THE SPLIT-FINGERED FASTBALL FAIRLY WINKED AT AARON JUDGE AS IT PASSED HIS FIELD OF VISION. JUDGE DID NOT FALL FOR ITS FALSE CHARM. HE WATCHED THIS CHANGEUP DISGUISED AS A FASTBALL FROM RED SOX PITCHER NATHAN EOVALODI TUMBLE EVER SO SLIGHTLY BELOW THE OUTSIDE CORNER OF HOME PLATE. BALL ONE. HOME PLATE. BALL ONE.
That Aug. 12 pitch might have been just another one of the 12,593 pitches Judge had seen to that point in his career with the Yankees, including 104 from Eovaldi, except for what happened next. What no one saw ranked at least as amazing as the unmistakable percussive punishment Judge delivered to the next pitch. It was the advanced calculus known by only an elite hitter—part homework, part intuition, part pattern recognition from those 12,000 pitches. It is the reason Judge is chasing home run history.
“Eovaldi—and even the Red Sox in general—they like to throw me up and in with the heater,” Judge says. They first] like to stay with stuff soft away. Soft away, down and away, down and away... see if they can steal an early strike. And then they always like to come back in and get me a little off balance and make me be conscious of it so they can go back to that away pitch.
“So when they went with a splitter down and away for a ball, I just had a feeling. O.K., I don’t think they want to go down there again to go 2-0 on me. They might try to come up and in here and...
“It kind of worked out.”
Judge smiles at his own litotes. Eovaldi threw an up-and-in fastball directly where catcher Kevin Plawecki set the target—and precisely where Judge expected the pitch. He hit it 113.8 miles per hour, harder than any ball hit all season by any right-handed hitter on an up-and-in fastball. It soared completely out of Fenway Park, landing atop a parking garage across the street. Eovaldi remained in a state of amazement after the game, telling reporters, It’s just, he’s on fire right now. He’s locked in at the plate. I felt like I located that pitch.”
The blast gave Judge 46 home runs through 113 team games, a pace matched by only Barry Bonds in 2001 48, on his way to a record 73) and Babe Ruth 46 in 1921, on his way to 59 in a 154-game season). No player has hit 60 home runs since MLB began testing for steroids in 2003. And no American League player has come within three of the league record of 61 since Roger Maris set it in 1961.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1452683429/1663221964/articles/YYgYKoHdB1665051624174/zlCsF9B-s1665051805595.jpg]
“Seventy-three is the record,” Judge says. In my book. No matter what people want to say about that era of baseball, for me, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers, and that to me is what the record is. The AL record is 61, so that is one I can kind of try to go after. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s been a fun year so far.”
Where Judge’s bat met Eovaldi’s fastball is the preeminent metaphor for this Year of Judge. It is a moment in time and space where a hitter executes his craft in a way that is, as the writer Dan Jenkins defined it in golfing terms, dead solid perfect. The intersection of a round bat traveling 85 miles per hour and round ball traveling 93 miles per hour occurs about 12 to 18 inches in front of home plate in an impact area of about 12 square centimeters—opposing forces colliding in a window the size of three postage stamps. No one creates this perfect convergence, known as barrels” when done at optimum force and angle, more than Judge.
This season is defined by the intersection of forces in Judge’s career. Of the wisdom gleaned from those 12,000 pitches. Of the Yankees’ offering him a contract extension of 213.5 million just before Opening Day and then, to his disappointment, going public with the terms of it after he turned it down. Of his impending free agency. Of the advice he received from a former teammate about how to protect what had been his injury-prone body. Of accomplishing by July 28 the one goal this year that makes him proudest—and has nothing to do with hitting home runs.
The simplistic narrative is that Judge bet on himself” by turning down 213.5 million. He does not see it that way. It was never a gamble for me, because no matter whether we got a deal done or didn’t get a deal done I was still going to be playing with the Yankees this year,” he says. In my mind there was no gamble. I’ll be playing for the Yankees, working as hard as I can to help us win a World Series. All that other stuff, that’s why I’ve got an agent.”
AS DID MARCUS AURELIUS, Mark Twain and Joan Didion, Aaron Judge keeps a notebook. It used to be a physical notebook, but when he found carrying it around to be a bit of a pain, he switched to keeping a digital version on his phone. He will log key swing thoughts from his personal hitting coach and how he felt at the plate during especially good games. Each time he opens his digital notebook, the first page greets him with a reminder: 179.” That was Judge’s batting average in 2016, when he struck out in 44% of his trips to the plate during a late-season call-up. After overhauling his swing that winter, Judge hit a rookie-record 52 home runs the next season. After that he took a black marker and wrote 179” in his size-17 spikes to remind himself of the struggle. He has since moved the numerical reminder from his shoes to the title page of his notebook. Still glaring at me right at the top is 179, he says. No matter how many homers, what’s going on, or we’re in first place, I know it can change in the blink of an eye.”
