Aaron Judge is the best hitter on the planet. Over the last three seasons combined, he has a 202 wRC+. We’re witnessing one of the best stretches by any hitter in baseball history, full stop. The fact that a player as great as Judge can struggle as much as he did this postseason (113 wRC+ in 64 plate appearances) is telling of how slumps can happen to anybody at any time, regardless of talent. You could chalk it up to randomness, and you’d probably be right, but randomness doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for it.
For example, hitters can find their mechanics out of whack, sometimes with no explanation. When that happens, they look to address the inefficiency and get themselves back on track. Sometimes it’s bad luck, but oftentimes it’s mechanics. Those blips can explain why hitters go through ups and downs. And depending on who you are and what your hitting style is, the fluctuations can be wide.
During the World Series, when Aaron Boone was asked if he thought Judge was pressing at the plate, he made a comment that stuck with me. Boone said, “… it can always be a little bit of a mechanical thing.” It’s not exactly clear if he meant that for Judge specifically or for all hitters, but regardless, I think it illuminates the mindset of players when they work through slumps. Depending on the shape or severity, it usually pushes hitters to get in the cage to figure out what tweak will unlock the best version of themselves. With Judge in particular, any mechanical issues can completely disrupt his bat path. Let me clarify that a bit further.
There are many styles of hitting. You can be the type of hitter who varies body angles a ton to flatten out at the top of the zone and steepen at the bottom. You can be the type who is more handsy with getting to the ball, to the point that you don’t think or care much about how the rest of your body moves in space. Or you can be the type who gets on a steep plane very early in the swing to create a highly positive attack angle both behind home plate and far in front of it. Judge is this third type of hitter, and because of that, he is fully reliant on creating a bat path that gives him a ton of room for error in terms of timing, rather than relying on manipulating his body to make ideal contact. His A-swing focuses on hitting fastballs to the middle of the field — with a deep-to-neutral contact point — and pulling slower pitches by making contact farther out in front. If his mechanics get thrown off, then so does his path, and that can have a downstream impact on his batted ball profile both in terms of elevation and direction.
Luckily for Judge, this rarely happens to him, but when it does, the fluctuations can be drastic. In the first month of 2024, his 115 wRC+ in 141 plate appearances was nearly identical to his postseason mark. Out of his 23 pulled batted balls during that month, only two (!) were fly balls. In the postseason overall, he had three pulled fly balls. This is a trend for him when he gets into ruts – his swing just doesn’t work in an optimal direction. The factors that initiate his woes can vary, but more often than not, the problem that prolongs his slumps when they occur is mechanical.
During Game 5 of the World Series, the FOX broadcast broke down two bad swings by Judge from the postseason. These graphics reveal the source of his slumps when they occur.
Judge’s swing style is completely centered around how he rotates on his back hip. He coils into it and rotates out while tilting his upper body slightly backward to create a steep entry point. It’s the reason why his bat is on a positive attack angle throughout so much of the hitting zone (which is the green area in the second image) and allows him to do so much damage on contact regardless of his timing. If he’s late, he’s still on plane to hit the ball for a line drive. If he’s early, he’s on a perfect upward angle to drive the ball to the pull side. And everything in between works too! But the focus here is about understanding his slumps, so let’s dive into that.
In the first image, you can see the red and yellow arrows initially point more backward than downward, meaning his plane on this swing started too far behind his body. This causes his swing not to maintain a positive attack angle throughout the front part of the hitting zone, putting him in a bad position to turn his barrel over, regardless of the pitch speed or type, and leading to suboptimal contact. The second swing is a little bit better, but he’s still tilted back too much, forcing his swing to take a more circuitous route before getting into the hitting zone on a positive attack angle. A batter’s timing has to be perfect to do damage with swings like these because his bat isn’t on the ideal plan in the hitting zone for as much time. These swings tend to result in the batter just getting under pitches when he makes contact, and that’s what happened with Judge. In the playoffs, Judge flied out 12 times on 31 batted balls. The smallest difference in launch position (angle of upper body and barrel near the point of contact) can cause a big enough change in bat path direction, resulting in high fly balls instead of home runs and doubles. Here are a few clips to help give a visual reference on what some of those swings looked like:
You can see how much he is leaning backward or falling toward the other batter’s box in these swings. That’s where the mechanical inefficiency affecting bat path comes into play. Again, the direction in which he rotates around his back hip is key. The possible fix here is either to change the setup of his base or keep the same setup while cueing a different movement (with the hands, shoulders, etc.). Judge ended up closing up his stance a bit after Game 3 – as Tom Verducci mentioned on the Game 5 broadcast — and he started to turn things around a bit from there. Notably, this is actually the same exact change he made after his struggles in April.
When rotating around the back hip, the front side of your body needs to maintain a position that ensures your upper body doesn’t tilt too much. When you start with your stance open, you have to stride to a position that lets you reach the right balance point in your back hip. It’s pretty easy to feel this out. If you stand up and try to rotate into your back hip with your front foot open, you might fall over because your body isn’t in a good position to reach a balance point. Do the same thing while your front foot is neutral or closed, and you’ll have a stronger connection with your feet to the ground. In the case of Judge, he wasn’t striding to the point where he struck that balance, and his direction was getting thrown off, leading to a bat path that wasn’t covering the entire zone. And even when it was, his bat angles were leading to suboptimal contact.
And to be clear, this isn’t only a thing for Judge. There are a bunch of hitters who have a ton of strength and mobility in their back hip and swing on a similarly steep upward angle. Those hitters will see similar fluctuation, although their highs are not nearly as high, of course.
When managers and hitting coaches say things like “he’s close” or “he’s right there,” it’s because they have an idea of how their players’ swings work and know when they’re only a slight adjustment away. It’d be one thing if Judge was grounding out to the right side a ton or chopping pull-side grounders, but instead, his playoff woes looked nearly identical to other slumps in his career. When he made his adjustment, it all clicked. Unfortunately for the Yankees, that fix happened while they were down three games in the World Series.
