Can Aaron Judge Limit Swing-And-Miss this Postseason?
After a disappointing 2022 postseason following his MVP season, Judge is determined to avoid a repeat performance in 2024
Aaron Judge has been one of the best hitters in baseball since his first full major league season in 2017. With 311 home runs in that span and a 2024 season that’s drawn light comparisons to the great Barry Bonds — Judge slugged .701 this year, becoming the first player since Bonds in 2004 to finish a season with a slugging percentage over .700 — he’s more than earned the title of the game’s top hitter.
If there’s any doubt, take a look where he ranks in key Statcast metrics since being welcomed to the show.
That’s a lot of dark red and triple digits. It’s no surprise that the hulking 6’7”, 282-pound slugger is likely cruising to his second AL MVP in three seasons — even with Royals’ shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. racking up 10.4 fWAR compared to Judge’s 11.2.
But there are some deep blue areas on the table, particularly in the K% and Whiff% columns. To his credit, Judge has made progress — his 24.3% K% in 2024 is the lowest of his career. Still, swing-and-miss remains his most glaring weakness, and that vulnerability tends to be magnified in the postseason, especially against elite pitchers willing to pull out all the stops with just weeks left in the season. This has shown in his postseason performance, where he holds a career 108 wRC+ over 198 plate appearances, including a 35 wRC+ in the 2022 postseason (38 plate appearances).
Statcast breaks the strike zone into “attack zones,” and for this study, I’m focusing on the “Chase” zone — the yellow-shaded area in the diagram below.
In 2024, the frequency of chase pitches Judge saw was slightly lower than what he’s faced throughout his postseason career (Chase Pitch % Frequency - 2024: 24% | Postseason: 26.1%). However, Judge has been more likely to chase those pitches in October than during this past regular season. In 2024, he swung at just 14.1% of pitches in the chase zone, but that number jumps to 21.4% in the postseason.
Judge is no more or less likely to swing and miss at chase pitches in the postseason than during the regular season. In the playoffs, he’s missed on 71.7% of the chase pitches he swung at, compared to 72.4% in 2024. The issue isn’t the swing-and-miss rate, it’s the fact that he’s swinging at those pitches more often in the playoffs — that’s where the trouble starts.
Where Judge is most vulnerable to swing-and-miss is on breaking pitches. His highest swinging strike percentages this season come on curveballs (24%) and sliders (17%). Opposing pitchers have read the advance report: attack him with low-breaking balls. No hitter has seen more breaking balls in the low chase zone than Judge this season (205 pitches), and only two batters have faced more low-and-away breaking balls in that zone (133).
Judge has whiffed on all 37 swings against breaking balls thrown in the low chase zone. Still, his Swinging Strike % on these pitches is 18% — about 9 percentage points better than the MLB average (27.3%).
While that’s good compared to the rest of the league, 18% would be Judge’s third-highest swing-and-miss rate on low breaking balls in the chase zone for his career — only 2019 and 2020 were worse.
There are levels to the quality of this kind of pitch, too. I can see why Judge might take a hack at the following pitch given the situation, but ultimately, this is a pitch that’s never really in the strike zone and should be laid off.
Same thing here. Judge might not have actually gone around — I can’t tell from this angle — but giving the 1st base umpire the opportunity to call a strike on a pitch that never enters the zone can’t happen in October.
The following pitch is a really good pitch. It has strike potential as it approaches the plate, then drops out of the zone. I can't fault Judge too much for missing it, but it's definitely a pitch he could do a better job laying off.
Whereas the following pitch is just impossible to lay off.
The following pitch is similar to the first two pitch examples. The ball never enters the strike zone. But this time Judge does a good job of laying off with two strikes.
If Judge can lay off the low breaking ball and keep his swing rate on chase pitches around his 2024 regular season mark rather than his career postseason figure — the Yankees could be hoisting their 28th World Series title this fall.