Yankees’ Aaron Judge is breaking out of his slump

The Yankees need Judge to bounce back

The answer is yes, and he already has since April. The biggest question within this first question is to what extent will Judge improve? Judge has been around in the MLB for eight-plus seasons (including his 27-game rookie start in 2016). Over that time frame, fans and experts alike have witnessed his ability to be a high-volume base hit producer, whether his hits resulted in home runs or not.

Over his record-breaking season in 2022, Judge produced a stellar .311 average. Even prior to that, Judge hit .287 in 2021, .278 in 2018, and .284 over that big AL Rookie of the Year performance in 2017. Though the general rule of thumb in baseball is not to get too caught up about batting average, Judge hasn’t been known to let his hitting slide to such a low degree, even for a power hitter such as himself.

The good news is that Judge has done his homework and worked hard to pull himself out of this mini-slump. In fact, over the month of May so far, Judge is posting a .357 average with a .455 OPB, ten hits, three home runs, and seven RBIs. That’s a great sign, seeing how he struggled early on in April. However, longevity in his success is key, and once Judge gets on a roll, very little tends to slow him down.

Come the All-Star break, we can expect Judge to be back in form with a batting average over .260 and a 20-60+ HR to RBI stat line to marvel at.

What does Judge need to do in order to be better?

Judge isn’t in that big of a slump here and has performed quite well so far throughout the month of May. However, he’s currently struggling with a variety of key aspects of his hitting that should he improve in, would allow him to dominate into the All-Star break and onward.

The first and foremost aspect to understand about Judge’s hitting is that he dominates fastball pitching. But the type of pitches that have been difficult for Judge to hit this season, are breaking and off-speed. In fact, Judge’s batting average against breaking pitches in 65 plate appearances is .182, while he only has a .200 average to show for against off-speed pitches in 12 plate appearances.

As a result, his average against sliders, curveballs, and changeups is .200 or lower, which isn’t a recipe for sustained success in a league that’s home to plenty of breaking and off-speed pitching. To improve that, Judge has to work on his pitch reads and discipline himself to stay back on these types of pitches, which he tends to be early on.

In addition, Judge’s barrel percentage this year is significantly lower than his last two seasons, and that has to improve (even for contact purposes). In 2022, Judge’s barrel percentage was 26.5 while last year he finished with a 27.5 rating. This season in 38 games played, Judge only has a 16.7-barrel percentage, which hurts his exit velocity and launch angle.

Lastly, Judge has to be a bit more aggressive at the plate and for a couple of reasons. To begin with, he’s not taking enough first-pitch swings, and that’s sometimes when pitchers slip up the most with heaters or hangers down the plate. Judge’s first pitch swing percentage was 33.0 last season — this year, he’s only swinging at first pitches 29.4 percent of the time, which isn’t helping his case.

Secondly, Judge has done a nice job refraining from chasing pitches, particularly ones very close or just along the strike zone. That being said, that’s also cost him some painful strikeouts when deciding to leave it to the umpires. It’s key that Judge doesn’t expand the strike zone any bigger than it needs to be. However, if he’s going to improve his strikeout rate and up his hitting, Judge will have to go after some of those pitches just around the edges of the strike zone, particularly when he’s dealing with umpires that will call anything close.