Hey, you there. You're probably taking Aaron Judge's talent for granted. Yes, you. No, no, it's not your fault. You can't help it. It's just how we're wired. We adapt quickly to our changing environments, and a big part of our baseball environment that is a given these days is that Judge is awesome.
And we've already grown accustomed to seeing Judge do what he has been doing for the first 10 weeks of the 2017 season. After all, he adjusted his swing and was hitting moon shots in spring training. Now, he is being considered a candidate not only for American League Rookie of the Year but also for AL MVP. That's not out-of-control Yankees hype run amok. The data is there if you'll look at it.
Before he stepped to the plate in the regular season, we knew Judge could be a slugger. What's astonishing is how quickly he has become a hitter. Judge had a cup of coffee in 2016, and a poor one at that, but now he's second in the majors in wRC+, behind only Mike Trout. While it's not surprising that Judge ranks second in slugging percentage, the fact that he leads the AL in batting average (and is fourth in MLB) is jaw-dropping. Judge has resembled a near-perfect bat.
The only counterpoint to Judge's early-season excellence is that it's the middle of June. For anyone interested in remaining a skeptic, the argument goes that big league pitchers are going to adjust. And you know what? They will! They'll try new things to try to get Judge to sit down. The problem is that opponents have already attempted adjustments. So far, nothing has worked. Judge remains a juggernaut.
The easiest way to start is by looking at pitches that Judge has been thrown. For these purposes, I've grouped fastballs and cutters together with the label "hard pitches." Leaguewide, these account for about 60 percent of all pitches. For Yankees hitters alone, these account for about 59 percent of all pitches. Judge is at 53 percent. But here's how that rate has moved around, expressed as a 100-pitch rolling average, shows how a player's average has moved over consecutive, equivalent spans of time:
Judge has bottomed out at 41 percent, toward the end of May. He hung there for a while in the 40s, and that suggested that pitchers might be on to something, but over that stretch, Judge slugged .613. So for the pitchers, that's not very good. And then, look. The hard-pitch rate shot up, and Judge topped out at 69 percent about a week ago. Over that stretch, Judge slugged .526. He also had an OBP of .479, so he basically wasn't making outs, relative to the usual standard. Maybe you're curious about that early dip. In the middle of April, Judge spent another span of time in the 40s. Over that stretch, he slugged .783. The point is that while pitchers overall have somewhat shied away from throwing Judge many fastballs, they haven't found much vulnerability.
Judge has been awesome.
When he hasn't seen many fastballs, he has been awesome. And when he has seen a bunch of fastballs, he has been awesome.
Why don't we look at a similar plot, except instead of showing hard-pitch rate, we look at the rolling average of vertical pitch locations? The vertical middle of the strike zone for the average hitter is about 2.5 feet off the ground. Since Judge is tall, his zone middle is a bit higher. Here's the plot of vertical pitch locations:
You might notice some vague similarities between these last two plots, and that's no coincidence. Hard pitches tend to be thrown higher than secondary stuff. So there's that same recent spike, where Judge saw both more hard pitches and more elevated pitches. We've already established that Judge was successful. He will eat your high hard fastballs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It hasn't been often that pitchers have lived very far down in the strike zone: The lowest point in the above graph is an average of 1.94 feet off the ground, and over that stretch, Judge slugged .552. Later, when pitchers went down again, Judge slugged .600. But, what the heck, I've got one more plot! Spoiler: It's a lot like the one above, except instead of vertical location, we'll look at horizontal location.
For this plot, 0.0 refers to the horizontal middle of the plate, and therefore the strike zone. Negative numbers refer to pitches more inside, against the right-handed-hitting Judge. Positive numbers refer to pitches more away. Here's the data:
That's a fun one. Pitchers haven't exactly made a habit of pounding Judge inside, but at times they've been willing to come more inside. Between May 3 and May 20, the average reading to Judge was 0.01 -- neither inside nor outside. Judge slugged .623. Just before, there was a stretch when the average reading was 0.40 -- quite outside. Judge slugged 1.000. More recently, there was a stretch when the average reading was 0.27. Judge slugged .686. In a sense, looking at that line, you could say pitchers of late have been trying to come back inside. But maybe they're already moving back out. It's not as if they've had much in the way of recent success.
Over the weekend, Judge had a crazy two days. He did this unspeakable thing to an inside changeup. He obliterated this hanging slider. Then he improbably drilled this outside heater. I know the whole punchline about Orioles pitching, but in the span of two games, Judge showed off his virtually unparalleled blend of coverage and strength. He'll turn on an inside pitch and threaten the livelihood of the fans in left field. Or he'll stay on a pitch away and flick a ball out with a lunge. It's that opposite-field homer that might impress me the most. Most hitters in the majors can't hit that ball out on contact. Judge threw his bat at the ball and it went screaming out on a rope.
What has been proved about Judge beyond a shadow of a doubt is that his power is at the highest possible level. It's him, Giancarlo Stanton and maybe Miguel Sano. That power gives Judge a considerable margin of error. He can mishit the ball and still end up with two or four bases. As a pitcher, then, you have to hunt and be careful, but further complicating matters is that Judge doesn't chase. Here's a map -- from the catcher's viewpoint -- of Judge's 2017 swing rates:
Based on that, Judge wants the ball up. That implies a vulnerability down. But not too down, because Judge won't offer. He has one of baseball's lowest out-of-zone swing rates. A careful pitcher might get Judge to roll over on a sinker, or could get a whiff at a slider down and away. But because Judge doesn't expand, and because he has so much raw strength, he leaves very little wiggle room. He has made his own adjustments to fight off the enemy. Maybe the easiest way to make the point: In April, Judge was baseball's sixth-best hitter by wRC+. Skeptics claimed that he would slow down. It wasn't crazy to suggest as much.
For the month of May, Judge was baseball's fourth-best hitter.
So far in the month of June, he has been baseball's second-best hitter.
In April, Judge had one of baseball's higher rates of pulled balls; since then, he has had one of the lower rates in the league. Judge has stayed one step ahead. That small sample isn't looking so small anymore. Judge almost certainly won't finish the season with his current 207 wRC+. Babe Ruth finished his career at 197. It still seems too early to think of Judge as a Hall of Fame talent. What we know, though, is that he has Hall of Fame power. And so far, Judge has been making the successful big league adjustments.
I don't know what pitchers are supposed to do. Thankfully, that's their job, not mine.