Thus far, the Yankees are very much for real, though that wasn’t much in question coming into the season. Their star player, Aaron Judge, is also legitimate, proven by a starter’s spot for the American League All-Stars and a plethora of standard and advanced statistics.

While the majority of Yankees fans likely didn’t doubt Judge’s legitimacy coming into 2018, the question of whether Judge was really this good definitely came up. The question’s answer? So far, not so much.

I think an underrated storyline this season has been “Aaron Judge is actually this good”

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) July 3, 2018

I stumbled over this Cespedes Family BBQ tweet the other day and thought “huh, I really haven’t seen much chatter on this.” Well, here is some.

Entering Monday night, Judge has hit 25 homers (2nd in baseball), slugged .572 (8th), has a Statcast hard hit percentage of 48.3 percent (4th), a 4.39 BWARP (5th), 4.6 fWAR (5th) and 5.0 bWAR (9th). By all measures, he’s replicating his breakout 2017 season pretty well.

If we really want to be nit-picky, his counting numbers are a hint down from last year’s. And most projection systems believe his final statistics may be slightly less impressive than his numbers from 2017. But the decrease is like going from the average Barry Bonds season to that of Miguel Cabrera. Yes, there’s a decrease in output, but it’s minuscule enough that it doesn’t change who the player is. Judge unquestionably remains a top-10 hitter, if not player, in baseball.

And nearly every sign points for Judge to continue this type of performance. Like last season, Judge’s hits fall among the league’s top one percent in exit velocity, barrel percentage, and hard-hit rate. He’s actually hitting the ball harder in terms of exit velocity (96mph) than he did last year (94.9 mph). Judge hits the ball extremely hard and that hasn’t changed.

PECOTA projects Judge’s production to tail off a tad, but to still remain at an elite level. Combining his projections and his to-date stats, Judge would finish with a .268/.382/.546 slash line, 42 homers, 103 RBIs and a 6.5 WARP. For reference, his WARP from last year was 7.3.

Is it really surprising that a 6’7, 282-lb dude who hits the baseball harder than almost anyone ever can repeat a breakout season? No, not really. But to answer the questions posed last year and this offseason, yes, Judge really is this good.

Photo credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports

EJ, Paul, and Derek discuss Gary Sanchez’s groin injury, EJ’s research on Aaron Judge’s strike zone, and whether the Yankees should use an Opener.

EJ’s article on Aaron Judge’s strike zone on BP Bronx.

This umpire bias is unfair and must be corrected. Umpires are human, and will often call pitches wrong. As long as those errors are randomly distributed, luck evens out. When errors are correlated by batter, MLB umpires are systematically punishing that batter.

How much damage is the strike zone doing to Aaron Judge’s performance? After all, he’s got a spiffy .274/.393/.547 batting line (.398 wOBA). I’ve run the numbers, and the answer is clearly: way more than you think.

Like all MLB hitters, Aaron Judge is better when he is ahead in the count. Here are his wOBA splits by count:

It’s hard to believe, but the difference between a called ball and strike on the first pitch is the difference between Aaron Judge hitting like Barry Bonds or Ronald Torreyes. The count has a huge impact on the game. We can calculate the impact of moving between two counts by subtracting the predicted count (if the pitch is called a ball) from the called count (if it is called a strike). So, if the count is 1-1, and a borderline pitch is called a ball, Aaron Judge enjoys a 2-1 count and can be expected to have a 0.463 wOBA.  If the pitch is called a strike, Aaron Judge is stuck with a 1-2 count and an expected wOBA of 0.270. The impact of the called strike is thus 0.193 wOBA.

What is the total impact of 74 fewer called strikes in 2018 on Aaron Judge? To do this, we need to do the same difference exercise and distribute it over the total counts that Judge has seen. For example, Judge has come to the plate 338 times, so he has had 338 opportunities to move to either a 1-0 or 0-1 pitch by a called strike. However, he has seen only 56 0-2 counts, so he has had only 56 opportunities to move to either a 1-2 count or 0-3 strikeout by a called strike.

