Aaron Judge Might Need Another Adjustment
The notion that Aaron Judge would have to eventually make an adjustment this season isn’t all that surprising. What comes with being the largest, most physically intimidating player in the game is also the largest strike zone, the largest area within which pitchers and opposing game-planners can work.
And the counter-offensive to Judge’s remarkable first half has perhaps begun. Even after his home run Monday, Judge had recorded just a .170/.339/.360 slash line in the second half entering play on Tuesday.
Consider some facts regarding Judge and the fastball.
From April though June — during which period he was arguably the best baseball player on the planet — Judge’s expected wOBA against fastballs was .479 according to Statcast data via Baseball Savant. Since July 1, however, it’s been just .372. Overall, the MLB average wOBA for the season is .344, which means Judge has fallen from elite status against the fastball in the first half to merely slightly above average in the second.
So what’s going on here? Are pitchers climbing the ladder more with high-spin four-seam fastballs? That certainly appears to be the fashionable counter measure against members of the air-ball revolution, and Judge is a fly-ball hitter.
In the first half of the season, 10.9% of pitches Judge saw were fastballs up or above the strike zone, according to Baseball Savant’s detailed zone. In the second half, that number had jumped to 14.5% entering play Monday. Pitchers are climbing the ladder against Judge.
But it’s not just the high four-seamer against which Judge has been ineffective in the second half. It’s a number of four-seam fastball locations.
Despite his relative youth, Judge has recorded above-average numbers against both curveballs and changeups. While he’s also been well above average against fastballs this season, it would make sense to challenge a hitter who possesses such long levers with velocity and high spin.
| Month | Fastball% | Avg FA velocity (mph) |
|---|---|---|
| APR | 48.8 | 93.7 |
| MAY | 49.6 | 94.1 |
| JUN | 50.3 | 93.8 |
| JUL | 56.5 | 93.3 |
| AUG | 47.4 | 94.4 |
What’s interesting is not only that fastball usage has generally increased against Judge, nor simply that Judge has faced his highest average fastball velocity of the season in August (94.4 mph) as his struggles deepened, but that the spin rates on the those fastballs have also increased.
In the first half, the average spin rate of four-seam fastballs against Judge was 2,284 rpm. Since July 1, it’s 2,319. Give our current understanding of things, it doesn’t appear as though pitchers can manipulate four-seam spin. Their spin is their spin, as this author understands it. So perhaps Judge has just seen better spin. Whatever the reason, Judge’s swing-and-miss rate against four-seamers has increased from 9.1% in the first half of the season to 11.6% in the second half.
And, again, it’s not just the high fastball against which many thought Judge might struggle. It’s the high and away fastball.
Regard, Judge’s contact rates against fastballs in the first half:
And Judge’s contact rates against fastballs since July 1:
Not only is Judge seeing more fastballs up, but the percentage of fastballs away and away off the plate has jumped from 18.4% in the first half to 22.3% in the second.
While his strikeout rate has been inching up throughout the season, Judge has actually made some improvements against offspeed and breaking stuff in August. Nevertheless, his whiffs against the fastball continue to slowly climb, as we can see via this Brooks Baseball chart.
Judge’s second-half struggles could just be the result of a rookie player contending with fatigue. But pitchers are pitching him differently. And there is something else partially related to the fastball working against Judge: the strike zone.
Back on June 7, I looked at how Judge’s height might be hurting him on calls lower in the strike zone.
Over at ESPN on Sunday, Mark Simon examined how the called strike zone against Judge has changed dramatically in the second half of the season.
Wrote Simon:
Judge’s strike zone has changed a little, as he got used to low pitches often being called strikes. Now he has to get used to something new: high pitches getting called strikes more often.
Dealing with this is a challenge for anyone, but it’s especially difficult for someone whose strike zone is as big as Judge’s. It’s just another adjustment that Judge has to make as he battles through the second half of the season.
So not only must Judge adjust to pitchers attacking him in different ways, but now, also, he must deal with an evolving strike zone. Perhaps umpires were made aware that they were calling an unfair zone against Judge as it relates to lower portion of the zone and they have adjusted.
We’ll have to see how Judge responds. The good news? He’s a Statcast God and he made remarkable improvement from his first exposure to the major leagues last year to this season. The bad news? The game’s biggest frame also comes with the largest and most exploitable zone.
But baseball is a game of adjustments and Judge has already shown to be quite capable of making them.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Judge will be fine. He adjusts at every level and will end the season running away with the MVP.
This will only happen if Judge goes Donkey Kong and grabs Chris Sale (who he mistakes for Princess Peach.)
I’d put the odds under 20% of him winning MVP. Sale is the obvious choice. Next is Altuve, and then Trout has about the same odds as Judge.
Altuve is the obvious MVP choice. Sale is the obvious choice for those who don’t understand MLB.
Well thank goodness we have you to explain MLB to the rest of us fools.
