New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge. Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports

Aaron Judge, Aaron Boone address state of Yankees amid disastrous season

All-Star slugger Aaron Judge remains optimistic about the New York Yankees' future amid what became a woeful season for the proud organization. 

"We’ll see what the future holds," Judge said on Thursday, as shared by Dan Martin of the New York Post. "We still got a lot of work to do here. When you go through a season like this, the most important thing is to keep pushing forward. If you dwell on what’s happened the past couple months, past couple days, past series, it’s going to linger on. We still got a month of baseball to play, so we gotta keep focusing on the next day." 

Judge explored free agency last offseason but ultimately signed a nine-year contract reportedly worth $360M to stay with the Yankees and become the 16th captain in club history. Needless to say, the subsequent campaign hasn't gone to his liking. 

Judge completed a springtime stint on the injured list due to a right hip strain and later suffered a torn ligament in his big right toe on June 3. The Yankees improved to 35-25 that same day and were 54-48 when Judge made his return to the lineup in late July. New York began Friday at 65-69 and sitting 10.5 games back in the race for a wild-card playoff spot. 

"We’ll get it fixed," Judge vowed heading into the final month of a season that can't end soon enough for the Yankees. "We’ll get it fixed."

As recently as this week, conflicting reports emerged regarding whether Yankees manager Aaron Boone is in danger of losing his job this fall. 

Team owner Hal Steinbrenner told Mark Didtler of The Associated Press on Thursday that the franchise is "looking to bring in possibly an outside company to really take a look at the analytics side (and baseball operations) of what we do." 

Bob Klapisch of NJ Advance Media wrote Wednesday such a development "could be bad news for Boone" as it pertains to the skipper's future with the club. 

"Even before the [trade deadline], we weren’t playing that well," Boone recently admitted while speaking with The Post. "...I felt we were right there to make a run, but I also knew we were struggling. In my mind, the tough stretch didn’t really start at the trade deadline. We were scuffling for a while." 

Steinbrenner directly told Didtler that being in last place in the American League East standings on Sept. 1 is "obviously unacceptable." It seems somebody, perhaps Boone, will have to answer for the team's "scuffling" after the regular-season finale on Oct. 1. 

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