I’ve done the math, so you don’t have to:

Aaron Judge has a 0.403 wOBA so far this season. If Aaron Judge has seen 72 additional called strikes than the average batter, and each called strike on average is worth 0.233 points of wOBA, Aaron Judge’s total wOBA should be 0.05 points higher, or 0.453. If you think that Aaron Judge has seen fewer than 72

These results estimate a massive impact on Aaron Judge and the Yankees. Judge is having a strong All-Star-caliber season with his 0.403 wOBA. However, he should be having an all-time great offensive season on the level of 2018 Mike Trout or Mookie Betts.

In fact, the results may underestimate the impact of umpire bias. Pitchers strategically pitch Aaron Judge low. Part of this behavior may be caused by how Aaron Judge is deadly on high pitches. However, part of it is likely caused by pitchers knowing that they can shade Judge a little bit low and still get called strikes. Furthermore, it doesn’t account for pitches where Judge swings at a low pitch knowing that it has a higher probability of being called a strike than other low pitches, or overall swing changes that Judge makes to adjust to the distribution of pitches he sees.

Either way, these results are outrageous. MLB’s umpires are kneecapping one of the game’s best hitters. While I’ve seen no evidence that they are doing so intentionally (nor reason to believe they consciously would), I’ve also seen no evidence that they are working to correct their errors. In fact, Judge’s strike zone expanded from 2017 to 2018.

The Yankees and Aaron Judge haven’t made a big public stink about this problem. How could they? Both would risk retaliation from umpires defending their territory. Only MLB can step in and fix this problem. Fans and the media should make a stink for them because baseball is being denied the dominance of one of its best hitters because umpires aren’t adjusting to an abnormally tall player.

Notes:

(1) All Statcast data as of 6/25/2018, all other data as of 6/26/2018. The differences should be negligible.

(2) I use wOBA here for ease of comparison to other data, rather than BP’s True Average. The results should be similar.

(3) I assume 72 extra called strikes for Aaron Judge due to umpire bias, but it is possible that Aaron Judge’s height creates a slightly smaller borderline pitch area than other players (instead of 2.9%, some larger proportion of pitches should be called a strike for Judge versus the average player).

(4) Called strike data are from Statcast. wOBA splits are from Fangraphs. PA% is from Baseball Reference splits.

(5) Called strikes that result in a strikeout are assigned a wOBA of zero. Called balls that result in a walk are assigned 0.69 wOBA, per the Fangraphs glossary.

(6) It’s worth noting that additional called strikes against Judge are driven overwhelmingly by pitches thrown in the strike zone according to Statcast. These are frequently called balls incorrectly by umpires for most batters. Judge gets fewer inaccurate calls in this zone. Thus, the zone is larger for Judge than other players. However, this is because umpires are more accurate for Judge than other players. The result is still unfair since the strike zone should be the same for all players.

(6) Here, I assume that over-called strikes against Aaron Judge are randomly distributed during his PAs. It is plausible to assume that the bias might be asymmetric (when Judge is ahead, more strikes get called, when Judge is behind, fewer) or that low pitches come during different counts, but for mathematical simplicity, I do not make this adjustment.

(7) These results aren’t peer-reviewed, so I’ve created a Google Sheet with all of my calculations here. I encourage people to check my math. If you prefer different assumptions about the number of extra called strikes, you can change that assumption in the spreadsheet and report different results.

(8) BR’s splits do not allow me to estimate repeated counts in one plate appearances with the same count (two-strike counts after foul balls), so the PA% column underestimates the proportion of times Judge has seen those counts. Given the huge differences between a called strike and ball in a 2-strike count, this likely results in an underestimation of the impact of called strikes on Judge’s performance.

Photo credit: Kim Klement / USA TODAY Sports

We all know the stats. Judge was a superstar in 2017: .284/.422/.627, .443 xwOBA, etc. Judge broke out after years of solid but unspectacular performance in the minor leagues. He showed no signs to reverting back to his previous form in 2017, but the risk was always there. Judge could have turned back into a pumpkin, become a player closer to Joey Gallo or Adam Dunn than peak Jose Bautista, or continued to be dominant.

Early returns suggest he’s going to continue to be dominant. Judge is hitting .333/.462/.595. with an even better .479 xwOBA and 25% strikeout rate. Judge not only looks dominant, but he looks like the dominant version of himself from 2017. His elite season-long performance included a prolonged slump in July and August. During that time, his strikeout rate rose way up to 35%, and Judge looked very Gallo-y. He recovered in September by hitting a disgusting number of home runs, but the strikeouts remained.

