We’re going to start this piece with a general disclaimer: Aaron Judge is still an excellent MLB hitter. He is also 261 plate appearances into his worst season since 2021, a “mere” five-and-a-half win campaign that saw him finish fourth for AL MVP. We can also all be honest that that is a significant drop from Best Right-Handed Hitter’s Peak In Baseball History, and from a team construction standpoint, that means other guys in the lineup need to pick up those runs that a 200 wRC+ bat would have produced.
So what gives? We know there’s been some pain for the last month or so, as Judge is currently day-to-day with a bone bruise. We’re a third of the way through the season. How much of this regression is based on the fact that he’s 34 now, how much is because of some problems in approach, how much is just more or less bad luck, and how much is the injury affecting him?
The good news is some of this could clear up on its own. One of the things that’s powered Judge in his post-COVID peak has been that he’s hit to his expected levels — he’s never had a 2025 Ben Rice type of year where he should be hitting better than he is, until now. It’s pretty routine stuff by now for an analyst to say “OK, his xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA are all higher than his actual numbers, we should expect an improvement, something back to that 170-175 wRC+ that FanGraphs’ Depth Charts projects for the rest of his season. Good news!”
There’s still a difference between 170, which gets you MVP votes, and 200, which makes it a no-contest. Solving that delta is now our quest, and I worry how much of it comes from the fact that 34 doesn’t play the way it used to. As Judge has set or approached career high after career high over the past five years, the name he keeps bumping up against is Barry Bonds, and while I do think Bonds is one of the three or so most talented hitters to ever play the game, he had a certain degree of pharmaceutical help. I don’t think steroids are some kind of super soldier serum, but the core benefit of helping your body rebuild muscle faster helps extend careers — Bonds’ best seasons were his age 36-39, and I just don’t think that’s in the cards for Judge.
We see this reflected in bat speed, one of those things that does decline as you age. Judge’s swing speed is down a full mile per hour, and the resulting second- and third-order effects are there. One mile isn’t a huge decline, but it leads to a waterfall of decline elsewhere — barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and average exit velocity are all down ticks. Bat speed is also primarily generated by the lower half. If you watch Judge’s swing, so much of his power comes from a pretty flawless weight transfer against baseball’s stiffest front side. This is why I don’t necessarily think the bat speed is going to come back after Judge recovers from this bone bruise.
Here’s where this becomes a problem; Aaron Judge is no longer the best fastball hitter you’ve ever seen. Last year he was +25 in run value against heaters, 2024 +33, and 2022 +32. This is a roughly cumulative stat, but in a third of a season he’s at +3 in 2026. In a world of Cam Schlittlers and Jacob Misiorowskis, hitters have to bring their own velo against ever-climbing fastball speeds. The slower your bat speed, the less damage you can do against higher velocity.
A first glance at that decline in production and particularly the way Judge’s pull rates have increased might make you think he’s cheating on fastballs, starting the hitting chain earlier. I actually don’t think that’s the case here; his pull rate is back over 40 percent, which is seven points higher than last year, but pretty in line with his other two MVP campaigns. The pull rate isn’t the problem; the problem is what the pull rate represents.
This is where I ask, dear reader, to come with me beyond the spreadsheets into something a little murkier. Michael Kay has talked over and over this season how proud Judge is of his 2025 batting title, that he wants to see himself as a complete hitter, not just a slugger. Part of this is Kay needing to be a play-by-play announcer and needing to guide us all through the various, complicated stories that emerge in 162 games; that’s his job. As we journey into the mystical world of psychology though, you have to wonder how much Aaron Judge is trying to decide what kind of hitter he wants to be.
Last year Judge really fell in love with the opposite field. He’s always had plenty of power to center and right, but all those singles and doubles to the other side were what gave him the batting title. Contrast that with 2024, when his pull rates were more in line with what’s happening this year.
