Aaron Judge Put a Ball into Orbit Last Night

Aaron Judge is large. He’s 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds of human. A lean, mean slugging machine. He is one of, if not the, largest players in the game right now, and we are blessed to be able to watch him ply his craft in the big leagues. It doesn’t hurt that he plays in Yankee Stadium, which is essentially the size of a thimble, but Judge doesn’t exactly need shallow walls to do his thing.

That’s 443 feet of dinger. You can fit 67.3 Aaron Judges into that distance. It’s easy power from an easy swing, because turning baseballs into FAA-sanctioned aircrafts is one of the perks of being the size of the Incredible Hulk. It’s also worth noting that Judge did this on a cold, damp night. That’s not an environment that’s conducive to monster bombs. The ball tends to fly further when it’s warm out. This leads us to a very important question: what the hell is Aaron Judge going to be doing a month from now? Are the Yankees going to need to install some sort of protective awning over the bleachers? Is he going to be peppering the middle of the upper deck? Is that beer stand in danger?

We live in strange times, times where the Yankees are laden with exciting rookies and not relying on golf shots into the first few rows of the short porch. It stands to reason that the Yankees used their considerable funds to grow Judge in a lab somewhere, that they stole some of Giancarlo Stanton’s DNA to create their own homer-hitting Mewtwo.

But no, Judge is for real. He’s really got a 181 wRC+, and it’s really fueled by a .660 slugging percentage. He’s almost certainly not going to keep that up, but Judge has proven that he can hit for more than enough power. He’s a force of nature, even if he ultimately produces a lower batting average and homers less frequently. The Yankees have spent a lot of their season so far facing some not-great pitching, after all. But that easy natural power can’t be denied. A normal man’s fly ball to the track is an automatic threat to go out off the bat of Judge. He’s got 13 hits so far, and five of them have gone over the fence.

If all goes well, we’re going to be blessed with these sorts of bombs for years to come.

Yeah. Same.





Nick is a columnist at FanGraphs, and has written previously for Baseball Prospectus and Beyond the Box Score. Yes, he hates your favorite team, just like Joe Buck. You can follow him on Twitter at @StelliniTweets, and can contact him at stellinin1 at gmail.

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v2miccaMember since 2016
8 years ago

After the highlight for this homerun ran on sportscenter, my sister called me to ask who this Aaron Judge kid was. I answered truthfully: Evidence that the Yankees have begun to experiment with genetically enhanced humans.

Any fans of Warhammer 40K would take one look at this kid and think, yeah, he would fit in with a squad of Ultramarines.