In fact, Judge’s 25% strikeout rate is a huge improvement on even his 2017 first half rate of 30%. He’s leading the league (again) in Statcast’s barrels per plate appearance. Instead of peak Jose Bautista, he’s performing like peak Mark McGwire. That’s pretty darn special.

Ultimately, all of the other bad news is small potatoes. Minor injuries heal, and the Yankees can find replacement relief pitchers. Aaron Judge is still a superstar, despite some real doubts that he’d continue to be a superstar.

Oh yeah, he also put Joe Kelly in a headlock. We’ll always have that.

Quite simply, they performed exactly as expected. Judge had a pretty good day. Sanchez added just the one RBI double. Stanton carried the load and was the indisputable offensive star of the game. Rarely will all three of them be outstanding at the same time, but with three hitters as gifted as they are, one of them will probably do something special on any given night. Sometimes, the simple act of getting on base is special enough. In 2017, their OBP were as follows:

Each is pretty impressive individually, but collectively they become insurmountable. The opposing pitcher has a greater than 50% chance of getting any one of them out, but when they bat consecutively, the pitcher has to retire all three. The chances of getting past them completely unscathed are only 23.6%. Roughly 3 out of 4 times, at least one of them will get on base.

That’s daunting enough as is, but a starting pitcher usually has to get through the batting order more than once. The pitcher has just a 5.6% chance of facing Judge/Stanton/Sanchez twice and recording 6 outs. If the pitcher is having a particularly good day, he might have to face them a third time. In that case, he’s only got a 1.3% chance of retiring them three times each!

Against a right-handed starter, manager Aaron Boone will probably split them up in the lineup. However, Opening Day was a special case. J. A. Happ, the Blue Jays starting pitcher, is a lefty. Assuming the trio will bat consecutively mostly against lefties, we should use their OBP vs. LHP to determine their odds of success:

As expected, all of them were even better against southpaws last season. Judge and Sanchez saw a minor jump in OBP, but Stanton improved 76 points!

Using their OBP vs. LHP, the opposing pitcher has a 20.0% chance of getting them all out one time, a 4.0% chance of doing it twice, and just a 0.8% chance of getting them to go 0-9!

Out of the 162 games the Yankees will play in any given season, they’ll face a lefty starting pitcher probably 30-40 times. Those pitchers will each have less than 1/100 odds of retiring the side against Judge/Stanton/Sanchez three times in a game. At that rate, it might happen just once between now and the end of the 2020 season. Judge and Sanchez won’t become free agents until at least 2023 and Stanton’s contract is guaranteed through 2027. Barring trades or injuries, opposing LHP will have plenty more chances to face them, but their odds of success are insanely long.

Photo credit: Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports

Here’s the case to bat him leadoff:

1. Aaron Judge draws a ton of walks, creating a high OBP, creating RBI opportunities
2. Aaron Judge kills baseballs, so lineup protection could force pitchers to throw him strikes
3. Aaron Judge is the best hitter on the Yankees, so he should receive the most plate appearances

These are all valid arguments. However, #1 and #2 also apply to batting Aaron Judge in the second spot, and #3 is pretty close. #2 hitters receive on average 18 fewer plate appearances over 162 games than #1 hitters. The arguments against batting Aaron Judge leadoff:

1. Home runs are more valuable when runners are on base. Aaron Judge will never have anyone on base in the first inning and will have the bottom of the lineup in front of him in other innings
2. It is difficult to construct a lineup where Gary Sanchez or Giancarlo Stanton will see most of Judge’s walks while also balancing the lefty/righty lineup.

The Yankees appear to be trying out the following lineup:

1. Aaron Judge
2. Giancarlo Stanton
3. Greg Bird
4. Gary Sanchez
5. Aaron Hicks

And compare it to:

1. Aaron Hicks
2. Aaron Judge
3. Greg Bird
4. Giancarlo Stanton
5. Gary Sanchez

The second lineup gives Judge more RBI opportunities, keeps Stanton and Sanchez as lineup protection for Judge, and breaks up the L/R combinations better.

I also don’t want to overplay this point, but there are psychological considerations as well. Aaron Judge is a power hitter. Power hitters don’t hit leadoff. I don’t think we want to mess with the best hitter on the team’s psyche. Hitting second is much less cognitively weird.

