Cleveland's Aaron Judge strategy could be even more effective

When Aaron Judge began the postseason in a 2-for-15 rut, Yankees fans quickly forgot about the megastar’s accomplishments, opting instead to relive the horrors of past Octobers. Because, to that point, Judge had a .756 OPS through 49 postseason games. That’s not awful, but this is Judge we’re talking about, the player who just posted the best single-season wRC+ (218) by a right-handed hitter in MLB history. The standards are higher.

And while Judge has since homered twice — a couple of Ruthian shots to steer the Yankees to the brink of the AL Pennant — he’s not out of the woods just yet. 

In Game 3 of the ALCS, Judge whiffed eight times. That’s the second time he’s swung and missed at eight pitches in a game this postseason, after doing so just twice in the regular season. His single-game season-high is 10 whiffs, when he fanned four times and received a chorus of boos in a 2-0 loss way back on April 20. That was somewhat of a turning point for Judge. He entered the day with a .359 SLG and .682 OPS, and posted a .757 SLG and 1.236 OPS the rest of the way. 

Which is to say: This doesn’t happen to Judge. Except, well, it’s now happened twice in seven games. Something is going on here. 

Judge’s Swing Decisions	Postseason (Ranking, of 59 players with 20+ PA)	Regular Season
Zone%	40.9%	49.5%
Z-Swing%	83.6% (3rd)	66.9%
SwStr%	18.1% (9th)	12.1%
Swing%	51%	42%
O-Swing%	25%	17.7%
Z-Contact	73.7% (54th)	80.3%
O-Contact	36.8% (52nd)	37.7%

In the postseason, all of Judge’s plate discipline metrics have gone backwards. We can easily see that he’s being far more aggressive, which isn’t inherently a bad thing. Some of it is a byproduct of how he’s being pitched — he’s simply getting less pitches to hit, so there’s really no point in letting those pitches go by. He may only get one hittable pitch per at-bat. And he’s shown he has no intention of missing it — his Swing% on In-Zone fastballs, for instance, is 85%. But there are problems here, too. 

We begin in the strike zone. Judge is swinging at anything in the zone, yet he’s running the fifth-worst Z-Contact rate of anyone in the postseason. There’s a pretty obvious reason for that, too — he’s not seeing any fastballs. 

Only two hitters — MJ Melendez and Josh Naylor — have seen fewer four-seam fastballs than Judge, who is seeing them at a 19.5% clip (down from 26.8% in the regular season). Judge was historically good against four-seamers in the regular season: His RV of 34 lapped the competition, with Shohei Ohtani (24) the next closest player. He’s still hitting four-seamers this postseason; he has five hits, with three coming against the four-seamer. (The other two? A home run off Emmanuel Clase — OK, that’s more like Judge — and an infield dribbler off a Kris Bubic slider in the ALDS.) But his chances to mash traditional fastballs are few and far between. 

This is all, of course, correlated. Pitchers can afford to avoid throwing Judge a four-seam fastball because he’s not hitting anything else. He’s chasing once every four pitches — which means he’s not walking — and when he chases, he’s not making contact, either. There are suddenly a lot of ways to get Judge out. Imagine saying that a couple of weeks ago? 

Ironically, Judge has homered off the two best pitchers the Guardians have to offer, in Clase in set-up man Hunter Gaddis. He’s singled off their third best pitcher, Cade Smith. But he hasn’t done anything else against the bevy of other Cleveland arms, and I think that has a whole lot to do with their attack plan. If the Guardians have any shot of erasing a 3-1 series deficit, it’s time for the entire staff to embrace the strategy. 

Four-Seam Fastballs Thrown to Aaron Judge

Hunter Gaddis + Cade Smith — 10 of 19 (53%)

Everyone else — 5 of 31 (16%)

*Excluding Alex Cobb and Emmanuel Clase, who don’t throw four-seam fastballs

Smith and Gaddis wield utterly dominant four-seam fastballs, and yes, a pitcher should maximize his best pitch. For Smith, who throws 70% four-seam fastballs, there’s fewer choices; he’s not going to throw Judge, say, four consecutive split-fingers. But Gaddis, whose best pitch is actually his slider, has another route. And, to his credit, he adjusted. After allowing a home run to Judge in Game 2, Gaddis struck out Judge in Game 4, winning an eight-pitch battle in which he threw just one four-seam fastball, an unhittable pitch near Judge’s eyes. Judge, somehow, fouled it off. But his swing there, as well as his home run on another very high four-seamer from Gaddis in Game 2, reveals a certain comfort. You don’t see that with anything else right now. 

The obvious question here is longevity: How sustainable is this approach? And we’re not just speculating for the Guardians, but for a potential World Series opponent, too. 

The answer? It may be a little more sustainable than you might think, because it’s been done before. Judge’s maiden voyage into the postseason came in 2017,  his rookie season. From 2017-2024, there have been 412 instances of an individual player accumulating 20+ plate appearances in a postseason. Sorting by four-seam fastball percentage, where a higher percentage of four-seam fastballs equates to a higher percentile, here’s where a selection of Judge’s postseasons rank: 

• 2020: 17.9 FA% (3rd percentile) 

• 2017: 18.6 FA% (3rd percentile)

• 2024: 19.5 FA% (4th percentile) 

• 2022: 24.2 FA% (11th percentile) 

And Judge’s performance in those postseasons? It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but none are up to Judge’s caliber. 

• 2020: 72 wRC+

• 2017: 115 wRC+

• 2024: 110 wRC+ 

• 2022: 35 wRC+

Really, it’s all up to Judge. He shouldn’t receive any four-seam fastballs — and certainly not any to hit — until he proves himself capable of hitting something else. Through eight games, he hasn’t. It’s worked in the past, and it’s working again. 

Cleveland’s margin for error in this series is pretty much non-existent. Unless you’re a one-trick pony, why throw Judge a four-seam fastball? This isn’t waving a white flag, either — there are still plenty of ways to get Judge out, whether it’s him chasing a breaking pitch or swinging through an offspeed pitch in the zone. Point being, there’s a roadmap here, and it’s pretty simple: Don’t throw a four-seam fastball, even if you have a good one.