Both last year and this year, Judge has hit far better at Yankee stadium than away. For his career, his home OPS is 1.119 whereas his road OPS is .801. For this season, it’s 1.187 vs .882.
Obviously a .882 road OPS is still very good. And he defintiely deserves full credit for how he’s hit at Yankee Stadium. But maybe Judge isn’t the elite hitter that he was made out to be earlier this year? Maybe he’s just a guy who’s learned how to take advantage of the dimensions of Yankee stadium?
At the very least, I’d like to see an article that examines how he’s done home vs. road. Is there something different about his swing? His spray chart? How pitchers pitch to him?
Judge’s home runs are generally home runs in any stadium though. I remember more I-wonder-if-that-will-leave-the-stadium home runs than Yankees Stadium home runs.
But that doesn’t change that fact that he’s hit twice as many homeruns at home than on the road. Or that his BA (and BABIP) are much higher at home. The stats show that he’s elite at home, but only good to very good on the road. A 300 point differece in OPS is huge. So what’s going on???
What’s going on? Variance. It’s just a coincidence, most likely. What is your suggestion?
Judge can hit the ball out anywhere in any park. Pitchers seem to pitch to him to get him out and to not let him hit the ball hard. They are not trying to get him to hit the ball to specific parts of the park. Yesterday, for instance, the Mets were pitching and playing him to hit the ball to the opposite field in Yankee stadium. They were choosing a strategy to get him out over playing to the park.
I would just assume he’s more familiar with the batter’s eye in Yankee Stadium.
there is 1 home stadium and somewhere around 20 road stadiums which divide your remaining 81 games. There is no way to derive any useful information from home v. road stats.
Yankee stadium does rank near the top of the League in park factor. But let us remember that there is more to Park Factor than just dimensions. Also, I forgot who it was at Fangraphs, but they showed a positive correlation between the the Umpire and the Home Park, so there is a slight advantage there, too. And in the case of a huge player like Judge, for a guy who strikes out as much as he does, a more favorable strike zone may benefit him more than the usual player. There is also a psychological factor in that Judge may be more comfortable at home.
Psychological factor, park factor. Weigh that against a .300 point difference in OPS between home and the road. I think you’re trying to crack a walnut with a feather duster. Much more likely at this point: it’s random noise.
Travis – No offense –I absolutely love your stuff — but I think you really missed on this article. It really feels like you had a hypothesis (it’s fastballs!) and are now bending metrics to confirm it.
Fastball Frequency –
Your fastball % and fastball speed table show absolutely no trend. The July month looks anomalous in terms of % and the velocity numbers just bounce up and down. Lastly, why quote spin numbers if pitchers can’t control it? And what is considered a significant change in the metric we’re using?
Fastball vs Other Pitches –
Looking at your own charts, you see Judge incrementally struggling more particularly with breaking pitches. The slope of the “hard” line is identical to that of the breaking pitches. Show this chart to anyone without context and there’s virtually no chance that someone would conclude that the black line is the underlying cause of a phenomenon we’re seeing.
Fastball Location –
This is the one area I buy into your story, but I’m not convinced it’s just fastballs. He has struggled more on fastballs away AND pitchers have gone there more often. But is this true of all pitches or just fastballs? Not to bring anecdotal evidence into play, but I’ve seen him (and Gary) chase a lot of low and away sliders (and fastballs) in the 2nd half and feel like the strategy has been go low/away with 2 strikes.
Apologies if I come off as arm-chair critiquing. This article/analysis needed to be written, but I think it deserved exploring a few more hypotheses.
I agree 100%. Another point regarding the first table. The author had no problem citing the increase in velocity seen in August (supporting the hypothesis) but conveniently ignores the sharp decrease in frequency seen in August (evidence of the null), while citing the increase in frequency in the
previous months (supporting the hypothesis). Furthermore, the month in which there was the highest frequency of fastballs seen (July) was the same month in which the velocity was lowest.
Regarding the line, graph, it’d be nice to see how whiff rates change as a function of month in the population of players and see how Judge compares.
Regarding the ESPN piece- Here’s a quote:
“In the first half, Judge had 13 strikes called against him on pitches in the upper-third of the strike zone (aka “high pitches”) – in 84 games.
– In the second half, he’s already had 11 — in 27 games.”
Ok, there have been more called strike in the upper third, but what about % of pitches called for strikes? Maybe he is simply seeing more pitches up in the zone, which suggests that he is seeing more pitches up, not a change in then zone.
When it comes to writing articles like these, inferential statistics need/should be used. It is not enough to cite a cite a 1-2% increase in a metric and claim that it supports your hypothesis. I understand this is not an academic journal, but it makes for better material.
Players have had prolonged hot streaks, and baseball is very much what have you done for me lately. With that said, Judge looked like a God in the first half. He is probably a true talent 250/350/500 hitter. Maybe a bit worse. That’s a very good player. But a lot of us really jumped the gun on the whole “he is a better version of Stanton.”