Hitting, it turns out, is a bit like how Didion described writing: an attempt to find out what matters, to find the pattern in disorder, to find the grammar in the shimmer.”
Despite those 52 homers in 2017, Judge struggled in other ways to find the pattern in the disorder that pitchers presented him. That season he struck out 50 times flailing at breaking pitches out of the zone—fourth-most in the majors. He hit 224 on breaking pitches over his first five seasons. He watched too many hittable pitches go by early in counts.
Moreover, injuries wracked his 6' 7", 282-pound body. He missed 37% of the Yankees’ games from 2018 through 20. He suffered a broken wrist in 18. An oblique strain in 19. A cracked rib and collapsed lung in 20. It was after Judge returned in 19 from the oblique strain that veteran teammate Edwin Encarnacion pulled him aside after a game. Encarnacion noticed how often Judge would hit in the indoor batting cage, even during games.
“If I struck out, I’d be in the cage,” Judge says. Hitting, hitting, hitting. If my swing didn’t feel right, I’d be back in the cage. In-game hitting, pregame hitting, postgame hitting.”
Encarnacion told him, All those swings you're taking? It’s making you tired and it’s going to get you hurt. And all you are doing is practicing bad swings. You don’t need to take a thousand swings. You just need to take a couple and go out and play. Less is more.”
“When he told me that,” Judge says, I was like, Less is more? What’s he talking about? Once I started learning that I was like, O.K., that’s probably why I’m blowing out certain muscles.
“IT started watching veteran guys. I watched DJ LeMahieu. He’ll go in and take five swings off the tee, five flips, and go out there in the game and go 3-for-4. And that was a lesson for me. It’s quality over quantity. It’s helped me out the past two years especially.”
Entering September, Judge had played in more than 90% of the Yankees’ games over the past two years. He prepares for games now by taking a couple” of swings off the tee; a few more off flips; a few more off short BP,” in which the pitcher stands only about 40 feet away; and a few more against a high-velocity machine that spits out fastballs at 110 miles per hour as well as nasty, high-spin sliders. Judge also will simply track the pitches without swinging so that his eyes grow accustomed to more velocity than he will see later.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1452683429/1663221964/articles/YYgYKoHdB1665051624174/1396806363.jpg]
“So when I step out there in a game it’s OA, that’s all this guy has?” Judge says. I saw that a hundred times already.”
He also has incorporated postgame maintenance work for his body, including stretching exercises, hot and cold tub therapy sessions, and saunas.
“I do all my recovery stuff, which you don’t think about when you're 24 or 25,” he says. You just think, I played my game. I’m going to eat, go back to bed and I'll wake up feeling great. Now it’s the little things, even if it’s 20 minutes after the game of stretching.”
Judge hit a career-high 287 last season. He cut his strikeout rate to a career low 25%). He finished fourth in MVP voting. He wanted more. Soon after the season ended, he reported to the Yankees’ training complex in Tampa and worked with one of the team’s speed trainers.
“I said, Hey, I see guys in the minor leagues with 40 stolen bases and I know I’m faster than that guy. What can I learn from you?’ Judge says.
They broke down his running form and studied how to get a better first step. If there is a definitive story about what motivates Judge, this is it. Almost immediately after hitting 39 homers and slugging 544, the biggest position player in baseball history went to the minor league camp to become a better base runner.
“Especially hitting higher in the lineup,” says Judge, who usually bats second, if I can get on base and I can get into scoring position or even have that threat to the pitcher that I might steal, the guys] behind me might get better pitches to hit.”
Judge has a chance to lead the majors in runs, home runs, RBIs and total bases, which has been done by only Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle since RBIs became official in 1920. But ask him which part of his season brings him the most pride, and Judge—who had swiped 13 bases in 14 tries by the middle of August, three times as many as any other player 6' 7" or taller in history—has a simple answer:
“Stolen bases.”
THE YANKEES OFFERED Judge $30.5 million a year. Eleven players earn more, including two on his own team. The Yankees will be paying Gerrit Cole and Giancarlo Stanton more over the next six years.) They made the proposal just before Judge’s deadline to get a deal done by Opening Day. Immediately after Judge’s rejection, New York GM Brian Cashman announced the terms of the offer in a press conference for the sake of transparency. Judge did not appreciate such candor.
