From Bryan Hoch:
Aaron Judge’s happy homecoming has continued into a new month.
The Yankees star reached the left-field seats at Oracle Park in the first inning on Saturday for a two-run homer, launching his Major League-leading 21st long ball of the season in New York’s 7-3 victory over the Giants.
“I’ve got a lot of family in town, a lot of friends in town,” Judge said. “We’ve got to do something special for them. I’m just trying to stay locked in and put on a show.”
Giancarlo Stanton also homered and Alex Verdugo drove in a pair of runs for the Bombers, who have now won 15 of their last 19 games. Judge, who homered twice in Friday’s series opener, has been the heartbeat of that tear.
Judge is only three home runs behind his 2022 record-setting home run pace, which is INSANE when you think of how slowly he started this season off, hitting-wise (2022, I recall, he also struggled a bit to start the season, but nowhere near like this year. Then was a slow, like, five games or so. This year it was almost a month’s worth of games. He had a .643 OPS 23 games into the season).
Otherwise, this was a very good win with the Yankees’ #6 starter, Cody Poteet, pitching against one of the best pitchers in baseball, Logan Webb (Webb came in second to his current teammate, Blake Snell, in the Cy Young voting last year. I wonder how many teams have had the first place AND the second place Cy Young winners from the previous year on their team at the same time the next year). Webb had only allowed two home runs all season, and Judge made that three in his very first at-bat. Wow.
Stanton’s insurance home run in the eighth inning against a good reliever (who had made Volpe and Soto look awful earlier in the inning to get two quick outs) was very impressive as well. He just sort of chopped it, and it went all the way past the left field fences. Crazy.
Judge deserved the featured image today, but then I saw that Soto’s strong game himself has allowed him to crack a 1.000 OPS (1.002), as well, giving him the 2nd best OPS in the Majors, behind only Judge (1.067), so I figured I’d let them share this one to celebrate the Yankees’ very special Dynamic Duo.
Wow.
Barrels have to be percentaged, right? I prefer flat swings as a rule’s – like Stanton’s, like Soto’s, like DiMaggio’s – but Judge’s swing is crazy. It sends the ball exactly in its own trajectory. There can’t be anyone whose home run swing centers the ball as exactly and easily as his. (They do track that, right?) It’s like it cradles the ball and then just tosses it into the seats.
And this one was particularly impressive – it was off the end of the bat, but the bat was going so fast that, with Judge’s strength behind it, it made no difference.
<–repost, but so on point
You can see the percentages of a whole bunch of contact information: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/
Clay, very cool!!!
…but not quite what I mean. To calculate a “barrel,” you need put limits on a range of spots where the ball hits the bat. WITHIN that range, then, there’ll also be a spread. Unless I’m mistaken, the statistics available on the site just give %s for established measures (e.g. barrels).
What I’d want is: taking only pitches hit for home runs, how centered was the ball on the bat.
Still very cool, though!
On the other hand, as I look at the expanded set of stats… I need to figure out what they all are!
Found the definitions. Interesting stuff. If the actual measured data is somewhere in there, though, I’d love to be able to set up my own measures. Their launch angle likes from 8 to 32 degrees, for example. It would be even cooler if that weren’t the only spread we could measure for.
UPD no, not all the definitions, for a bunch it looks like I have to go to Statcast (not a big deal).
I think you’d have to do some more data analysis to get exactly what you want, but you’re basically talking about a subset of blasts.
I prefer softball bats
Another series win. Amazing season so far. The one big downer was losing 3 out of 4 in Baltimore. Still time for revenge on that one.
Even that one, they played without Verdugo for most of the series.
Reminder, today’s a freebie if you’re out of market
Cole AA start Tuesday. I wonder if they could use him as an opener soon after?
They won’t do that, he’s the ace
Looked like Poteet was surprisingly good, yes? Second time in a row? Any hope for him to become something?
And close to continuing the streak… well, I’d like to SLIGHTLY revise the streak, so as not to count runs allowed by subsequent pitchers, or better – just count “getting through 6 with no more than 2 runs”, even if one more run scores later. I wonder when the last time is that was done if you make that slight adjustment…