Aaron Judge is a tower of hope - not yet a trade chip - for Yankees
MOOSIC, Pa. -- The choice facing the New York Yankees with Aaron Judge, outfielder and power hitter to dream on, was supposed to be an easy one.
The slugger who stands 6 feet, 7 inches yet has a wide receiver’s gait to cover the outfield has rocketed through the system, debuting in 2014 and arriving at Class AAA by last month.
For a team expecting to wait out some long-term albatross contracts, the future could wait. Players like Judge, first baseman Greg Bird, catcher Gary Sanchez and starting pitcher Luis Severino would be part of the next great Yankees team, when they were ready.
It wasn’t a very New York Yankees way to do things. But neither is producing so much young talent for a team whose last homegrown star (the underrated Brett Gardner notwithstanding) was Robinson Cano.
Yet, the 2015 season brought a surprisingly robust first-place club, with the resurgence of Alex Rodriguez, and the surprising return to peak form of Mark Teixeira. With the trade deadline approaching, the Yankees are in first place, and planning for a playoff appearance is paramount.
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So pursuing players such as Philadelphia ace Cole Hamels or second baseman Ben Zobrist - traded from Oakland to Kansas City on Tuesday - is natural. And so is the inclination for these teams to ask for Judge in return.
The answer, so far, has been no.
And that leaves intact in Scranton the most talented group of Yankees prospects since perhaps the Derek Jeter-led contingent.
“Without question. It’s been awesome,” says Railriders manager Dave Miley, the Yankees’ Class AAA manager since 2006, when asked whether this represented the most young talent he’s ever had. “It’s been a lot of fun with these guys, and my coaches feel the same way.”
In Judge’s case, an ability to quickly acclimate to newer levels only feeds the optimism further that if he indeed joins the Yankees, it will be for good.
Judge, promoted on June 21 from Class AA Trenton, managed to actually improve his control of the strike zone in his first 22 AAA games. He’d walked 8.6% of the time for Trenton, but that jumped to 12.2% in Scranton. And the worries about contact have abated, with a 25% strikeout rate in Trenton falling to 19.4% with Scranton.
“I think it’s just sticking to my approach,” Judge said Monday. “If I don’t get my pitch, take my walk, and I know the guys behind me on our team are good enough to get me over or drive me in.”
One advantage Judge has at 6-7 comes in an ability to focus exclusively on approach. He doesn’t have to try to hit for power, and he never has tried. The laser beam home runs off the bat come from merely identifying his pitch.
“A lot of guys ask, what are the setbacks?”Judge said. “And I’m like, it’s a blessing. If I just square up the ball, I may run into 25, 30 home runs a year.”
As for where Judge can play once he reaches the major leagues, it was often posited that theframe would eventually relegate Judge to first base. But to watch him out in the corner outfield, or even in a handful of games he’s logged in center field, Judge more than holds his own chasing down balls in the gap. It might never have happened if not for Judge’s Fresno State coach, Mike Batesole, discovering he’d played wide receiver in high school and figuring, if you can run down a football, you can run down a baseball.
Judge’s manager has taken notice of the preparation he puts in on defense.
“He does everything fundamentally the way you’d want,” Miley said. “He always hits the cutoff man. He throws to the right base. He’s made I don’t know how many plays where he had to leave his feet. He gets great jumps. You put him in center, the only difference is, he’s the tallest center fielder I’ve seen.”
Baseball-Reference indicates that the tallest center fielders have been 6-6. Some Lehigh Valley fans were treated to that visual, shortly after Judge’s promotion.
“He’s big, but he can move, he’s athletic,” says RailRiders hitting coach Marcus Thames. “The first inning, a ball out in the gap, he dove and caught it. I was like ‘Wow, he can do that.’”
It’s this kind of routine moment from Judge that led the Phillies to ask about him, the Yankees to place him off limits, and his more than 10,000 Twitter followers to panic at the murmur of a trade rumor.
“They see how big he is,” Thames said of the Judge love among fans. “And they see how athletic he is. And it comes with all the other stuff. People come to the game, and they see he doesn’t chase that many pitches. He’s not just a big guy, he’s a smart player, too.”
Judge is active on Twitter, but he says it’s “pretty easy” to block out the numerous mentions every day that usually come with pleas by the Yankees not to trade him, or vows to give up on pinstripes if they do.
“One thing I heard from my Double-A hitting coach was just, ‘Be where your feet are’,” Judge said. “Control what you can control. So right now I’m here in Scranton, trying to get better each day, and trying to help the Scranton Railriders win. It’s nice to hear, but I really focus on what I can do on the field.”
So for now, Judge is surrounded by Bird, and Sanchez, and Severino, and others coming up behind him. He said they’ve gotten to know each other well through the years, and that part of the dreaming he’s permitted himself.
“I’ve gotten to play with these guys the last two, three years, so we’ve gotten to be like brothers,”Judge said. “We hang out on and off the field basically all the time.
“So that would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? The next Core Eight? Core Nine?”
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