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.

Three and a half years later, it’s safe to say things didn’t go according to plan on either side. Montero played promisingly in 2012, hitting .260 with 15 home runs and 61 RBI’s. Since then he’s split his time between the big league club, the minors, the disabled list, and 50 games on Bud Selig’s naughty list for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. From the Yankees perspective the trade looked even worse as recently as last spring. Pineda missed all of 2012 and 2013 with right shoulder injuries and came into camp last year as a complete mystery. He again spent a good chunk of last year on the shelf with more shoulder injuries and serving a minor suspension for some tomfoolery (the pine tar incidents), but he managed to pitch 76 innings with a 1.89 ERA.

If each player retired on the spot today, we might call this one a draw. But as far as I’ve heard that’s not happening and the Yankees look poised to win the trade over the long haul. Michael Pineda showed a lot of promise last year and is healthy for the moment, while Jesús Montero can’t rid himself of the “AAAA” label on his bat.

Two starts into 2014 and nearing the 100-inning plateau in pinstripes, it seems like as good a time as any to evaluate Michael Pineda. We’ve seen enough from him since his shoulder injuries to get a good idea what type of pitcher he will be as a Yankee. For better or worse, he is not the same guy he was that first summer in Seattle.  So let’s take a trip down memory lane. The year: 2011, the city: Seattle, the music: fitting.

Note: the data included is from Brooks Baseball, a partner of Baseball Prospectus.

Mariner Mike: A Two-Pitch Power Arm

When he broke into the league in 2011 with the Mariners, Michael Pineda pitched like a typical 22-year-old; he relied on what had gotten him there. For Pineda specifically, this meant throwing his fastball and slider, two dominant pitches, almost 95% of the time. He rode these two pitches to a breakout first half (8-5 with a 2.58 ERA on July 4th) and an all-star nod as a rookie.

In Seattle, the four-seam fastball was Pineda’s favorite pitch.  His fastball had great velocity and great tailing movement (in to a righty).  He could throw it in any count against right-handed or left-handed hitters and the subtle, late run on the pitch prevented hitters from squaring it up. Pineda moved it up and down, in and out, ringing up strikeouts and using it to set up his other main offering, the slider.

His hard slider was filthy, especially paired with 95 mph heat at the belt. Batters were flailing all year at the pitch, and for good reason.  It too had fantastic late movement, diving at the foot of left-handed hitters and off the table for right-handed hitters. Batters whiffed at Pineda’s slider an absurd 20% of the time he threw it in 2011. The fastball and slider were his bread and butter, his pasta and marinara, his baa-gel and cream cheese.

Pineda also very occasionally used a changeup to keep hitters honest, though throwing it only 6% of the time kept them about as honest as a Bluth. And the sinkers that PITCHf/x thought it tracked may have just been wild fourseam fastballs, recording only 23 of them all year. I couldn’t locate video of either pitch back then so we’ll have to believe that at best, the changeup was a work in progress.

Relying so heavily on two pitches, no matter how great they are, is a strategy usually reserved for relief pitchers who see only a part of a lineup each game. As a rookie, teams were facing Pineda for the first time and he shoved the fastball-slider combo down their throats, but in the second half he began to struggle. Some combination of better scouting reports, a lack of a third pitch, and general fatigue caught up with Mariner Mike and his ERA jumped up one whole run the last two months of the year.

That being said, there was a lot of promise and strikeout-potential in his young arm, enough to convince the Yankees to acquire him.

2014 Yankee Mike: Less Power, More Refinement

One of the first things I noticed when I saw Pineda pitch his first game in New York last year was how different his stuff looked from what I remembered. In my mind he was a huge dude with a blazing fastball. And he was still a huge dude but the fastball had lost some of its oomph. He was being a lot more precise with his pitches and…wait…was that a cutter?

Mariner Mike reminded me of Joel Zumaya or Fernando Rodney but Yankee Mike reminded me of a much, much larger Dan Haren. Had Michael Pineda become Dan in real life? Had he changed as much as I thought?

Yes! His fastball underwent a sea change during the three years it took him to get on the mound for the Yankees. He no longer threw as hard, didn’t throw his fastball as much, lost almost all of the horizontal run, and his fastball was dropping more than it ever had. Everything about the pitch had fundamentally changed. He became more precise, throwing 3% more strikes with his fastball last year than in 2011 though he wasn’t having as much success with a falling whiff rate. Depending on the situation, Pineda will sometimes even cut his fastball now, something he couldn’t dream of doing in Seattle.

Pineda’s slider in 2014 might have been even filthier than it was back in his Seattle days. He has managed to maintain the velocity right around 85 mph and increased both the drop and sweep on the pitch. His slider is an improved weapon and last year Pineda’s catchers called the pitch nearly 35% of the time. Though the whiff percentage on the pitch has dropped a bit down to 17%, this is likely due to the smaller gap between the fastball and slider velocity.

Despite the numbers in this chart that would suggest otherwise, the changeup has been one of the biggest changes for Michael Pineda since he’s returned to the mound. Last year, before getting suspended and hurt in the middle part of 2014 his changeup was finally becoming a legitimate offering for him. While the movement is no different than it was in Seattle, his confidence in the pitch is growing and this season the trend has continued. Through two starts in 2015 the changeup has been his best pitch.  He’s now throwing changeups almost 15% of the time and getting whiffs over 25% of the time.

What Happened?

The obvious question that this analysis elicits is WTF? Why the Face?  How did Seattle Mike become Yankee Mike? Where did this big drop in velocity come from?  And the answer is pretty equally clear: his shoulder. Pineda has suffered an extraordinary amount of injuries to his pitching shoulder in his young career and is now three years removed on his only completely healthy season. A combination of a chronically injured shoulder and the normal velocity drop that happens as pitchers age is the likely culprit for that velocity drop.

More interesting to me is the change in movement on Pineda’s fastball and slider. I suspect it also relates to his shoulder issues but in a more roundabout way.

It’s pretty well known that arm angles and release points help determine the trajectory of pitches. A pitcher who throws sidearm will naturally have a lot of run on a fastball and a frisbee-like slider (see Brad Ziegler or Pat Neshek). Similarly in order to throw a perfect 12-6 curveball a pitcher needs to throw more-or-less over the top.

Michael Pineda nearly eliminated the run on his fastball, adding the ability to throw a near-cutter and added a lot of horizontal movement on his slider the same way. I suspected that this change came as a result of a more over the top motion and vertical release point. Thanks to one of the coolest features of Brooks Baseball, I was able to put my hypothesis to the test.

Since coming to the Yankees and recovering from shoulder injuries, Pineda’s release point changed quite drastically. He now throws nearly a quarter of a foot more overhead and similarly closer to the body, most likely to relieve some stress he naturally put on his shoulder from his old arm slot. This change in release point could very well explain the change in movement we’ve seen on his pitches with the Yankees.

The Outlook

Yankee Mike is a much smarter pitcher than Mariner Mike. This at-bat with Chris Davis from his start on April 13th shows he’s mixing up his offerings better and using more creativity to make up for a loss in fastball velocity. Whether his newfound refinement is an improvement on his “here try to hit this” Seattle style remains to be seen, as does his health. But it is clear that he will be a key player for the Yankees in 2015 and if he keeps improving can be the best pitcher on the team.