Observations on Yankee star Aaron Judge’s postseason struggles; What is the reason?

After Saturday’s 4-2 loss in Game 2 of the World Series, New York Yankees find themselves in a 2-0 series deficit against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Aside from Juan Soto’s solo home run in the third inning, the Yankees offense was quiet until the ninth, when Soto, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled and Anthony Rizzo homered. work at first base. Unfortunately for New York, their captain and regular season MVP, Aaron Judge, seemed lost.

The umpire whiffed on a first-pitcher, watched a 95-mph hitter get called out for a hit up the middle, took the ball out of the zone, then threw the hitter out of the plate for hitting third. He finished the game 0-for-4 with three strikeouts, bringing his postseason total to 6-for-40 (.150) with 19 strikeouts and 1-for-9 (.111) with six strikeouts in the World Series.

The presumptive AL MVP posted historic regular season numbers at age 32, finishing with a .322/.458/.701 slash line and a league-leading 58 home runs in 158 games. So what caused this sharp drop in October? Ultimately, it comes down to two changes in his approach.

Expansion of the impact zone

Pitchers have been trashing him out of the zone all season. While Judge vacated those pitches during the regular season, he’s chasing them now.

In 158 regular season games, Judge was second in the American League in strikeout rate (18.7%), trailing only Juan Soto (18.3%). In 11 postseason games, his rushing rate has risen to 29.3%.

Of greater concern is his drop in tackles. Since the regular season ended, his slugging percentage has gone from 30.7% to an alarming 44.1%, missing 49 of 111 postseason innings. For context, the highest slugging rate during the regular season was 36.4%, recorded by A’s infielder Zach Geloff.

In the regular season, Judge swung and missed on just 12.1% of the pitches he saw. At this point in the World Series, that number has skyrocketed to 32.6%.

Drag-Happy

If you’ve ever watched Judge take batting practice, you’ll notice that he rarely attempts to hit home runs in that setting. With his power, it’s natural. Instead, he focuses on staying locked in and consistently hitting down the line over the second baseman’s head.

However, during games this postseason, Judge has opened up by trying to pull passes into the outer half of the zone, abandoning his usual approach of running the ball the other way. As a result, he repeatedly succumbed to devastating pitches in the outer third, a tactic Dodgers closer Blake Treinen employed late in Game 2.

In the author’s fiction Greg Joyce of the New York Postit was revealed that a key factor in Gleyber Torres’ resurgence after the All-Star break was Gio Urshela’s observation that Torres often overturned and landed to the left side instead of driving the ball to the opposite field, where he had found success in the past .

Torres is still an aggressive hitter, but now that he’s not getting his pitch, he stays patient, walks and passes the baton to the talented hitter behind him, Juan Soto.

Judge showed that ability in his first 158 ​​games this year, so pitchers eventually had to challenge him in the zone. Result? 58 home runs, 144 RBI and a 1.159 OPS.

Even if a referee simplifying his approach like Torres leads to more moves than the heroic wobbles expected of the team’s star player on the biggest stage, it will still help his team’s position to get results. After all, ALCS MVP Giancarlo Stanton is hitting right behind him, waiting to do some damage.