The career of Aaron Judge has been a prosperous one since his rookie year when he should’ve won AL MVP. After a tumultuous road of injuries and questions of contractual worth, Judge is in the middle of what could become the greatest offensive season in Yankees history. He’s currently slashing .298/.386/.676 with a 1.062 OPS and 194 wRC+ with 43 home runs which is on pace to break Roger Maris’s 1961 AL record of 61. In a contract year, it’s safe to say that things couldn’t be going better for the de facto Yankee captain.

Approach

An under-looked aspect of his career is how he’s approached a certain pitch, the slider, sliders are the most common breaking pitch thrown in baseball and Judge has quite the history with them. He went from having a commonly exploited weakness to them to downright destroying most sliders thrown to him. It’s a tale that shows how even the best hitters can adjust their approach and make themselves even better.

Rookie of the year

In 2017, Judge burst onto the scene as the new Yankees’ baseball assassin, clubbing 52 home runs (a rookie record at the time) with a 1.049 OPS and 174 wRC+. However, he led the majors in strikeouts with 208, why was that? It’s because he only hit .161 and slugged .305 against sliders, the 2nd most common pitch he saw. He had a whiff rate of 51.1% on sliders and a 43.3% K%, making him prone to stretches like August of that year when he had a 35.3% K% and a wRC+ of 91. In his rookie year and should’ve been MVP year, he smashed every pitch except for sliders.

Gradual progression

What followed was a gradual progression from a weakness to a strength against sliders for Judge. In 2018 he saw massive improvement, hitting .290 and slugging .490 against sliders and having a Baseball Savant run value of 7 compared to -4 in 2017. 2019, 2020, and 2021 saw Judge take a step back. In 2019, he only hit .156 and slugged .429 against sliders with a K% 43 and a whiff% of 54.8, resulting in a -4 run value. In 2020, there was some improvement, hitting .250 but he only slugged .400, however, he did reduce his whiff% and K% to 48.7 and 34.6 respectively, and had a run value of 2. 2021 also saw a fair bit of improvement in the plate discipline department, reducing his whiff% to 40.1 and his K% to 31.9. These years saw Judge slowly begin to adjust to sliders, setting him up for an explosive 2022.

destruction

This year has seen Judge destroy sliders, hitting .295, slugging a whopping .659, and only having a 36.6% whiff% and a 25.5% K%, with 2 months to go in the regular season, Judge has a run value of 17 against sliders this year. This success has led to him leading the majors in home runs and being one of the favorites for AL MVP.

From his rookie year to now, Judge went from being weak to sliders to having pitchers be terrified to throw them to him. A story like this shows how a hitter, no matter how productive, can always look for room to improve in certain areas. Judge saw room to improve his effectiveness against sliders, and he has most definitely improved against them, turning him into an unstoppable force. It may have taken a while, but Judge finally won his battle against the slider.