It’s mildly surprising that we haven’t seen Judge in left field for any of this camp’s exhibition games. Of course, there are still two more weeks for Judge to get an opportunity, but there doesn’t appear to be any urgency to do so. Although the team hasn’t explicitly given its rationale for Stanton getting live game chances over Judge, there must be some reasoning behind it. So, why have the Yankees made Stanton the apparent alternative in left field? A few things come to mind:

1. Stanton has plenty of experience playing in an expansive outfield corner already.

As we already know, Yankee Stadium’s left field is pretty vast toward left center’s death valley. On the other hand, the park’s right field is quite small. Stanton’s former home field in Miami has a large outfield all around, including Stanton’s natural spot, right field. When it comes to navigating a huge outfield, Stanton has done that already, whereas Judge is accustomed to covering less ground. Point to Stanton.

2. Judge is returning from shoulder surgery, so perhaps it’s best to keep things business as usual for him.

We already know that the Yankees took it slow with Judge’s return, gradually working him back into full activity this spring. Perhaps the team decided that adding another wrinkle to his return was unnecessary, making the choice for Stanton in left an easier call.

3. FRAA, UZR, and DRS all preferred Stanton to Judge in 2017.

Per UZR and DRS last year, Stanton and Judge were virtually even defensively though both gave Stanton the slight nod. FRAA clearly preferred Stanton to Judge. All around, both outfielders are viewed highly for their defensive work, but Stanton’s efforts appear to be a tad better from this standpoint. Obviously, the Yankees didn’t simply look at these three stats and call it a day, but it might have helped a tad.

—

Alright, so there are some pretty good reasons behind the Yankees’ thinking. However, is there evidence that Judge might be the better choice? My opinion is yes. Here’s why:

1. Statcast Metrics prefer Judge.

Even though some of the aforementioned advanced fielding metrics gave a slight nod to Stanton last year, Statcast left little doubt about who was better defensively. Judge beat Stanton in Outs Above Average by a wide margin, clearly grading Judge as an above average fielder, while it pegged Stanton to be a hair below the norm. Much of this is due to Judge making two percent more catches than were expected, meanwhile Stanton stood even.

When it came to difficult plays, Judge outshined Stanton. Stanton didn’t convert one 5 star play, while Judge was able to make two. Both made the same amount of 4 star catches, though Judge had one extra opportunity. Judge had the advantage in two and three star catches soundly. One star catches, or rather easy plays, were practically a tie. Considering how large left field is compared to right field at Yankee Stadium, I’d anticipate more difficult plays occurring in left. That would seem to make Judge better suited there compared to Stanton.

A quick summary of the 5 through 1 star categories:

5* = 0 – 25% catch probability

4* = 26 – 50% catch probability

3* = 51 – 75% catch probability

2* = 76 – 90% catch probability

1* = 91 – 95% catch probability

2. Judge has experience at other outfield positions more recently than Stanton.

As recently as 2016, Judge spent time in both left and center field while in Triple-A. It wasn’t much (63 innings in left, 26 innings in center), but it’s certainly more than Stanton has of late. In fact, since reaching the majors in 2010, Stanton has only one inning under his belt that wasn’t in right field. Considering both players’ recent experience, it seems like Judge would have an easier time transitioning to a new spot.

3. Judge is faster and younger.

This point could be construed as a stretch, considering a 0.2 MPH different in sprint speed is marginal. Furthermore, sprint speed doesn’t account for acceleration (i.e. how long it takes either player to get to their top speed). Still, I think it’s reasonable to give the nod to Judge in terms of athleticism because of the age difference. Judge is three years junior to Stanton, and younger people tend to be quicker than older humans. I don’t think it’s outlandish to think that Judge gets to his maximum running speed quicker than Stanton. Further evidence of this can be found by circling back to the Statcast metrics, which have Judge making tougher catches more frequently than Stanton. Those catches generally require more ground to be covered, so logic would indicate that Judge got to his top speed sooner than Stanton last season in order to make those low probability catches.

—

For all this talk about left field, Gardner can’t be left out. After all, he is expected to be the team’s everyday left fielder while Judge and Stanton mostly split duties between right field and designated hitter. Plus, Gardner has played in at least 145 games every season since 2013, so perhaps who’s in left when he’s not in the lineup won’t be a big factor this season. It sure seems like Stanton will only get a couple dozen games in left field at most, right? Maybe not.

