Judge’s discipline helping him do more than just punish baseballs

IN LESS than 24 hours, Aaron Judge hit the hardest homer of the Statcast era (since 2015) and the longest homer of 2017.

His weekend was like a greatest hits (literally) of a season in which he entered Monday with a major league-best 21 homers — three more than anyone else — and the four hardest-hit balls of the season (and five of six).

Yet, to me his .344 average is more impressive than all of that. Because if you would have said on April 1 that one day Judge would lead the league in homers, I would have thought that possible. But I would have expected it in a Chris Carter-type way — low average, high strikeouts — like Carter did last year, when he tied for the NL home run lead with 41 while logging a .222 average and 206 strikeouts.

What is staggering is Judge is going to have the strikeouts, yet his discipline — particularly his hitting with two strikes — has been a difference-making phenomenon.

Judge is on pace to strike out 189 times, which would be the secondmost in Yankees history behind Curtis Granderson’s 195 in 2012. In that less-than-24-hour span Saturday and Sunday against the Orioles, Judge also displayed what has been so different about him in 2017. The count went to 1-2 on him three

times, and he went 3-for-3 with a double and homer. The five times he faced two strikes, he was 4-for-4 with a walk.

In his 2016 major league cameo, Judge was hapless, hopeless and mostly hitless with two strikes. When he fell behind 0-2, he was 2-for-22 (.091) with no walks and 13 strikeouts. At 1-2, he was 4-for-28 (.143) with no walks and 19 whiffs. After two strikes, he was 8-for-62 (.129) with two homers, six walks and 42 strikeouts.

This season, Judge entered Monday hitting .298 after the count reaches 0-2 with a .906 OPS, the fourth-highest in the majors (minimum 150 total plate appearances). He was .291 after 1-2 with nine homers and a 1.007 OPS, second in the majors. He was .274 after two strikes with a .920 OPS, the highest in the majors. The major league average OPS is .439 after 0-2, .495 after 1-2 and . 521 after two strikes.

Judge told me he does not alter his swing one iota with two strikes, and Matt Holliday — a bit of a guru for Judge on the art of hitting — said there was no reason for an adjustment. Holliday — in hitting Ph.D.language — tried to explain to me in granular terms the head and hand positions Judge has found constantly:

Judge essentially is keeping his hands and head back, letting the ball travel deeper, which gives him more time to decipher rotation, location and velocity. The number of, for example, sliders from righties that seduced him into humiliation last year that he doesn’t even flinch at now is an incredible before-and-after picture. His .450 on-base percentage is second in the majors and reflects pitchers working around him, yes, but also his ability to lay off borderline pitches.

“His at-bats are so consistent now,” said Brett Gardner, who long had been the Yankees’ most patient hitter. “What is amazing is his strike zone is so huge because of his size, and I actually think he has strikes called low down against him because they are strikes for everyone else, but they really aren’t strikes for him. It is impressive how many pitches he lays off of that just miss that big zone.”

Holliday likened “the super efficiency” of Judge to the best he has seen, Barry Bonds, also noting the balance, the length of time the swing stays in the zone, the ability to hit in all quadrants of the strike zone, the shift-busting ability to hit to all fields and — of course — the power.

And the power is a benefit to batting average. Judge has hit 15 balls measured at more than 115 mph this season; the rest of the sport has 26 combined (Giancarlo Stanton is second with four). As Gardner said, “He hits it so hard that if it is not right at someone, then there is no reaction time, it is going to be a hit.”

In fact, if you subtracted the 21 homers/at-bats from Judge’s ledger, he still would be batting .271, the same as Neil Walker. And the Yankees would have signed up for .271 before the season. Heck, they would have signed up for .251 with 21 homers for the whole season, plus the defense, base running and positive clubhouse energy.

Instead, they got consistently brilliant at-bats and .344. With all the numbers, that is the most impressive.