“I could have taken it out on the organization and taken it out on the fan base and taken it out on my teammates,” Judge says. But I kind of turned it into a positive. Like, Hey, we didn’t get it done. Now I can turn my focus back to the season and do what I can do to help this team win as many games as we can.’ That’s what I decided to do.”
“Nothing fazes him,” says Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. You don’t know if he’...
That Aug. 12 pitch might have been just another one of the 12,593 pitches Judge had seen to that point in his career with the Yankees, including 104 from Eovaldi, except for what happened next. What no one saw ranked at least as amazing as the unmistakable percussive punishment Judge delivered to the next pitch. It was the advanced calculus known by only an elite hitter—part homework, part intuition, part pattern recognition from those 12,000 pitches. It is the reason Judge is chasing home run history.
“Eovaldi—and even the Red Sox in general—they like to throw me up and in with the heater,” Judge says. They first] like to stay with stuff soft away. Soft away, down and away, down and away... see if they can steal an early strike. And then they always like to come back in and get me a little off balance and make me be conscious of it so they can go back to that away pitch.
“So when they went with a splitter down and away for a ball, I just had a feeling. O.K., I don’t think they want to go down there again to go 2-0 on me. They might try to come up and in here and...
“It kind of worked out.”
Judge smiles at his own litotes. Eovaldi threw an up-and-in fastball directly where catcher Kevin Plawecki set the target—and precisely where Judge expected the pitch. He hit it 113.8 miles per hour, harder than any ball hit all season by any right-handed hitter on an up-and-in fastball. It soared completely out of Fenway Park, landing atop a parking garage across the street. Eovaldi remained in a state of amazement after the game, telling reporters, It’s just, he’s on fire right now. He’s locked in at the plate. I felt like I located that pitch.”
The blast gave Judge 46 home runs through 113 team games, a pace matched by only Barry Bonds in 2001 48, on his way to a record 73) and Babe Ruth 46 in 1921, on his way to 59 in a 154-game season). No player has hit 60 home runs since MLB began testing for steroids in 2003. And no American League player has come within three of the league record of 61 since Roger Maris set it in 1961.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1452683429/1663221964/articles/YYgYKoHdB1665051624174/zlCsF9B-s1665051805595.jpg]
“Seventy-three is the record,” Judge says. In my book. No matter what people want to say about that era of baseball, for me, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers, and that to me is what the record is. The AL record is 61, so that is one I can kind of try to go after. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it’s been a fun year so far.”
Where Judge’s bat met Eovaldi’s fastball is the preeminent metaphor for this Year of Judge. It is a moment in time and space where a hitter executes his craft in a way that is, as the writer Dan Jenkins defined it in golfing terms, dead solid perfect. The intersection of a round bat traveling 85 miles per hour and round ball traveling 93 miles per hour occurs about 12 to 18 inches in front of home plate in an impact area of about 12 square centimeters—opposing forces colliding in a window the size of three postage stamps. No one creates this perfect convergence, known as barrels” when done at optimum force and angle, more than Judge.
This season is defined by the intersection of forces in Judge’s career. Of the wisdom gleaned from those 12,000 pitches. Of the Yankees’ offering him a contract extension of 213.5 million just before Opening Day and then, to his disappointment, going public with the terms of it after he turned it down. Of his impending free agency. Of the advice he received from a former teammate about how to protect what had been his injury-prone body. Of accomplishing by July 28 the one goal this year that makes him proudest—and has nothing to do with hitting home runs.
The simplistic narrative is that Judge bet on himself” by turning down 213.5 million. He does not see it that way. It was never a gamble for me, because no matter whether we got a deal done or didn’t get a deal done I was still going to be playing with the Yankees this year,” he says. In my mind there was no gamble. I’ll be playing for the Yankees, working as hard as I can to help us win a World Series. All that other stuff, that’s why I’ve got an agent.”
AS DID MARCUS AURELIUS, Mark Twain and Joan Didion, Aaron Judge keeps a notebook. It used to be a physical notebook, but when he found carrying it around to be a bit of a pain, he switched to keeping a digital version on his phone. He will log key swing thoughts from his personal hitting coach and how he felt at the plate during especially good games. Each time he opens his digital notebook, the first page greets him with a reminder: 179.” That was Judge’s batting average in 2016, when he struck out in 44% of his trips to the plate during a late-season call-up. After overhauling his swing that winter, Judge hit a rookie-record 52 home runs the next season. After that he took a black marker and wrote 179” in his size-17 spikes to remind himself of the struggle. He has since moved the numerical reminder from his shoes to the title page of his notebook. Still glaring at me right at the top is 179, he says. No matter how many homers, what’s going on, or we’re in first place, I know it can change in the blink of an eye.”