Even though Gardner is very durable, it’s reasonable to think he belongs in a platoon permanently. In the last two years, Gardner has performed much better against right-handers than southpaws.

There’s been no hint that Gardner will predominantly play against righties this season, but it shouldn’t be a surprise if that’show it sorts out. If that’s the case, we should be seeing plenty of Stanton and Judge covering both corners while allowing another right-handed bat in the lineup (Miguel Andujar? Tyler Austin?). With how spring training has gone, it’s clear that Stanton will be the one getting the most reps in left as compared to Judge, if not all of them. It’s not a bad decision, per se, as Stanton is a sturdy fielder in his own regard. It just might not be the best decision.

—

UZR, DRS, and wRC+ splits via Fangraphs.

FRAA via Baseball Prospectus.

Statcast data via Baseball Savant.

(Photo credit: Reinhold Matay | USA TODAY Sports)

Our visual model is the cosine wave. Starting in the positives from square one, it dips below zero into the abyss, only to remerge and reach the same peak it originated at 360 degrees ago. Judge started on cloud nine, fell to cloud negative nine, and heading into the final weekend of 2017’s season, finds himself back where he started.

Narratives surrounding Judge’s slump, for the most part, remain mundane. Find any rolling game log of Judge’s stats and you will observe a gradual peak and subsequent decline for stats like strikeout rate, swing-and-miss rate, with the inverse true for more advanced metrics like Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) and True Average Value (TAv). Industry minds have punted reasoning for Judge’s mid-season valley to an inevitable decline given how impressive the two tails of Judge’s season have been.

But a black hole occupies the space between. So what happened? The story begins with a decision – or lack thereof.

Joe Girardi & Co. – as reported by the Daily News, NJ.com, and New York Post – considered a cortisone shot as an option for the ailing Judge, and for good reason.

“Cortisone shots are pretty amazing – they’ll take an incredibly painful area and reduce it to pain-free. The first cortisone shot I got felt literally like magic – my elbow pain was an 8/10, and as the needle entered, it was immediately down to a 1/10.” Dan Blewett, a former pitcher for the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks and current owner of a baseball academy in Normal, Illinois, admitted to me. Blewett had surgery twice to repair a torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament in his throwing arm, becoming an unfortunate expert on nagging injuries.

“Every team is different as far as the treatments they offer their players, but in crucial times – such as approaching the playoffs – they’ll often do what is necessary to keep a player on the field, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize their overall health.”

Judge’s shoulder remained tattered, mired in a grotesque slump. Shortly after, the public received insight that Judge would rest for multiple days, starting on Monday, August 28. He returned to the Yankees’ lineup as a pinch-hitter during the first half of an August 30 doubleheader, proceeding to to start the nightcap. That same day, reports – like three I linked above – started to emerge. To my knowledge, what doesn’t exist is confirmation that two days of inactivity completely healed his nagging shoulder; a common citation for his midseason void of production.

Travis Swachik, author of industry-leading book Big Data Baseball, does a fantastic job pointing out what changed during this downturn in Judge’s season. More fastballs, higher in the zone, more spin on said pitches, with a developing tendency to pitch Judge off the plate. This is a common adjustment pitchers make against hitters who graduate from “just another guy” to one of the game’s greats. With players of Judge’s size, high-and-tight usually prevents extension of a hitter’s arms and ability to drive the ball. Matt Olson, the Oakland Athletics’ first baseman, is another player with similar deficiencies that I’ve pointed out in the past.

While Judge routinely appears atop hard-hit metric leaderboards, the 25-year-old achieves even more immortality from the size of his strike zone. Mark Simon, an analyst for ESPN, notes not only how large Judge’s zone is, but how umpire tendency towards calling his zone have changed as calendars flip towards 2018. Judge went from seeing more called low strikes to called high strikes after the first two months of the season.

Evolving pitcher approach coupled with umpire adjustment did not provide any bridges for Judge to cross back to relevance. While there is rarely one reason for a hitter’s slump, singling out these changes adds context to Judge’s improvements after his two-day break.

From July 1 through August 27, Judge barreled eight of the 360 four-seam fastballs he saw in 200-plus plate appearances (under three percent). A “barreled” ball is a classification of batted balls that fall in the most beneficial windows of launch angle and exit velocity (Tom Tango is the visionary on this topic). Since Judge’s two-day break – August 28 and 29 – Judge has barreled 16 fastballs in just over 100 plate appearances; nearly half the amount of plate appearances and double the production.

