Andrew Pollack
Setting the Stage
We start our story shortly before first pitch as 35,964 fans sit packed into American Family Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on a late mid-September afternoon. The roof was open on the 81-degree, overcast day. Starting for the Brewers is Jason Alexander, a rookie making just the 11th start of his career. In 2022, Alexander ranked near the bottom of the league amongst qualified pitchers in average exit velocity and strikeout percentage.
The Brewers had won both of the previous two games in this interleague three-game set. They were gaining ground on the NL Central-leading Cardinals and were set up for a wild-card berth. The Yankees, on the other hand, were desperately trying to avoid a sweep and lose more ground in the AL East, with their lead entering the game at 4.5 games back.
So, as the clock approached 1:10 CST, Aaron Judge, the Yankees lead-off man, stepped into the batter's box. Coming into the game, Judge was hitting .312 and had a 1.120 OPS, the highest mark in the majors.
Oh, and he had also hit 57 home runs, most in the American League since Alex Rodriguez slugged that many in 2002. Aaron Judge had a true season for the ages in every offensive category up to this point in the season. He had been a bright spot when this Yankees team hit rock bottom in August, going 10-18 in the month.
But here he was, leading off and starting in center field, a position he had rarely played before the 2022 season. No one in the crowd knew at the time, and how could they? But Aaron Judge was about to put on one of the best individual offensive performances in recent baseball history.
First Plate Appearance
In the first at-bat of the game, Alexander starts Judge off with a slider low and away, which was only a strike in the eyes of home plate umpire Gabe Morales. Due to his size, Judge often has low pitches outside of the zone called strikes, so this wasn’t anything different. He shook off the bad call and took two pitches for balls inside. The fourth pitch is low and out of the zone, but Judge chased, something he’ll only do once more in this game. He then took a changeup for a ball and worked the count full. In 2022, Aaron Judge had a 0.517 on-base percentage when the count was full.
In this count, however, Aaron Judge swung at the sixth pitch of the at-bat and drove the ball deep to Center Field. It didn’t look like a home run off the bat, but maybe it could bounce over the wall and get Judge extra bases. Instead, Tyrone Taylor made a great leaping grab to record the out. Based on its exit velocity and launch angle, Judge’s flyout had an expected batting average of .780. According to Baseball Savant, the ball traveled about 384 feet with an exit velocity of 115.4 mph. 115.4! The launch angle of 16 degrees was the only thing that kept this ball in the park. This lineout by Judge would become either team's hardest-hit ball in this game.
Despite this, Judge’s laser would be marked as an out, starting his day off 0 for 1.
Second Plate Appearance
The second time Judge came up to bat, the Yankees were down 4-1 in the third inning. At this point, Yankees fans were thinking the worst. Gerrit Cole wasn’t able to step up to the spotlight once again, and the Yankees still couldn’t hit. And, according to ESPN, Milwaukee had a 71.8% chance of winning at the beginning of this inning.
But just seeing Aaron Judge made them feel better. He stepped up to the plate with one out and Jason Alexander still on the mound. This time Alexander was a bit more careful. He remembered how hard Judge hit his sinker in the first inning, so he tried to keep it far away from the plate this time.
A sinker inside and a changeup low gave Judge a good hitters count, 2-0. Alexander didn’t want to go to 3-0, where he is forced to throw a strike, so he tried to paint the corner of the zone and maybe steal a strike with some help from Morales behind the plate. Instead, he threw a 92 mph pitch right over the heart of the plate, and in this historic season, Judge would not let him get away with it.
Judge turned around this sinker and sent it 414 feet to right field. At 111.6 mph off the bat, that home run would have been gone in all 30 major league parks.
This solo shot cut the Brewers' lead to 2 runs and gave Aaron his 58th home run of the season, overtaking A-Rod’s 2002 number. He is now 1-2 on the day.
Third Plate Appearance
Fast forward to the fifth inning, and Hoby Milner is now pitching for the Brewers, looking to protect a one-run lead. Unlike Alexander, Milner is an expert at keeping exit velocities low, ranking in the 98th percentile. To accomplish this, Milner throws his sinker and curveball 42.9% and 32.8% of the time, respectively. These two pitches, if thrown correctly, make it difficult for hitters to barrel the ball. On average, 2.2% of plate appearances off of Milner end in a barrel, the 12th lowest in the majors in 2022.
So how does Judge respond to Milner? He works a six-pitch walk, not swinging at a single pitch in the plate appearance. Milner was hesitant to throw a pitch anywhere near the zone after seeing what Judge did to his teammate in the first and third innings, so he kept it away.
By the end of the 2022 season, Aaron Judge would finish with 111 walks, leading the American League.
In the following at-bat, Anthony Rizzo recorded a hit and Judge moved to second. A flyout advanced Judge and Rizzo one base before an error by Brewers second baseman Kolten Wong allowed him to score. Judge’s walk started a rally in which 4 Yankees reached home, taking a 7-4 lead. Judge is now 1-2 with a walk on the afternoon.
