That thought crossed Los Angeles Angels reliever Hans Crouse’s mind shortly after the ball left his hand at 92.3 mph last week and the ensuing drive flew off the bat of New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge at 104.6 mph.
“What went through my mind when he hit the ball,” Crouse said, “was, ‘Yeah, that ball is about 20 rows deep.’”
Crouse had reason to despair. He had made the worst mistake a pitcher can make against a batter. “Given him a fastball,” Crouse said. “I definitely gave him one.” And he had made that mistake against Judge, a batter so fearsome that opposing managers have decided to capitulate and simply give him first base rather than risk the wrath of his hitting.
Unlike many of his peers, Crouse got a reprieve this summer. The baseball hung in the overcast sky above Yankee Stadium. “I guess I was lucky the weather was bad,” Crouse said. “On a normal day, that ball would be gone.” Instead, it landed in the left fielder’s glove. Crouse joined an increasingly exclusive club: pitchers who faced Aaron Judge this summer and emerged unscathed.
When Judge returned to the plate two innings later, Angels manager Ron Washington had seen enough. He ordered an intentional walk with two outs and the bases empty. As he did toward the end of 2022, Judge has begun receiving treatments not seen on batters since Barry Bonds terrorized the National League 20 years ago. Since a sluggish April, Judge has reestablished himself as the game’s best hitter and the favorite to win the American League MVP. He entered Monday leading the game in home runs (42), RBIs (106) and OPS (1.161). He hit his 42nd home run on Sunday against the Texas Rangers, capping a nine-game home run streak in which he has homered three times, scored nine runs and reached base 25 times.
On the cusp of reaching 300 career home runs, Judge is on a plane that has been empty since Bonds’s peak. Judge entered Monday’s series against the Chicago White Sox with a 218 wRC+, an all-encompassing metric that measures a player’s overall offensive value. Since 1968, only three players have completed a 162-game season with a wRC+ above 200. Mark McGwire eclipsed that barrier in 1998, the year he broke Roger Maris’ career home run record. Bonds did it four times, from 2001 to 2004. Judge is on pace to do it a second time, which would surpass his 2022 season, in which he hit 62 homers and finished with a 209 wRC+.
“Every now and then I try to remind myself what I’m going to see out there, what he’s been able to do,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “And just the player and the hitter that he’s become.”
During that final home game, Judge took 12 walks, six of them intentional. Toward the end of a series against the Toronto Blue Jays in early August, manager John Schneider opted to say the silent part out loud. Rather than pitch cautiously to the outfielder, Schneider authorized three intentional walks after Judge hit a home run in his first at-bat of the final series.
“I honestly didn’t want to see him swing,” Schneider said afterward. “He’s in a different category than anybody else in the league, where he can turn the script of a game around with one swing.”
Judge currently leads the sport in multiple categories and is the favorite to take home the American League MVP award. (Adam Hunger/Getty Images)
Judge presents pitchers with a puzzle without an easy solution. He has the strength to make mistakes, the agility to ruin good pitches and the discipline to ignore deceptive ones. He can be vulnerable to balls that go down and away, but if the pitcher’s control wavers, the ball can go straight into his wheelhouse. Earlier in the season, Judge adjusted his stance so that his front foot began to move closer to his back foot, an adjustment designed to combat pitchers on the other side of the plate. Crouse described Judge’s plate coverage as “insane.” “He’s just so big,” added Angels pitcher Davis Daniel. “He can reach everything.”
He forces opponents to lower their expectations. A day after Judge collected three hits and three walks in a doubleheader against the Angels, Daniel noted that he felt the club had overpowered him. “When someone is stuck like that, you have to limit the damage,” Daniel said. “Keep him in the ballpark. Keep him on singles. That’s all you can do.”
Or you could watch the dugout for a signal from your manager for a free pass. The strategy tests Judge’s patience and could leave him rusty come October. Judge is hitting .139 in the 2022 postseason after accepting eight intentional walks in September. How many hittable offerings he receives the rest of the season could depend on the performance of the other hitters in the lineup, including rookie catcher Austin Wells and returning slugger Giancarlo Stanton.
“I try not to think about it,” Judge said. “I get on base. Hopefully the guys behind me do their thing.”
One of the architects of the Bonds Treatment visited the Bronx this weekend. In 2001, when Bonds broke McGwire’s record with 73 homers, Bruce Bochy was the manager of the San Diego Padres. Bonds took Padres pitchers deep 11 times, more than any other opponent. Over the next two seasons, Bochy gave Bonds 23 intentional walks, more than any other team in any given year. By 2004, the rest of the game had caught on. Bonds allowed 120 intentional walks, surpassing his 2002 record of 68.
“I probably should have done it with Bonds a little more often,” Bochy said. “He hit more home runs off me than anybody else.”
Bochy, now manager of the Rangers, didn’t take his own advice in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader. Judge singled off Nathan Eovaldi in his first at-bat. The next time he batted, he singled again. For his third at-bat, he came to bat with one out and runners on first and second. Instead of loading the bases for Wells, Bochy assigned reliever Brock Burke to Judge. After falling to a 2-0 count, Judge faced nine pitches and hit the last one for an RBI double.
On Sunday, after Judge had singled in his first two at-bats, Bochy tried a different approach. He intentionally walked Judge in the fifth inning to put two runners on base. Stanton responded with a 114.9-mph liner into the left-field seats. Judge enjoyed watching a teammate make an opposing player pay for avoiding him, because “it’s always a little sweeter when you can get through to those spots,” he said. Stanton, a former home run champion in his own eyes, brushed off the perceived disrespect.
It’s party time in the Bronx! Aaron Judge is getting down! photo.twitter.com/WT4LkNroac
—MLB (@MLB) August 11, 2024
“He’s an all-time talent,” Stanton said. “If that happens, I’ve got to do what happened today — to keep it from happening.”
Two innings later, Judge took his final at-bat of the weekend against Rangers reliever Andrew Chafin. Like Crouse a few days earlier, Chafin hit a fastball. Unlike a few days earlier, the sun was blazing over the ballpark. Judge extended his arms and hit the ball on the outer half of the plate. The baseball cleared the right-center fence and landed a half-dozen rows deep.
(Photo by Aaron Judge: Adam Hunger/Getty Images)
