Breaking down what went wrong for Aaron Judge in the postseason

As the Yankees’ feast or famine approach doomed them in the postseason, Aaron Judge was one of the players left extremely hungry.

His season for the ages immediately caved once the playoffs began. Pitchers exposed the flaws in his game, fans’ worship turned to consternation, and the Yankees were forced to grapple with the fact that not only did their best player disappear when they needed him most, but he also might not play another game for them.

One common theory for why Judge was so ineffective during the postseason — he went 5-for-36 (.139) with 15 strikeouts, two walks and three RBI in nine games — was that his pursuit of 62 home runs during the regular season tired him out. Apart from the physical toll that taking such powerful swings has on the human body, Judge also had to be mentally affected by the Beatles-esque attention he garnered, especially during the final two weeks of the season when the record came into focus.

When pressed about the impact that had on him, Judge downplayed the whole ordeal. In his mind, chasing history had no correlation with his dreadful postseason line, which included just one measly single in Houston’s sweep.

“Not at all. I was just out there playing a game,” Judge shot back. “I didn’t really think about [the record] as a toll or a burden. I just tried to take it the same as I did every single other game. When we got to the postseason, the first couple games didn’t go how I’d like, but I felt like I turned it around a little bit. I just didn’t get the results I wanted to. That’s all on me for not stepping up when the team needed it.”

Judge strapped on his typical smile and Jeter-like cadence while answering questions following Game 4. His media-facing personality can come off as a bit indifferent, especially in a situation like this, where he was arguably the biggest reason the Yankees’ offense was so helpless against the Astros. Where many fans would want scorched-earth anger, self-hatred, or vows to be better, Judge was downright deferential to the team that’s ended his postseason run three times now.

“Their pitching staff did their job, and they played great defense. That’s really what it kind of comes down to.”

Even before the American League Championship Series, though, Judge was having issues. His 4-for-20 (.200) line against the Guardians in the Division Series was boosted by two home runs, but he struck out 11 times in those five contests, seven of which came in the first two home games. Cleveland’s pitching staff laid the blueprint for pitching to Judge, and Houston’s executed it even better. While the Astros didn’t have the inflated strikeout total that Cleveland did, they turned Judge into a complete non-factor, holding him to one total base in the entire series.

The name of the game were sliders, sinkers and cutters. Judge saw 86 of those in the postseason (52.5% of the total pitches he faced) and did not register a hit. Cal Quantrill’s cutter got him three times in the ALDS — twice swinging and once looking, all on the outer half of the plate — while Shane Bieber and Triston McKenzie used their sliders for three punchouts. Apart from two mistake pitches that still got a swing and miss, all 15 of the putaway pitches in Judge’s strikeouts were down.

Pitches in the lower third of the strike zone and below were responsible for 123 of Judge’s 175 regular season strikeouts, per Statcast. Pitching a huge right-handed power hitter down in the zone is not exactly a groundbreaking scouting report, but seeing the Guardians and Astros both basically execute it to perfection tells the story of why Judge’s postseason numbers were so grim. Judge also got only four plate appearances against a lefty in the playoffs. One of them ended in a home run when Cleveland reliever Sam Hentges hung a curveball in Game 5, but the other three were against weak contact wizard Framber Valdez, who held Judge hitless.

“Every good team goes through those spells where the ball isn’t falling your way,” Judge said. “Once we got here we just couldn’t capitalize on a couple things and finish the job.”

Showing Judge a conveyor belt of right-handed pitchers — and particularly right-handed sliders that bend away from him — is a very sound strategy. In looking at the down and away portion of the strike zone and the area directly outside it, we find that Judge struck out 25 times on right-handed sliders there in the regular season. He did not register a single extra base hit. With those numbers at their disposal, both Cleveland and Houston flooded him with low and outside sliders — as well as the slider’s high-velocity cousin, the cutter — every single night.

Altogether, he saw 34 low and away sliders and cutters during the postseason, just over 20% of the total pitches Cleveland and Houston threw to him. Five of those struck him out, only two were put in play, and neither of them went for a hit.

“They had an answer for us at every turn,” Judge said of opponents’ pitching continually vanquishing him and his teammates.

This has been the book on Judge for his whole career, dating back to his rookie season in 2017 when he set a then-Yankee record for strikeouts. Getting better at laying off those types of pitches played a huge part in Judge limiting his K’s, but the old habit resurfaced over the last three weeks. Pitchers also refused to give him a fastball when they were ahead in the count and they avoided the top of the strike zone like the plague.

According to Statcast, just seven of the 165 total pitches (4.2%) to Judge in the postseason were in the top strip of the strike zone. Keeping that up into next season and throughout his career will be a challenge. Pitchers make mistakes, after all. But over the course of his nine most recent games, facing two of the best pitching teams in Major League Baseball, Judge was forced to deal almost exclusively in his weaknesses. When no adjustments came and pitchers kept putting the ball where they wanted to, it gave them no reason to stop.

The result was Judge having a postseason that will live in infamy, especially if it’s the last memory Yankee fans have of watching him.

“I really don’t want to sit here and make excuses for what happened,” Judge said of the Bombers’ exit. “It’s a failure.”

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from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/M6rDCRO