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Why has Judge Historically Struggled in October?
October 8, 2024
Aaron Judge's struggles in the postseason have been well documented. For one of the best players in the game, the drastic decrease in production when the calendar flips to October is pretty stark. I tried to look at Statcast data from the past seven years to get an idea of what makes Judge's performance different in the playoffs compared to the regular season. While I'm only really looking at a very narrow scope of statistics and player metrics, I still found some pretty interesting trends. These may mean nothing but maybe they are worth pointing out just to get a better idea of his performance. Even though Judge has been in the league since 2016, his playoff sample size is still pretty small compared to the regular season (obviously). Just keep that in mind as you look through these graphs.
( in the table below, Pcount is the number of pitches he has seen in the playoffs. Rcount is the number of pitches in the regular season )
Pitches Thrown to Aaron Judge
In these plots we can see the relative differences from Where pitches are targeting Judge in the three pitch types that have yielded the biggest difference in wOBA.
In Judge's three worst pitches based on his wOBA differential, most are being thrown more inside to him.
On sliders, his worst pitch in the playoffs, he is seeing more pitches that end out of the zone.
Judge is getting 2 strike Sliders
The split of pitches that Judge is seeing by count in the playoffs shows two main things. First, pitchers do not want to challenge him with fastballs and 3-0 fastballs are really only thrown to get back in the count.
Second, sliders, sliders, and sliders. Especially with two strikes, sliders are the most common pitch to get Judge to strikeout. Pitchers throw these over and over when they are ahead in the count or even.
Judge's Swings
Again, smaller sample in postseason but his whiffs are much higher in nearly all breaking pitches.
Sweepers and sliders have given him fits.
These graphs look at all of his swinging strikes / all of the pitches he swings at.
Since the sweeper has only been thrown to him 11 times in the playoffs, it is hard to use that for a meaningful comparison, but still important to show.
His 4 Seam Fastball whiffs are nearly identical which means he may not be missing these, but just not getting the contact he is used to.
The first table tells us what we all probably know...pitchers have more spin and better stuff in October!
The overlay to the right shows the types of pitches that Judge is seeing in each count. Again, it should not be a surprise that he is getting better pitches from better pitchers. But here are a few thoughts:
The spin rates across the board have increased.
The most interesting counts for me are when the pitcher is in control and with two strikes. (0-2 , 1-2) Pitchers are using much more spin on Judge when they have the leverage AND a buffer. Without the buffer (like a 2-2 or even 3-2), the spin is up but not as dramatically.
The 3-1 and 2-0 counts also stick out. In these relative "hitter-friendly" counts, pitchers attack 99 with more spin and it might be working.
Now we are going to look at some of his swing data. Since the bat tracking data has only been publicly available this season, the sample is too small to make any real conclusions. But here we can see where Judge's first two games differ from the regular season.
First, we need to set up the strike zone (seen below). The picture below shows the zone from the catcher's perspective with the numbers signifying "zones." The right handed hitter standing in would see that zones 1, 4, 7, 11, and 13 are all inside pitches.
With the low quantity in the data, some of the swings in zones that have one or two pitches this postseason is so miniscule that they do not show well. But if we focus on what we can see, there are some takeaways: ▼ ▼ ▼ ▼
Zones 5 and 6 are where Judge should mash. He crushes middle-middle pitches like no one in the game (1.368 SLG in Zone 5 this year), but his swings have been much shorter than they were in the regular season. He may be swinging a fraction too early, which is both causing the short swing and lack of damage in these zones.
For Zone 7, the opposite is true. For a pitch that is "down and in" on him, the first couple of games have shown that he is a little late on these pitches. Maybe that is why pitchers continue to attack him there.
Takeaways:
If we think that the data here is sufficient to offer Judge some tips (which it is not, and he's one of the best players in the game, and who am I), here is what I would suggest...
Know where and how they are targeting you. They are looking to get to you on the inner third of the plate and make you chase low with breaking pitches. The set up with the hard and in fastball allows for the slower slider to drop out of the zone.
Sliders are their bread and butter. Many pitchers are throwing sliders knowing that they will get you to swing or that they will miss the zone. They are content in that. Best case, they strike you out. Worst case, you stand on first after talking 4 balls. There are fewer pitches for the taking that they will let you do damage on. Keep a strong eye in 2 strike counts, especially if they have a pitch or two to work with.
Uptick in spin. You know this, but pitchers are throwing harder and better in October. You are seeing their best stuff every night and every inning. Jump on your opportunities with the fast balls and be patient with those breaking pitches. That said, know that your "A-swing", especially out and over the middle of the plate is still good enough to do damage. Have a short memory on each pitch and be ready to hit that.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Read up on my recent Biomechanics and Computer Vision research (such a cool field)!
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