Speaking as a Red Sox fan, I’m still pretty convinced that Judge is a better version of Stanton. Judge absolutely murders his liners, and his launch angles are still superb. Yes, he’s striking out quite a bit more recently, and I don’t think that surprises anyone. With his walk rate and contact authority, he can afford to run a very high strikeout rate and still be an offensive stud, but what he showed at the beginning of the year is that he’s not *necessarily* going to have to.
Contact was always going to be Judge’s question mark. He showed in the first half that he’s capable of controlling his swing through the zone. Yes he got a bit lucky on HR/FB and BABIP, and certainly the league’s collective pitching had yet to adjust to him, but what he demonstrated was a true skill. I have very little doubt he will continue to adjust. Whether he will be able to adjust without opening up new holes in his swing determines whether he is Stanton 2.0 or Trout 2.0.
Let’s not forget that Judge is (astonishingly) a legit defensive and baserunning asset. So it’s not like all his value is tied up in his ability to break windows at the Rogers Center.
I don’t know about you, but when you have a player under team control for approximately the next decade who’s FLOOR is basically Giancarlo Stanton, you don’t want to complain too much. Judge is going to be the terror of the AL East for a long time, and what we’re seeing right now is in no way representative of his true talent production.
I really don’t think it’s reasonable to say that Judge’s floor is Stanton. Three months of world-class hitting is an extremely small sample size. In fact, I think the Yankees would be thrilled if his CEILING is Stanton. There is a small but very real risk that his floor hitting-wise is, say, Mark Trumbo.
Also, Judge is NOT under team control for a decade, “only” through 2022, and he’s already 25, only two years younger than Stanton. He may not further develop to the extent that you seem to be anticipating.
I think the chances he’s Jack Cust at the plate are surprisingly high. But Jack Cust at the plate who neither adds nor subtracts on the bases or in the field is something like a 4-win player.
His floor at the plate is actually much lower–it’s what he’s been doing since the all-star break…which is something like Danny Espinosa at the plate. But I think most reasonable observers would conclude that is not likely to continue, even if it is possible.
The second half has done a good of reminding us (a) that rookies with great physical talent sometimes have hot streaks and (b) how insanely good Stanton can be when he’s on.
I think that what the first half showed is that Judge has the *potential* to be like Stanton. But Stanton is ridiculously good. He has hit 44 homers this year with his home games in Miami, not NY. He’s truly a monster.
Whether Judge is a lesser or greater version of Stanton is “officially” unclear but it’s not very easy to be much better than Stanton. Stanton is a capital-S-Star. The lesser version of Stanton is a still a player NY would like very much.
Would going to more of a closed stance (ala Stanton) help him against pitches thrown away/just off the plate?
His zone may be biggest, but is it the most exploitable? Shouldn’t it be easier for him to cover than smaller people, since the left/right dimensions don’t change and the top/bottom are relative to his own body?
That may be true, but the larger zone effectively grants pitchers better vertical command, in terms of hitting spots and not coming down the middle.
It’s like doing fine detail work on Shrinky Dink. If the pitcher can spot the ball into a one foot window, that’s 50% of a two-foot-high zone, but 40% of a 2½-foot zone. Not huge but it should help.
The fastball rate and velocity look like they could just be SSS noise with a dip in August and velocity often increasing in the warmer months.
And with the quote illustrating his strike zone changed dramatically starting “Judge’s strikezone has changed a little”, I think Travis is reaching further than Judge at those high strikes. Maybe a little more research or time and you’ll hit one out.
(I like the idea just think the content is lacking)
I know I’m very much in the minority here, but I still think Gary Sanchez is the better player long-term.
I think a fair question is: “Who is most likely to break down?”
Sanchez because he is a C?
Judge because he is a physical freak of nature?
Who has the longer career? (That’s not rhetorical)
That’s probably the determining factor, isn’t it? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s probably what matters.
I just figured that Sanchez would stay a catcher (and a decent defensive catcher at that) for a while–maybe the next 7 years? But by then I think he’ll have put up so much value already that he’ll be better off than Judge. But I also see Sanchez’s bat as special, on par with that of Judge (which sounds silly after Judge’s first half, but I like Sanchez a lot).
I see Judge having the (slightly) better bat. I think Judge has showed enough outside of his production at the plate, to answer some questions as whether he will provide value in other areas. I do envision Sanchez as the more valuable player, though.
This is going to be a fun question to follow, no doubt.
I wonder if his stance – how far he stands from the plate – is a contributing factor. I know he has long arms, it must be hard to judge the outer half standing that far off the plate, let alone to go out and get those pitches.
Has he really made less contact per swing on these FBs away or did he simply swing less often at them? FG should implement a ‘per swing’ denominator instead of a ‘per pitch’ which is the status quo. How am I supposed to follow the author’s argumentation if the evidence used is ambigious?
I would now have to look up Judge’s swing% at FBs and comparable them to the timeframe before and then figure out if his contact ‘per swing’ has actually decreased instead of his contact ‘per pitch’