the full picture, but the Mets accumulated a 4.24 ERA in the 51 games Soto didn’t appear in while the Yankees had an earned run average a full run lower at 3.22 when Judge was out.
Even with Soto potentially available for all of their games, the Mets probably didn’t have enough for a meaningful fight in the National League — and the Yankees possibly could have found their way to the postseason even without Judge for a single game. The discrepancy in these two teams’ records would seem to suggest that at least for 2026, the Mets are more reliant on Soto than the Yankees are on Judge. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be happy to have number 99 back; we shouldn’t lose sight of what this team accomplished in his absence and how much worse it could’ve been. After all, just look at the Mets.
