Bad Yankees Hit of the Week: Aaron Judge disappears in the World Series

Hallelujah, the Yankees will not be swept! The Bats finally woke up in Game 4 and forced at least a Game 5, with the Yankees managing to avoid the fate of the 2012 Tigers. They've been outplayed and controlled by the demonstrably superior team in their first three games, and even with the win they still face a near-impossible mountain to climb.

Aaron Judge is the No. 1 culprit for the team's placement in the Fall Classic. When you remove a 218 wRC+ hitter from the three spot in the lineup, it's difficult for the rest of the offense to pick up the slack. At this point, we may have to accept that Judge is that player in the playoffs. Coming into the start of the 2020 postseason, Judge is batting .142 with 45 strikeouts in 113 at-bats in 29 playoff games.

But that begs the question: Why is Judge turning from the best hitter in baseball to Chris Carter the moment October rolls around? I don't claim to know the answer, but perhaps a moment from Game 1 gives a clue as to what's going on mechanically.

We join Judge with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The game is tied after Giancarlo Stanton's go-ahead two-run blast in the sixth was nullified by Mookie Betts' sac fly in the eighth. Gleyber Torres is at second and Juan Soto is at first after the former hit a double and the latter hit an intentional walk with two outs. Judge has a golden opportunity to erase his postseason narrative with a hit against Blake Treinen and give the Yankees a winning start to their first World Series in 15 years.

Treinen starts Judge with a first-pitch sweeper.

It appears that Judge can see the ball out of his hand pretty well. He reads that the ball is breaking and doesn't pull the trigger on a pitch that he thinks will break out of the zone for ball one. That's a good setup – it can't do much damage if he swings out and makes contact – Treinen secures his spot right at the corner for the called strike one.

After observing Judge's take on the first pitch, Treinen tries to execute the sweeper again to the same spot and away from it.

Treinen narrowly misses his spot up the middle, but once again Judge can't pull the trigger. This casts doubt on how well he actually sees the ball – if he had been able to identify the first sweeper from the hand, he would have been able to identify that one too, realize that it was going to land in his wheelhouse, and him can start.

After two direct attacks on Sweeper in the zone, Treinen only needs to throw a third in a similar spot and he should have the punchout.

Treinen rips the pitch away from the plate, but it's still close enough to the zone to potentially trigger a chase. The judge starts to swing, but recognizes the rotation and holds on in time – good attitude.

The judge has now seen three sweeps in a row, so he should have a good idea of ​​how the pitch behaves out of the hand and how it breaks on the way into the zone. If Treinen gives him another mistake, he should be done with it.

It's just depressing to see Judge's swings against cookie pitches like this sweeper. It shows how out of control the mechanics are this postseason. He recognizes the hanging sweeper immediately, but his swing plane and posture are so messed up that there was never a chance to get the barrel anywhere near the ball.

The judge can be confident that the previous sweeper is the last hittable pitch he will see in this AB. In fact, Treinen changes tempo to the fastball in hopes of catching Judge late.

Judge arrives at just the right time, but once again his clumsy mechanics cause the run to fall under the ball, resulting in a harmless inning-ending pop-out, stranding a pair of runners and sending the game to extras. Sure, that's a lot of gas after only seeing soft stuff in the AB before, but it's still a pitch that Judge mastered with relative ease during the regular season.

Here is the full AB:

I would like to compare Judge's swing on this 1-2 hanging sweeper to a swing he made on a similar pitch during the regular season.

Here's that swing again on the 1-2 sweeper in the middle:

Compare that to that home run against Zack Wheeler on July 29th.

Both throws are right-handed sweeps thrown with similar speeds, motions and locations, making the pair a good choice for comparing mechanics. When Judge's swing is correct, he controls the weight transfer from the back to the front just before the moment of contact to provide effortless power. To my eyes, this postseason looks like Judge is stuck on his butt, forcing him to accelerate all parts of his swing that come after that weight shift. Because he is no longer transferring this energy efficiently from his base to his upper body, he has to apply all of the power using just his arms, resulting in violent, uncontrolled swings.

To generate this power, Judge must rotate and unwind his upper half much more than he is used to, which ironically results in a loss of power as his momentum becomes separated from the rotation of his upper half. Not only does this cause excessive head movement, making it harder to follow the pitch, but it also lowers his run at the point of contact, leading to all those pop-ups and foul balls on crushable pitches. Finally, it looks like Judge steepens his swing to try and create loft, but unfortunately all that does is keep the barrel in the strike zone for a much shorter time.

In last night's win, Judge finally got his first win of the postseason as the runners took the scoring position. If nothing else, this can lead to a restoration of faith that he can make a difference in these situations. If the Yankees want to do the impossible, they need Judge from Game 4, not Judge from the rest of the playoffs.