AARON JUDGE

THE YANKEES SLUGGER BET ON HIMSELF? THAT'S THE EASY NARRATIVE AROUND WHY HE TURNED DOWN A MASSIVE CONTRACT OFFER. BUT MAYBE IT'S NOT A BET IF, AFTER YEARS OF WORK AND STUDY, HE'S A HITTING MASTER COMING INTO HIS OWN AT THE RIGHT TIME

- TOM VERDUCCI

THE SPLIT-FINGERED FASTBALL FAIRLY WINKED AT AARON JUDGE AS IT PASSED HIS FIELD OF VISION. JUDGE DID NOT FALL FOR ITS FALSE CHARM. HE WATCHED THIS CHANGEUP DISGUISED AS A FASTBALL FROM RED SOX PITCHER NATHAN EOVALODI TUMBLE EVER SO SLIGHTLY BELOW THE OUTSIDE CORNER OF HOME PLATE. BALL ONE. HOME PLATE. BALL ONE.

That Aug. 12 pitch might have been just another one of the 12,593 pitches Judge had seen to that point in his career with the Yankees, including 104 from Eovaldi, except for what happened next. What no one saw ranked at least as amazing as the unmistakable percussive punishment Judge delivered to the next pitch. It was the advanced calculus known by only an elite hitter—part homework, part intuition, part pattern recognition from those 12,000 pitches. It is the reason Judge is chasing home run history.

“Eovaldi—and even the Red Sox in general—they like to throw me up and in with the heater,” Judge says. They first] like to stay with stuff soft away. Soft away, down and away, down and away... see if they can steal an early strike. And then they always like to come back in and get me a little off balance and make me be conscious of it so they can go back to that away pitch.

“So when they went with a splitter down and away for a ball, I just had a feeling. O.K., I don’t think they want to go down there again to go 2-0 on me. They might try to come up and in here and...

“It kind of worked out.”