It’s worth noting that clutter of singles in the infield hole last year, which was probably a good share of luck in getting that batting title. The main point is how many more hits were to the opposite field, even though Judge was a more productive overall hitter two seasons past. I think this is the first concerning bit of his approach in 2026 — it must be extremely tempting to still be the .331 hitter even as some of the effectiveness against fastballs begins to fade.
The second concerning piece, and I would argue more important one, is this strange passivity he has. He’s taking pitches in the zone at the highest rate since his 2016 disaster debut, taking first pitches at a lower rate than last year, and most concerning to me, taking meatballs at the highest rate again since 2016. Aaron Judge should never be taking a meatball. If you throw a pitch in the heart of the zone against Aaron Judge, you should be forced onto to the IL with a neck strain from how quickly you whip your head around to watch it leave the ballpark. Yet Judge has seen 42 percent of his 2025 pitch total, and has been one-fourth as effective against pitches in the heart of the zone.
In spite of Judge’s strikeout rate climbing over the past few years, he’s whiffing less, when he swings he’s making more contact. He is just not swinging enough, content to give pitchers a 0-1 head start, or allow a 1-1 offering to become a 1-2 hole.
Compare what he was swinging at last year. He wasn’t chopping away at pitches he couldn’t drive — everything is still in the zone. Indeed, the great advantage of being Aaron Judge is if it’s in the zone, you can probably put a charge into it. I don’t want him to become a slapdick slasher but there’s no reason, when you have arguably the most pure power in the integration era, that you should close off so much of the zone. Hell, maybe Judge’s most impactful home run came on a swing way inside:
You’re Aaron Judge, you have power no matter where the ball is. Stop taking the cutter at the thigh mid-in, you can probably get the barrel around on it. Actually not probably, we have almost a decade of evidence that you can turn that into a mistake pitch.
Here’s where we need to separate approach from the injury, and here’s where I think the fact Judge has seemingly played in pain for the last month factors in. Let’s look at that heatmap of 2026 again:
Aaron Judge is hunting for one specific pitch in one specific location, and willing to take on everything else. To me it seems logical that if baseball activities are causing you near-constant discomfort, you’re really going to focus on getting the A-Swing off on The Pitch you want, as opposed to previous seasons where any pitch above the belt could get the A-Swing. This would be the thing I’d be most confident in Judge changing should he be able to return to full health.
So we’re 1,200 words in. What exactly do we have in Aaron Judge?
He’s better than he’s playing now, and that’s without changing anything in his worrisome two-prong approach. I fully expect that if he’s just doing the exact same thing he’s doing, a month from now he’ll be boasting a better overall batting line. A certain amount of this is priced in already; all else equal he should be more productive than he has been.
I think there’s some age-related regression going on, and that in and of itself isn’t really a bad thing. The fun part about regressing from a 10-win, 200 wRC+ player is there’s so much room to catch a root as you slide down. I think we can be more than reasonable and say that even with the tick back in bat speed, Aaron Judge can be what he was in his rookie year — in my opinion the deserved AL MVP, but if nothing else finishing on the podium.
And then there’s this twin killing, the two things that I think are a bit of an anchor around the Captain’s neck, or at least, his swing. He needs to decide on the pull factor, especially if fastballs are getting just a tick too fast. Should that be the case he either needs to focus on getting around sooner, or take advantage of that natural, godlike power and wait on fastballs, to take them the other way with authority. Given that he is seeing fewer fastballs overall this season, I would tend toward the latter strategy; waiting on the heaters and driving them to right will also have you cocked and locked for offspeed or breaking pitches in the zone.
Health will answer the question around his passivity, though. The Yankees preach discipline and controlling the zone and being savages in the box, and Michael Kay will talk a lot about how often Judge is in 3-2 counts, but a 3-2 count in and of itself isn’t a good thing if you’ve let hittable pitches go to get there. An increased aggressiveness is the key to turning Aaron Judge from a damn fine hitter back to the best we’ve ever seen, but we’ll need to wait and see if that’s a philosophy change, or a constraint imposed because of injury.
