Judge Not Rising
At this point, the concern about Aaron Judge’s second-half performance has passed from hand-wringing over a perceived home run derby curse into something a little more tangible. His streak of consecutive games with at least one strikeout hit 26 last night, which is enough to tie the record for such a single-season streak by a position player. (The overall record is Bill Stoneman’s 37, with his streak lasting through parts of two different seasons. The overall record for a position player is Adam Dunn’s 36, which also ran through two seasons.)
But those strikeouts, of course, aren’t an isolated problem. The differences between Judge’s first and second half are pretty stark through just about any lens. Part of that is due to just how amazing his first half was—yes, the wRC+ of 75 that he’s compiled through his 106 plate appearances of the second half so far wouldn’t have ever looked good by any stretch of the imagination, but it sure would have looked less bad if it wasn’t next to a first-half figure of a whopping 198. His rate of hard contact has literally almost been cut in half—49 percent of his contact before the break, versus 26 percent since—and his power has dried up, too.
Part of this has been a struggle with breaking and offspeed pitches. Before the All-Star break, he whiffed on 18 and 19 percent of those, respectively. Since? 27 and 26 percent. (He’s whiffed more on regular fastballs, too, but only just barely—an 11 percent figure in the first half compared to 13 percent in the second.) This struggle has been especially apparent when dealing with offspeed and breaking balls that are right over the plate—an area where he rarely whiffed during the first half and has done so quite a bit since. As the Yankees buckle down for a tight wild card race, with six teams within two and a half games, they can only hope he figures it out soon.
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