To capture the entirety of Judge’s slump, we can move our July 1 parameter back two months. From May 1 through August 27 – nearly 500 plate appearances – Judge barreled 15 four-seam fastballs.

Nearly five times the amount of plate appearances as his post-break window, and nearly the same level of success. After that break, Judge became a menace against four-seamers.

However, it’s where these barreled fastball were struck that enlightens fans.

The flat, dark-brown line in the gif above are Judge’s 15 barreled fastballs from our large sample of games stretching from May 1 to August 27. This flatter picture morphs to show Judge’s torrid stretch of games in 2017’s final weeks since those two days off.  These barreled fastballs are noticeably higher in the zone compared to our prior period, and rest in the same part of Judge’s zone where pitchers and umpires seemed to collude against the righty earlier in the season.

Judge evolved.

But why are barreled fastballs an indicator of this evolution? For one, if you are barreling a ball its exit velocity exceeds 98 mph, about eight miles per hour above average. To generate that kind of kick off your bat, you need bat speed, especially given knowledge that bat speed provides six times more of an impact on exit velocity than pitch speed. More exit velocity is rarely a detriment for hitters.

If Judge’s bat speed increased during the period subsequent to his two-day break – where he began to barrel more fastballs up in the zone – we are observing a potential reason for his resurgence.

This change in Judge’s results could be the product of mechanical tweaks independent of his health, or Judge could have put his shoulder and other bodily issues behind him during his break in pursuit of productivity.

The essence of hitter analysis is how often changes this material lack one, all-encompassing reason, but that uncertainty provides ample room for theories to emerge.

“The front shoulder is a crucial player in a hitter’s swing. If [Aaron] Judge was having trouble elevating his front shoulder, he’d have trouble getting to pitches up in the zone.” Blewett and I tied our conversation on cortisone shots back to hitting mechanics, with this claim helping to clarify the possibility that Judge’s lack of shoulder health impacted his ability to hit elevated pitches. Among his other ailments from the season’s grind, Judge’s front shoulder remained a central reason for his late-August break.

Unless the Yankees opt for some retrospective transparency on Judge emerging from his slump in the coming weeks, fans will head towards playoff baseball with appreciation for Judge’s rebound, but a dwindling interest in confirming how, or why, he turned the corner. Narratives, like this one, will provide ample food for thought in the meantime, with hopes they corroborate with any revelations.

(Statistics all from open-source platforms BaseballSavant.com, Fangraphs.com, and BrooksBaseball.net. GIF created from graph outputs via BaseballSavant.com. Thanks to Dan Blewett for taking the time to speak with me.)

Photo credit: Ron K. Murray / USA Today

No, it wasn’t because of the Home Run Derby. That explanation – to use one of many terrible workplace buzzwords – is low hanging fruit. We’ve seen writers like Devan Fink of SB Nation’s Beyond the Box Score break apart that myth, leading us to a word wholly foreign to 2017 for the superstar.

Aaron Judge might be in a slump.

I emphasize “might” because other forces have muddied the waters of understanding the problems in Judge’s bat. That force is the Red Sox idea to pitch Judge noticeably different than their predecessors: up in the zone. Whether other teams begin to adopt the same approach will dictate the future of the word “might” in my phrase above.

Here is a handy little GIF comparing heatmaps between all of the pitches Judge saw between June 1st, 2017 and the All-Star break, with the 97 he saw in their most recent series against Boston. Why opt for just over a month’s worth of data instead of the whole season? I wanted to bake in the changes pitchers have already made as Judge’s season has progressed. My intuition is to visualize if the Red Sox actually had a distinct approach, or merely copied a trend from prior to their court date (come on, you knew I was going to sneak one in eventually).

This looks promising. While the heaviest concentration of pitches doesn’t migrate wildly from what Judge faced in our June 1st to All-Star break bucket, there is a clear movement north. Heatmaps like this are indicators of concentration, so while your eye might dismiss anything that isn’t movement in the darkest part – highest frequency – it’s important to look at the surrounding, lighter colored inkblots for a better sense of trends save the obvious. Elevated pitches, particularly those above the belt and slightly away, seems to have been the gameplan for Farrell and company.

