It’s time for the New York Yankees to bat Aaron Judge leadoff.
If New York manager Aaron Boone didn’t get the message yet after watching pitchers avoid Judge this month with almost two-thirds of their pitches out of the zone … and if he didn’t get the message after watching 20% of the Yankees’ losses this year end with Judge on deck or in the hole … and if he didn’t get the message after his leadoff hitters—the ones who get the most at-bats—account for the worst of the nine spots in his lineup and the franchise’s worst leadoff OBP since Horace Clarke led off for the 1968 Yankees, then a light bulb should have turned on when Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts announced this week Shohei Ohtani will remain his leadoff hitter when Mookie Betts returns from injury on Monday.
Roberts told reporters he will not go back to batting Betts leadoff and Ohtani second because, “I think it’s hard to argue Shohei starting the game off in the one. It breaks up Freddie [Freeman] and Mookie. And I like the idea that these two guys are going to potentially get the most at bats.”
Novel idea: get your best batters to the plate as often as possible.
Roberts added, “As great as Mookie is, Shohei really has a chance to change the game from the first pitch on.”
The same thinking should apply to Judge. Ten of the Yankees’ 48 losses have ended with Judge wearing a helmet in the on-deck circle or in the dugout (in the hole) waiting for a chance to hit that never came. Boone instead keeps asking leadoff hitters such as Alex Verdugo or Gleyber Torres to get on base to give the best slugger in baseball a chance to hit. Six of those 10 losses have been by one or two runs.
New York’s No. 9 hitters get on base more often than their leadoff hitters. That’s absurd.
Get Judge to the plate as often as possible. Get him more pitches to hit. Get Juan Soto behind him. And see what happens. Something needs to change if the Yankees want to maximize Judge’s value.
Need more reasons other than Ohtani batting leadoff to know why Judge should lead off? Here are eight of them.
1. The league has stopped throwing to Judge.
Remember when it was cool to point out how Judge was seeing more pitches in the zone because Soto was on base all the time? Those days are long over. Judge is so good that pitchers are simply defending the home run when he steps in to hit. If that means pitching around Judge with Soto on base, so be it. Pitchers see a walk as a favorable outcome.
Judge is seeing more pitches out of the zone in August than in any month this year: 54%.
But wait. Because intentional walks do not require pitches to be thrown, they are not counted among pitches seen—but they should be counted when analyzing the avoidance factor.
Judge has already been intentionally walked five times this month. He had no more than two in any previous month this year.
If you count those intentional walks as four-pitch walks, Judge is seeing a whopping 61.1% of pitches out of the zone, a sharp increase from any other month. The Yankees can’t sit by idly and expect that trend to change on its own.
Pitches Out of Zone to Judge
2. Batting leadoff, Judge will see pitches to hit in the first inning.
Pitchers still may pitch carefully to Judge as the first batter of the game, but they are not outright walking him. And if he should draw a walk, you have an instant rally with Soto hitting with a runner on first.
3. Judge benefits from a threat behind him more than Soto benefits from such protection.
Soto’s game is built on patience. He swings less often than any hitter in baseball (37.4%). That doesn’t change, no matter who is behind him.
Judge’s game is built on forcing pitchers into the strike zone and doing damage. The No. 1 goal of the Yankees’ lineup construction should be to get Judge more pitches in the zone because of this:
Highest SLG on Pitches in Zone, 2022–24
Nobody is close to Judge as far as doing damage when he gets a pitch to hit. Soto’s in-zone slug in that time is .581, which is very good but below those of José Altuve, Cal Raleigh and Christian Walker. He swings at only 60% of pitches in the zone. Judge swings at 66% of them.
Judge’s slug on those pitches is 148 points better than the next-best right-handed hitter, Marcell Ozuna.
4. The Yankees’ leadoff hitters are historically awful.
How bad are they? Yankees leadoff hitters have a .279 on-base percentage, which means:
- Only the Kansas City Royals are worse this year (.271) at getting leadoff hitters on base. (Why Maikel Garcia and his .284 OBP get 92 starts at leadoff is a mystery.)
