THE MIGHTY SWING OF AARON JUDGE.
YANKEES SLUGGER IS MECHANICALLY EFFICIENT
When Milwaukee outfielder Keon Broxton went clattering i nto t he c e ntrefield wall this month at Yankee Stadium in New York to steal an extra- base hit from Aaron Judge, he also caught something else: the sight of Judge smiling at him.
“It was just a friendly smile — ‘ Hey, c’mon, man, why you got to do me like that?’ ” Broxton said with a laugh. “And I’m like: ‘ Yeah, you got 30 bombs. Chill. It’s OK.’”
Several innings later, Judge sent Broxton scrambling again with a towering fly ball. Broxton turned and ran, tracking the ball’s flight, certain that he’d haul it in again. As it turned out, Broxton was not close. The ball clanked off the facing of the restaurant windows above Monument Park — an estimated 445 feet from home plate.
Judge, who is 6- foot-7 and 282 pounds, leads the major leagues in home runs and showed off his prodigious power before a national audience last week in winning the Home Run Derby during the allstar game festivities in Miami.
But Judge, his uncommon size notwithstanding, is not just a muscle- bound galoot who clubs baseballs over the wall with brute strength. His swing, from start to finish, is a portrait of technical precision that has allowed his rare physical gifts to flourish.
Nobody hits the ball harder — his average exit velocity, 95.8 m. p. h., is by far the highest in baseball. And nobody hits more balls farther more often — 14 of his homers have travelled at least 425 feet, including a 496-footer that is the longest in baseball this season.
His starburst of a first half was born of a winter of work — tinkering with and refining the mechanics of his swing after a rude introduction to the big leagues in August, when he hit .179 and struck out in half his at-bats.
“It’s a project,” said Judge, 25, who declined to discuss in detail his swing or the changes he had made. “Ever since I got drafted by the Yankees, I’ve been working on my swing. So it’s just a culmination of all those things, and I’m finally starting to see some results.”
Still, the Yankees’ hitting instructors and opposing catchers and pitchers point to a number of subtle changes that have been integral to his transformation. Judge is standing slightly farther off the plate than he was last season, the leg kick that he incorporated in the minor leagues at the start of 2015 has been toned down, and his weight, when he assumes his stance, is now anchored firmly on his back hip.
That last point may be the most significant. When Judge met with hitting coach Alan Cockrell and his assistant, Marcus Thames, at the end of last season, they had a message to convey: Judge needed to make better use of the lower half of his body.
How to do that was left up to Judge. So over the winter, he pored over video of players he admired, like Josh Donaldson, Miguel Cabrera, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, power hitters who used the entire field. He focused on trying to feel anchored on his back hip, where he could not only achieve good balance, but also feel the force he could unleash with his swing. Judge said in February that Rodriguez told him “he wanted to feel like he was squatting 300 pounds.”
As a result of being “cemented on his back side,” as Houston Astros catcher Brian McCann put it, Judge’s head has less movement now, which has helped him recognize pitches — be it the spin on a two-seam fastball that runs inside or a breaking pitch that swerves off the plate.
Judge has reduced his swings at pitches out of the strike zone by almost one-third, to 25 per cent from 34 per cent last year, taking him from the range of his freeswinging teammate Starlin Castro to that of Boston’s selective Dustin Pedroia.
“The good hitters, you don’t gain too much ground forward,” Toronto catcher Russell Martin said. “It’s kind of a theme: They have their heads still because your head is your camera. If you move your head at all, it kind of changes how you’re seeing things.”
(GOOD HITTERS) HAVE THEIR HEADS STILL BECAUSE YOUR HEAD IS YOUR CAMERA.
By staying so heavily weighted on his back side, carrying that sensation of squatting 300 pounds through his hip, Judge has i mproved his pitch selection and his balance. In the early part of his swing, it is as if the lower and upper halves of his body are operating independently — throughout the leg kick there is little movement from the waist up. Although many hitters lose power when their front foot comes down after the leg kick, when Judge’s front foot lands his body remains back — and his hip still loaded — waiting to unleash the torque from his hips.
That force was unbridled this month on a 3- 2 fastball at t he knees from Blue Jays left- hander J. A. Happ. The pitch was hit at 118 mph and on a line ( the ball left the bat at an angle of 18.2 per cent, his lowest launch angle of any home run this season), and it left a dent in a metal door casement in the Yankees bullpen. The distance was put at 453 feet.
“That’s as hard a ball as I’ve ever seen hit,” Martin said.
Judge’s ability to hit the ball so hard also helps explain why he is hitting for such a high average, . 319, fifth in the American League entering Sunday’s games. While he still strikes out a lot — 112 times, on pace to shatter Curtis Granderson’s franchise record of 195 for a single season — Judge hits ground balls so hard, t hey often scoot through the infield. He is hitting .411 on balls in play, second best in baseball.
The book on Judge before this season was a brief one.
“Just spin him,” Blue Jays rel i ever Ryan Tepera, referring to breaking balls, s ai d of Judge, whom he has faced six times in the big leagues and also in the minor leagues last season.
But all the modifications — honing of his pitch recognition, moving a bit farther off the plate and refining his approach — have coalesced so neatly that pitchers are reconsidering their approach.
“I threw some really good offspeed pitches that stayed in the zone and broke late, and he spit on pretty much every one,” said Brewers left- hander Brent Suter, who gave up a single and a walk to Judge and also struck him out.
Oakland right-hander Jesse Hahn, who struck Judge out twice and walked him once, said that Judge’s new- found ability to lay off pitches out of the strike zone is “a very superstar-like quality; very few guys can do that at that young of an age.”
As he patrolled centre field last weekend at Yankee Stadium, the Brewers’ Broxton had a clear view of just how together Judge looked at t he plate. Broxton said t hat when he faced Judge in the minors last year, he was not anywhere near the menace at the plate that he is now.
But Broxton said he was not surprised.
“You could see the talent; you could see what he was capable of,” he said. “Right now, any pitcher that steps on the mound and he gets in the box, they’re obviously going to be a little shaky. They’re going to want to control every single one of their pitches way better than they would any other batter. There’s definitely an intimidation factor when he steps into the box.”