You might be a bit surprised to learn just how rare 3-0 counts are. As of Tuesday morning, there had been 155,045 plate appearances in the 2024 season, and just 5,852 of them, or 3.8%, had gone 3-0. That means that each team should expect to see a 3-0 count just 1.4 times per game. That’s a whole lot fewer than I expected. Because of that scarcity, if somebody comes to you with statistics about a batter’s splits in 3-0 counts, you can probably discount them as a small sample size aberration. That’s all the more true when you consider that, ignoring intentional walks, 3-0 counts turn into walks roughly 60% of the time (which in turns means that they account for roughly 29% of all walks). Once the batter gets ahead 3-0, there are very few actual at-bats taking place. So you don’t have to take this seriously if you don’t want to, but once he reaches a 3-0 count, Aaron Judge is putting together the greatest season in recorded history. I know that’s not exactly a shocking lede – Aaron Judge is good at something; film at eleven – but it’s fun, so hear me out.
In this case, recorded history starts in 1988. That’s the earliest year that Stathead lets you pull count-based splits. Those splits are slightly muddied by the fact that as far as Stathead is concerned, 3-0 counts include intentional walks. (That’s understandable, since until very recently, intentional walks still required pitchers to throw four actual balls. Still, it definitely skews the numbers; it doesn’t make a ton of sense to include PAs where the batter never saw a competitive pitch in count splits.) This season, Judge has been walked intentionally 18 times, but four of those passes only happened once the pitcher had fallen behind 3-0, so we’ll leave them and strip out the other 14.
That leaves Judge with 43 PAs that went to a 3-0 count, second in baseball behind Juan Soto, who has 54 (which also gives the Yankees far more 3-0 counts than any other team in baseball). In those PAs, Judge has walked 35 times, for a walk rate of 81.4%. That’s how terrifying Aaron Judge is: Even though he ranks second in this split by PAs, pitchers are so disinclined to throw him a strike that he’s tied for 75th in ABs.
So how did those eight at-bats go? Well, they went popup, single, homer, homer, homer, strikeout, groundout, homer. If you’re keeping score at home, that would be 5-for-8 with four homers, good for a 2.125 slugging percentage. I went back into Stathead and tried to find the players with the best 3-0 splits in history. (For these splits, I wasn’t able to separate out intentional walks, but since we’re talking about some of the best hitting performances of the last four decades, they’re probably not skewing the on-base percentages that much anyway.) Since 1988, Judge is the only player to get ahead 3-0 at least 30 times and to run a slugging percentage above 2.000 in those plate appearances. Yordan Alvarez came closest; in 2019, the Houston slugger got ahead 3-0 in 23 PAs, walked in 20 of them, and homered in all three of the other others. That’s patently absurd, and it makes for a tidy 4.000 slugging percentage.
This season, once he reaches 3-0, Judge has a slash line of .625/.930/2.125, with an OPS of 3.055 (3.072 if we count his intentional walks). Among players with at least 35 PAs in a 3-0 count, that’s the best OPS in recorded history. Next on the list is 2004 Barry Bonds. As you might recall, 2004 Barry Bonds was pretty good. He ran a 233 wRC+ and hit 45 home runs in just 373 at-bats, because he got walked nearly 38% of the time. That season, Bonds ran a 2.760 OPS after he got ahead in the count 3-0, nearly 300 points beneath Judge.
Here’s the craziest part of the story. Judge has had eight at-bats with a 3-0 count this season. Since 1988, if you set a minimum of eight at-bats with a 3-0 count, he’s second all-time in both slugging and OPS. Who’s in first, and what year did they accomplish this feat? That would be Kyle Tucker, this season. The Houston right fielder, who has been out since June 5 with a mysterious shin contusion that was recently upgraded to a much-less-mysterious full-on fracture, has gotten ahead 3-0 in 20 plate appearances this year. He’s walked 11 times and gone 6-for-9 with five homers and a double. That’s good for a 2.444 slugging percentage.
Once again, the numbers we’re talking about here are minuscule. In the case of Judge, we’re talking about just eight at-bats. He could fly out twice with a 3-0 count tonight, and all of a sudden he’d be a pathetic 5-for-10 with four home runs and every word that I’ve written would be completely irrelevant. (Note to Aaron Judge: Please don’t do this, I beg of you.) But these tiny numbers also speak to kind of numbers Aaron Judge is putting up, again. He’s been so unreal that it’s hard to find a split where he isn’t at the top of the league. The numbers are tiny, but it’s not an accident that he’s found himself in so many 3-0 counts or that he’s walked more than four times out of five once he got there. He’s running a 96th-percentile chase rate and a 100th-percentile hard-hit rate. No wonder we can’t stop bringing up Barry Bonds. Seasons like the one Judge is having don’t come along all that often, so let’s make sure we enjoy ourselves, regardless of the sample size.
Many thanks to FanGraph member Brian Reinhart for suggesting this topic and Stathead’s Katie Sharp for helping me decouple intentional walks from this data where possible.
