NEW YORK — Ned Yost is not the kind of manager who dwells on statistics. Two years ago, his Kansas City Royals had the fewest strikeouts in the majors and won the World Series. Hitting for contact was in.
Yet as Yost leafed through the daily stats pack in a Yankee Stadium office Monday morning, he rejected the idea that strikeouts might be a problem for Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees’ rookie slugger.
In a few hours, Judge would tie and then break the major league record for homers by a rookie, ending the day with 50, one more than Mark McGwire hit for Oakland in 1987. So what if four times as many Judge at-bats have ended with strike three?
“A lot of times I wish we would strike out,” said Yost, whose hitters lead the majors in grounding into double plays. “The things that I look at, he’s got 202 strikeouts, but he’s also got almost 120 walks. His on-base is over .400. I don’t care about the strikeouts. Give me everything else.”
Judge offers so much else that he should now be the front-runner for the American League Most Valuable Player Award. Only one American League player has a higher on-base plus slugging percentage: Mike Trout, the two-time Most Valuable Player for the Los Angeles Angels who missed more than six weeks this season with an injury.
Judge leads the league in runs scored while hitting .283 with 105 RBIs, but here is the biggest reason he should win: Nobody plays the modern game better. Besides his two homers in Monday’s 11-3 rout, Judge added his 120th walk and his 203rd strikeout. His homers, walks and strikeouts lead the AL. In his first full major league season, Judge has become the manifestation of the game in 2017.
Major League Baseball has set a single-season record for total home runs, as strikeout and walk rates continue to rise. Plate discipline, launch angle, exit velocity. Patience, power, production. That is baseball today.
“When we left spring training,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, “I said, ‘If he gets the barrel of the bat to the ball, he’s going to do a lot of damage — and if he does it on a consistent basis, he’s going to have a huge year for us.
“And that’s what he’s done. You can talk about the home runs, the runs, the RBIs, the walks, the defense, the base-running — over and over, he’s a complete player.”
There has never been a player who strikes out so much yet makes up for it so emphatically. Only five other players have struck out 200 times in a season: Mark Reynolds (three times), Chris Carter and Chris Davis (twice each), Adam Dunn and Drew Stubbs. In one of those seasons, Davis placed 14th in the MVP race. That is the highest finish ever by a player with at least 200 strikeouts.
Judge reached the All-Star Game break hitting .329, but he wobbled when the season resumed. He entered September with a .179 average since the break, precisely his average in a cameo with the Yankees last summer. That mark was so embarrassing, Judge has acknowledged, that it fueled his workouts last winter.
Repeating that performance in the second half of this season has not worried him, Judge insists, because he had already shown what he could achieve. Soon enough, teammates told him, he would be that superstar again. Judge kept wearing down pitchers, even without much to show for it.
“When you’re going through slumps and you’re struggling, sometimes players become overanxious,” Girardi said. “And he was able to maintain a sense of what he needed to do, that he needed to remain patient and look for his pitch.”
From July 14 through Aug. 31, Judge hit only seven homers to go with that .179 average. But his on-base percentage was respectable, at .346. He may have been more bothered by a shoulder ailment than he let on, and he deflected a question about it Monday. His September performance — a .307 average, a .444 on-base percentage and 13 homers, the most he has hit in any month — is evidence of the revival teammates expected.
When Judge broke McGwire’s record Monday, with a blast to deep left center off Trevor Cahill in the seventh inning, the fans gave him his first curtain call. Judge said he had never gotten one before — not in high school, not at Fresno State, not in the minors.
He seemed a little sheepish about it — he didn’t want to interrupt the game — but the recognition was overdue. Only four other Yankees have hit 50 home runs in a season: Babe Ruth (four times), Mickey Mantle (twice), Roger Maris and Alex Rodriguez.
“Looking back at the history of the Yankees and all the greats that have put on the pinstripes, it’s extraordinary,” Judge said. “Just getting a chance to play one game with the Yankees is quite an honor. To have your name with those greats is something, as a kid, I never dreamed of.”
This is reality now, for Judge and his game.