New York Yankees super-slugger Aaron Judge continues to round into form, as on Sunday against the Brewers (NYY-MIL GameTracker) he smashed his second home run in as many days. Here’s a look (and listen):
Good acoustics, that. Judge turned around a full-count four-seamer from Tobias Myers and sent it 441 feet. It also left the bat at a hefty 115.9 mph, and as the great Sarah Langs notes that’s the 26th home run of Judge’s career, including the postseason, that left the bat at 115 mph or greater. In the Statcast era, or since 2015, only Judge’s teammate Giancarlo Stanton has more such blasts.
As implied by the “round into form” remark above, Judge endured an uncharacteristic start to the season. As recently as the morning of April 23, Judge was slashing .174/.308/.337. That kind of thing was enough to get him booed on his very own bobblehead day. Likely, though, Judge’s early struggles were a combination of slump-y randomness and a spring training that was interrupted by an abdominal injury. As of Sunday’s homer, he’s now batting .198/.333/.425 with six homers. That’s still far from vintage Judge, but it’s trending in the right direction.
With offseason addition Juan Soto in peak form thus far, a vintage Judge could really jumpstart the attack of the Yankees, who entered Sunday mere percentage points behind the Orioles in the American League East race.