- Yankees’ leadoff hitters are the franchise’s worst group at getting on base since the mound was lowered in 1969 and its worst in any year except ’68 (Clarke was the most used leadoff hitter), ’60 (Tony Kubek) and ’65 (Bobby Richardson).
- Yankees’ No. 9 hitters have a higher OBP (.317) than their leadoff hitters. The way it should work is that MLB leadoff hitters have a 45-point OBP advantage on No. 9 hitters.
- Anthony Volpe, Torres, Verdugo and Ben Rice all have OBPs batting leadoff of .293 or worse. None of them should be leading off. Torres is the worst hitter in the league against non-fastballs (.154).
- The worst spot in the Yankees’ lineup at getting on base is leadoff, the spot that comes up the most. Getting your worst hitters the most plate appearances is terrible lineup construction.
5. There is an endgame problem.
You want Judge to get that fifth plate appearance in the ninth inning. Don’t bat him third. The percentages tell you that betting on the likes of Torres and Verdugo to get on base to give Judge the chance to swing the bat is a losing bet. Just hit Judge leadoff and he is more apt to get that key at bat in the ninth inning.
6. Get Judge to the plate more often.
This one is simple. Every lineup spot as you move up the batting order is worth about 18 extra plate appearances over 150 games. That means if Boone bats Judge leadoff for the final 46 games, Judge will get an extra 11 plate appearances. Judge hits a home run every 12.3 plate appearances.
7. It’s been done before.
After Los Angeles Angels manager Joe Maddon tried David Fletcher (.297 OBP) as his leadoff hitter in 2021 in front of Ohtani and Mike Trout, he opened ’22 with Ohtani batting leadoff and Trout hitting second. Maddon thought it was more important to protect Ohtani than Trout based on how each was swinging at the time. The Angels went 9–8 with that configuration.
Maddon is on board with Judge leading off for the same reasons.
“Let the whole lineup protect him,” he says.
8. Judge has done it before.
Judge hit leadoff for most of September 2022. The reason? The same as what it should be now: get him to the plate as often as possible. Back then, Boone was motivated to help Judge get the AL home run record. Now he should be motivated to win more games by doing the same thing.
Judge hit leadoff 34 times in 2022. The results were eye-popping: a slash line of .366/.481/.740.
It turns out the Yankees have the greatest leadoff slugger of all time on their roster, but they are not using him there:
Highest Career SLG at Leadoff (Min. 35 GS)
Judge has the second-best all-time OBP out of the leadoff spot (.466), trailing only John McGraw (.504 from 1901–06).
The idea of Judge leading off sounds odd. You’re guaranteeing that at least one of his at bats will come with the bases empty. In a perfect world, you want hitters in front of him with a high OBP to feed RBI situations to Judge. But the reality is that it’s not happening often enough.
Barry Bonds never hit leadoff (or even second) after 1990. The five players right behind him on the list of career intentional walks never batted leadoff: Albert Pujols, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey and Ted Williams.
Traditional lineup construction tells a manager not to bat his best hitter first. But times are different. Maddon hit Anthony Rizzo leadoff during spells to spark his Chicago Cubs offense from 2017–19—and Rizzo posted a leadoff OPS in those seasons of 1.053, .979 and 1.167. Now we have Roberts leaving Ohtani in the leadoff spot and it makes perfect sense.
Boone has a chance to jumpstart his lineup and to make sure Judge gets that ninth-inning at bat in a close game that he’s not getting now. It’s only a radical idea if you are wedded to traditional thinking. And if Boone does decide to give it a whirl, we will see both Ohtani and Judge, the respective league leaders in home runs and slugging, simultaneously be the most dangerous leadoff hitters we’ve ever seen. Times change.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Eight Reasons Why Aaron Judge Should Lead Off for the Yankees.
