Maybe it was simply the heat of the moment. But it certainly was no lie. 

“When you’re the best player on the team,” Aaron Judge said in an on-field interview with YES Network following his walk-off home run Sunday afternoon, “how can you not [be confident]?” 

No one who has watched the Yankees this season — no one who has paid any attention to baseball this season — will argue the point at hand. Judge is currently the favorite to win his first AL MVP award, on pace to break Roger Maris’ non-PED-aided single-season home run record, and was the leading vote-getter for the All-Star Game as of Monday afternoon. He leads the league in home runs (28), runs scored (59) and total bases (175) and has 3.9 WAR, ranking third in baseball. 

Of course he is the Yankees’ best player. It does not take any expertise to arrive at that conclusion. 

It is a different matter, though, to hear the soft-spoken and circumspect Judge say such a thing aloud. 

But coming off a weekend in which he was the center of attention, settling a contract dispute with the Yankees moments before entering arbitration, then walking off against the hated Astros, if there was ever a time for Judge to make such a declaration, that was it. 

“He’s obviously gotta be super confident in order to have success in that position, you have to believe that first and foremost,” pitcher Gerrit Cole told The Post ahead of Monday’s contest against Oakland. “We all have to have a certain element of that. But I think what’s impressive is the wherewithal to corral the emotions in big moments and stay disciplined with the rest of his routine, knowing that there’s always an edge to be gained behind the scenes.” 

The difference between the best players and the rest of them often comes down to distinctions like this. Staying level in big moments is something that everybody talks about. Exceedingly few can actually pull it off, consistently, when those moments come. 

Judge, the first Yankee since Melky Cabrera in 2009 with three walk-off hits in a season, seems to have that gene. 

If he is at the plate late in a game, the Stadium stops, watches and expects. 

“When he puts a good swing on the ball in a location that he can do a lot of damage, it turns out like [Sunday],” Cole said. “For most people, that’s just a line-drive single to the shortstop. This guy, he goes to the bullpen. I think he’s pretty convicted in that approach.”

And for Judge to state the truth plainly, when so much of what anyone says in front of a microphone centers around artfully dodging such plainspokenness, speaks to the confidence he has in himself and the stature he has in the Yankees’ clubhouse. It would be easy to raise eyebrows with such a thing. Instead, it barely registered as a blip on the radar. 

“He’s always been a great leader,” DJ LeMahieu said. “Whether he’s hitting like he is now or if he’s in a little bit of a rut, which we haven’t even seen this year, he’s always just a good leader. Shows up every single day with a great attitude.” 

The Yankees, in the throes of an unyielding season, know that it is only June. There is a long way to go before they will openly discuss the historical implications of Judge’s season, should he continue to play at such a pace. Still: 

“What he’s doing is special,” LeMahieu said. “We all know that.”