Dangerous hitters are often met with breaking balls low and away, as pitchers would rather take their chances with a less threatening bat lower in the lineup. So why would the Red Sox elevate to a hitter like Judge?

That’s a shot of Judge’s whiff rate in our June 1st to All-Star break timeframe. You’ll notice some of the deeper red – higher whiff rates – find themselves up in the zone. From the looks of it, the Red Sox saw where Judge was struggling recently, and said, “Hey, we bet you can’t adjust.” It turns out they were right.

Actually, that claim may have seen its knees buckle if it wasn’t for Jackie Bradley Jr.’s unbelieveable robbery of Judge late into last Sunday night’s battle. And more importantly, I would have been tasked with adding a clever qualifier to pull out that 417 ft out from our sample if Bradley Jr. was a few inches shorter. Whether the Red Sox determined holes in a player’s swing over small samples actually are predictive is beside the point; their approach worked.

Let’s pay some attention to another aspect of the Red Sox’s philosophy employed to stymie Judge. Not only were they elevating pitches, but their staff made sure to lean on fastballs even when they weren’t living at the letters. The phrase, “Challenge him with a fastball,” veered from use on a scattered basis, to use in every Judge at-bat.

Only 11 total pitches – roughly 13% – of what Judge saw over the weekend were classified as offspeed; for what it’s worth they were all sliders. The other 87%? 62% four-seamers and 25% two-seamers. Compared to the same bucket from earlier in this column that took us to the All-Star break, Judge saw only about 53% mixed fastballs, a 35% increase. It’s hard to believe the Red Sox merely stumbled into an approach that stands out both visually and statistically. Premeditation is one of the intangible keys to pitching, and I’d venture a guess this idea was championed by a Red Sox who logs a lot of clicks on BrooksBaseball.net in their free time.

In wondering if the Red Sox’s model would become the norm moving forward – like a similar theory did to combat Mike Trout early in his career – the Twins provide our first indicator that teams may not have taken notice.

Below I’ve taken the GIF from above and added a third heatmap to the end. It shows all 46 pitches Judge saw against the Twins in their mid-July series. While the Red Sox’s model continues to distance itself from others, it confounds whether their model was actually more effective, or if Judge is in fact in a slump.

Minnesota opted for a much more perplexing approach, yet it didn’t prove substantially less effective. With the Twins living inside and over the plate – both, on the surface, seem like terrible ideas – Judge was 2 for 8 with two singles and two walks. Not nearly as disappointing as the 1 for 18 against the Red Sox, but not exactly breaking out of a rut. This group of pitches from the Twins’ staff is somewhat deceptive because it’s such a small sample, so while I’d like to conclude that the Red Sox’s Model is how you should pitch Judge, we’re going to need a bigger post-Red Sox sample before drawing any profound conclusions.

What we can conclude is that the Red Sox did pitch Judge differently than the month prior, and while correlation isn’t necessarily causation, I subjectively think it may have had some effect when combined with the context of Judge’s recent whiff rate up in the zone. While the Twins’ didn’t follow suit in terms of focusing on pitches hard and up, whether the Mariners will adopt the philosophy in their coming series remains to be seen.

The most valuable evidence to support the effectiveness of the Red Sox model is to see Judge revert back to his early-season self, while the Mariners either adopt the Twins’ perplexing pitch distribution, or assimilate themselves to the June 1st to the All-Star break bucket. Or they can go full Red Sox on Judge and prey on his eye-level temptations, and see if the model holds more water than a small-sample skeptic might think.

Judge has the hardest hit ball of the Statcast era, the longest home run of the season, the most home runs in the majors, everything in that chart above; the list goes on and on. Yet two of the more widely referenced stats when it comes to regression – HR/FB% and particularly BABIP – currently hold Judge well above the rest of the pack. His BABIP is .420 (26 points higher than Miguel Sano, second highest), with a HR/FB% of 41.3% (8.4% higher than Cody Bellinger, second best) heading into Tuesday night’s action.

It may seem irrational, but for one of the first times in my memory, I’m heavily perplexed by how much I should put in projection systems looking towards what Aaron Judge will do by season’s end. Boiling this argument down to the most rudimentary, non-statistical language I can; if we haven’t seen Judge’s batted-ball accomplishments before, how are we to believe that a projection system of historical data, can effectively factor in the feats in guesses at Judge’s average or slugging percentage? If it believes in the smoothing of perceived “outliers,” what happens if the 6’7″ Judge is simply going to hit baseballs this far and hard for the rest of the season, and perhaps, his career?