Hitting, it turns out, is a bit like how Didion described writing: an attempt to find out what matters, to find the pattern in disorder, to find the grammar in the shimmer.”
Despite those 52 homers in 2017, Judge struggled in other ways to find the pattern in the disorder that pitchers presented him. That season he struck out 50 times flailing at breaking pitches out of the zone—fourth-most in the majors. He hit 224 on breaking pitches over his first five seasons. He watched too many hittable pitches go by early in counts.
Moreover, injuries wracked his 6' 7", 282-pound body. He missed 37% of the Yankees’ games from 2018 through 20. He suffered a broken wrist in 18. An oblique strain in 19. A cracked rib and collapsed lung in 20. It was after Judge returned in 19 from the oblique strain that veteran teammate Edwin Encarnacion pulled him aside after a game. Encarnacion noticed how often Judge would hit in the indoor batting cage, even during games.
“If I struck out, I’d be in the cage,” Judge says. Hitting, hitting, hitting. If my swing didn’t feel right, I’d be back in the cage. In-game hitting, pregame hitting, postgame hitting.”
Encarnacion told him, All those swings you're taking? It’s making you tired and it’s going to get you hurt. And all you are doing is practicing bad swings. You don’t need to take a thousand swings. You just need to take a couple and go out and play. Less is more.”
“When he told me that,” Judge says, I was like, Less is more? What’s he talking about? Once I started learning that I was like, O.K., that’s probably why I’m blowing out certain muscles.
“IT started watching veteran guys. I watched DJ LeMahieu. He’ll go in and take five swings off the tee, five flips, and go out there in the game and go 3-for-4. And that was a lesson for me. It’s quality over quantity. It’s helped me out the past two years especially.”
Entering September, Judge had played in more than 90% of the Yankees’ games over the past two years. He prepares for games now by taking a couple” of swings off the tee; a few more off flips; a few more off short BP,” in which the pitcher stands only about 40 feet away; and a few more against a high-velocity machine that spits out fastballs at 110 miles per hour as well as nasty, high-spin sliders. Judge also will simply track the pitches without swinging so that his eyes grow accustomed to more velocity than he will see later.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1452683429/1663221964/articles/YYgYKoHdB1665051624174/1396806363.jpg]
“So when I step out there in a game it’s OA, that’s all this guy has?” Judge says. I saw that a hundred times already.”
He also has incorporated postgame maintenance work for his body, including stretching exercises, hot and cold tub therapy sessions, and saunas.
“I do all my recovery stuff, which you don’t think about when you're 24 or 25,” he says. You just think, I played my game. I’m going to eat, go back to bed and I'll wake up feeling great. Now it’s the little things, even if it’s 20 minutes after the game of stretching.”
Judge hit a career-high 287 last season. He cut his strikeout rate to a career low 25%). He finished fourth in MVP voting. He wanted more. Soon after the season ended, he reported to the Yankees’ training complex in Tampa and worked with one of the team’s speed trainers.
“I said, Hey, I see guys in the minor leagues with 40 stolen bases and I know I’m faster than that guy. What can I learn from you?’ Judge says.
They broke down his running form and studied how to get a better first step. If there is a definitive story about what motivates Judge, this is it. Almost immediately after hitting 39 homers and slugging 544, the biggest position player in baseball history went to the minor league camp to become a better base runner.
“Especially hitting higher in the lineup,” says Judge, who usually bats second, if I can get on base and I can get into scoring position or even have that threat to the pitcher that I might steal, the guys] behind me might get better pitches to hit.”
Judge has a chance to lead the majors in runs, home runs, RBIs and total bases, which has been done by only Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle since RBIs became official in 1920. But ask him which part of his season brings him the most pride, and Judge—who had swiped 13 bases in 14 tries by the middle of August, three times as many as any other player 6' 7" or taller in history—has a simple answer:
“Stolen bases.”
THE YANKEES OFFERED Judge $30.5 million a year. Eleven players earn more, including two on his own team. The Yankees will be paying Gerrit Cole and Giancarlo Stanton more over the next six years.) They made the proposal just before Judge’s deadline to get a deal done by Opening Day. Immediately after Judge’s rejection, New York GM Brian Cashman announced the terms of the offer in a press conference for the sake of transparency. Judge did not appreciate such candor.
“I could have taken it out on the organization and taken it out on the fan base and taken it out on my teammates,” Judge says. But I kind of turned it into a positive. Like, Hey, we didn’t get it done. Now I can turn my focus back to the season and do what I can do to help this team win as many games as we can.’ That’s what I decided to do.”
“Nothing fazes him,” says Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. You don’t know if he’...
You're reading a preview of
Sports Illustrated (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2022