Visualizing Aaron Judge's Swing Development

Adding visuals to an interesting article on The Athletic

Chris Kirschner of The Athletic came out with an interesting piece on the evolution of Aaron Judge’s swing from his first 95 plate appearances in 2016 to the MVP caliber slugger he is today.

Judge’s personal hitting instructor, Richard Schenck, had this to say of Judge’s swing when the two first met, “His swing was terrible. He had an amateur swing. He was a good athlete but couldn’t get his barrel up to speed quickly. That’s what you need to do in order to hit. That’s what we worked on. Initially, I wasn’t impressed with his swing.”

For reference here is Judge’s swing in 2016.

But halfway through their training, Schenck began to see the transformation take place.

“Before the 2017 season began, Judge and Schenck held 23 sessions, each lasting between 40 minutes to an hour. About halfway through their training, Schenck noticed significant progress in Judge’s swing. He observed that Judge was beginning to snap the barrel backward instead of pushing it forward, a fundamental principle of Schenck’s teaching. This adjustment leads to a powerful stretch between the snap of the barrel and a hitter’s rear leg, marking the point where their hard work began to translate onto the field.”

You can see the swing differences in terms of “pushing” the barrel forward of the 2016 swing and snapping the barrel backwards in the following 2024 swing.

Here are just the swings to better differentiate between the two.

Judge’s load is quieter and his hands are faster to get the bat through the zone.