As we understand it, exit velocity stabilizes relatively quick for hitters, reliable over 70% after 50 batted ball events – Judge has 169 of such events. In 2016, we saw only one player above 95 mph in terms of average exit velocity. That individual was a free swinging, strikeout-prone player by the name of… Aaron Judge. The closest two samples we have to Judge’s 2017 exit velocity since 2015 are Giancarlo Stanton in 2015 (95.9 mph) and Miguel Sano this season (95.1 mph) — via Baseball Savant. While Stanton and Sano have already achieved unbelievable heights in the exit velocity stratosphere, Judge has done so with an advanced ability to barrel-up baseballs — 5% more than Sano (2017); 1% more than Stanton (2015) — and connect for line drives – roughly 5% more than both Sano (2017) and Stanton (2015). What do we know about line drives? They result in a hit about three times more often than either a fly ball or ground ball. Implying, to some extent, that the crazy high BABIP Judge carries at .420, still has time to come down, but nearly 100 points to the projected .325 level I’ve seen in the industry feels like that “breaking” I talked about way back in paragraph one.

Players with Judge’s 2017 projected .325 BABIP last season include the following…

By now you can instinctively see the difference between Ryan Braun and Jose Abreu, compared to Aaron Judge. The homegrown Yankee talent hits the ball substantially harder and produces more line drives than Braun and Abreu. So why the low BABIP?

It could stem from the one inherent flaw in my optimism regarding Judge; line drive rates take more than a year and a half to stabilize, and we’ve only seen around 300 plate appearances of Judge. Given that in 2016, Judge had a line drive rate of 14% through his very unproductive 95 plate appearances, there is concern that Judge won’t be able to maintain an elite, top-10 BABIP in the league. Contrary is that we’ve heard numerous times Judge is a different hitter. Giving us confidence that reliance on 2016’s now tiny sample isn’t the most astute thing to do. If we take a look at players with over the last three seasons with at least 1500 plate appearances and a BABIP of .350 or better, the 11 names are present through a mix of distinct factors. Six are elite talents: Paul Goldschmidt, J.D. Martinez, Joey Votto, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Freddie Freeman. Three rely on their legs: Starling Marte, Dee Gordon, Lorenzo Cain. One plays in Coors (DJ LeMahieu), and the last is Christian Yelich.

If I split the difference between Judge’s current BABIP and projected BABIP, I’m left with a .373 number that would exceed Paul Goldschmidt’s league-leading .369 from our three year stretch of 2014 to 2016. While it’s easier to bet against this feat over the next two and a half years, an argument in favor of a .370+ BABIP’s possibility hinges on Judge’s exit velocity being legitimate, and the stabilization of his line drive rate around its present 25% mark. Then, I’d have to worry about the other two factors BABIP is notorious for considering, luck and defense, both out of Judge’s control.

All this talk about BABIP and whether Judge can maintain it at an elite level plays into the expectations for his end of season line.

Let’s remind ourselves of what Judge has done to this point in the season and what Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA is thinking might follow suit.

Through June 26th – 26 HR, 59 RBI, .330/.443/.693, 3.8 WARP

PECOTA 50th Percentile, Rest of Season – 16 HR, 48 RBI, .251/.343/.470, 2.2 WARP

PECOTA 90th Percentile, Rest of Season – 21 HR, 64 RBI, .291/.389/.545, 4.3 WARP

Am I betting that Judge’s .330 average continues for the rest of the season? No, but I’m not betting on a .251 average either, even with his swing-and-miss tendencies. I wouldn’t consider a BABIP in the .360-.370 window out of the question, which means independent of a change in luck and defense, Judge’s average can realistically sit in the .280-.290 window without the sky falling. This average is more in line with the 90th percentile projection, but my confidence in his batted ball profile and exit velocity plateauing, with even a minor drop, is more optimistic than any projection system is willing to assume.

I’m more than excited to compare Judge’s rest of season projection above, to what actually occurs from June 27th to October 1st. Maybe Judge is a flash in the pan, or maybe he’s bound to be the Anti-Michael Pineda. Outperforming peripherals and soaking up all the glory that comes with it.