Fourth Plate Appearance
Now in the sixth inning, Luis Perdomo is on the mound for the Brewers. Perdomo, like the Brewers pitchers before him, relied primarily on his sinker, which ranked middle of the pack in terms of velocity. In 2022, Perdomo’s sinker had a 14.3% whiff rate, meaning when hitters swung at this pitch, they often made contact with it. In general, sinkers move downward and in on the batters, making it difficult to barrel the ball and achieve a high launch angle. This results in many weak ground balls. With the Brewers now down by three runs, Perdomo appears to be in the game for the long haul.
After seeing at least three pitches in each plate appearance so far in this game, Judge decided to change his approach and swing at Perdomo’s first pitch. The 94-mph sinker is pulled into left field by Judge, touching the outfield grass before being fielded by Brewers left fielder Christian Yelich. A good throw into second base keeps Judge to a single. This single had the lowest expected batting average of any ball put in play by Judge in this game, at just a 71% chance.
Aaron Judge would put five balls in play during this baseball game. The lowest chance any of those balls would have of being a hit was 71% with a 111.3 mph exit velocity.
After this single, Judge is now 2 for 3 with a walk.
Fifth Plate Appearance
Luis Perdomo is still in the game for Judge’s fifth plate appearance in the seventh inning, but his service in this ballgame would soon end. Thus far in the inning, Perdomo had surrendered two runs on two hits, including a 410-foot home run by Aaron Hicks.
Perdomo started Judge off with two sliders, one inside for a ball and the other low in the zone that Judge swung over. Judge saw 21 total pitches in the game and swung and missed at just two of them. The third pitch just missed the middle-middle part of the strike zone, and Judge was able to foul it off. Perdomo was lucky Judge didn’t send this hanging slider to Canada.
For the next pitch, Perdomo threw the exact same slider and it ended up approximately 443 feet to left field, giving the Yankees a six-run lead. Interestingly, the exit velocity on this home run was the lowest out of all five balls that Judge put in play during this game, leaving the stadium at a pace of 110.3 mph. Perdomo would exit this game right after Judge crossed home plate, with his Earned Run Average having increased by 1.05 runs during his 1.2-inning outing.
At the end of the seventh inning, the Yankees have a 10-4 lead, and Aaron Judge is 3 for 4 with a walk and two home runs.
Sixth Plate Appearance
Judge would have one more chance in this game in the ninth inning. With two outs and two runners on base, Trevor Kelley is trying to hold the Yankees lead, now at four runs. Kelley is a primarily sinker-ball pitcher with below-average velocity, ranking in the 10th percentile among qualified major leaguers.
Instead of using his best pitch, Kelly served up an 80 mph curveball to Judge right down the middle. Judge hit it 355 feet to left field at a blazing 111.8 mph for a two-run double, giving the Yankees a six-run lead.
With the double in the ninth, Judge ends the day having reached base 5 of the 6 times he had a plate appearance.
Don’t Forget the Defense
Although his 2022 Offensive Performance has been historic, Judge has also been a strong defender at any position. In this game, Judge had four defensive chances and succeeded in all of them. This includes a nice running catch by Judge to retire Willy Adames in the 3rd inning. This ball had an expected batting average of .870. And in the 6th inning, Judge makes another excellent play to rob Luis Urias of extra bases. In this game, the four outs Judge recorded on balls in play had an average expected batting average of 0.428.
Conclusion
Three hours and forty-six minutes after the first pitch was thrown to Aaron Judge, Keston Hiura grounded out to end the game with a final score of Yankees 12 and Brewers 8. The Yankees avoided the sweep and sparked a mini-hot stretch that would push them into the postseason. The Brewers still won two games of three but ended up missing the playoffs entirely.
Aaron Judge had one of the most outstanding individual offensive performances in recent baseball history. The likely 2022 AL MVP (at least in my eyes) went 4 for 5 with two home runs, a single, a double, and a walk. He recorded 4 RBIs, 3 of those with 2-outs, and scored 3 runs. He left no runners on base. The five balls Aaron Judge put into play were above 110 mph. No other player recorded an exit velocity this high in this game.
Aaron Judge’s Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), or a fancy way of calculating how many runs the player created, was 705 on this day. This means Judge’s performance in this game was 605% better than the average player in a single game. This was the fifth-highest single-game measurement of this statistic Judge recorded in 2022. His 207 wRC+ for the entire season led all of Major League Baseball by 55 points (Manny Machado of San Diego had 152).
In the game, Judge saw 21 total pitches over six plate appearances (five at-bats plus a walk). He swung at eight of those 21 pitches and missed just two. He put 5 into play, meaning he fouled off just one pitch.
As I mentioned, Aaron Judge had a historic 2022 season. He led the league in all major offensive categories except batting average, for which he was less than one-hundredth of a point off from the lead. He hit 62 home runs, breaking Roger Maris’s 61-year-old record for the American League. Not to mention, he did all this in a free agent year, so to say his value increased considerably due to his performance would be a significant understatement.
But if you could go back and rewatch one game to summarize Aaron Judge’s memorable season, it would have to be this one. This game represented a microcosm of his entire 2022 season and what he meant to the Yankees. His offense, defense, and ability to spark team rallies proved vital to the Yankees' success in 2022. This is why September 18th was Aaron Judge’s greatest game of 2022.
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