A public service announcement: It is difficult to hit a home run in the major leagues.
That felt necessary to re-emphasize since if you blink these days, you may miss one by Aaron Judge.
The Yankees recently played in Williamsport, Pa., and Judge is making every stadium look like the one there — the Little League version.
The Yankees beat the Guardians, 6-0, in a Thursday matinee because Judge homered and had the Guardians so scared he might do it again that they walked him — and Austin Wells and, especially, Giancarlo Stanton, made Cleveland pay for the intentional pass.
What Judge is doing — arcing toward another 60-homer campaign and perhaps even a Triple Crown and very possibly a second AL MVP with a season that is clearly better than his first when he hit 62 homers — is not just leaving fans speechless and reporters reaching for new otherworldly words to describe it. This is leaving teammates awed.
“You just gotta be grateful to watch this,” Gerrit Cole told me when I asked for a summation. “The last people to see a season like this lived in the 1920s — and it was a totally different game.”
Let’s get some of the clerical stuff out of the way. Judge hit his 48th homer and is on pace now for 61 and 400 total bases (last done in 2001), but doing this while hitting .334 with MLB highs in on-base percentage at .465 and a slugging percentage of .726 — the highest in 20 years. How fitting that No. 99’s video-game run is now 99 games long, dating to April 27 — a period in which he has 44 homers with a .379/.507/.833 slash line. No player ever has reached at least .375 and 44 homers in any 99-game span.
“That’s what the best in the world does, make it look easy,” Stanton said. “We’re all feeding off that, and he amazes us every night.”
That is Stanton, who hit 59 homers one year and now has 423 in his career. But Judge is just playing another game now. A Ruth game. A Bonds game. A — more and more — Judge game.
Consider that there was no score in the fourth inning. Judge was up with one out. The count was 2-1. A changeup is Gavin Williams’ least-used pitch, particularly to righties — just eight of 369 pitches to righties all year (2.2 percent) coming in were changeups. In this start, Williams threw 10 changeups. Nine to lefties. One to Judge. But almost prophetically, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt had emphasized what a “great hitter” Judge is — not just a power guy — and how he is never off-balance or not in control of an at-bat.
“He doesn’t swing hard,” Vogt said admiringly. “He just touches the ball and it goes out.”
Judge touched the changeup and it snaked inside the right-field foul pole, moving Jose Trevino to say, “We are in the age of pitching and within that, when they see No. 99 walk up, they are coming with their best stuff and, I mean, he homered on a pitch that [Williams] throws like 1 percent of the time [to righties]. So he is seeing everybody’s best stuff in the best-stuff age and, I mean, it’s just incredible. Incredible.”
The following inning, the Yankees waged a bunch of terrific at-bats. Ben Rice and Gleyber Torres both walked after falling behind 0-2. Juan Soto bounced into a force out. Vogt went to righty sidearmer Nick Sandlin and Judge believed he would be pitched to. But after Sandlin fell behind 2-0, Judge was intentionally passed for the 16th time (also a MLB high) to load the bases. Wells darted a sacrifice fly to center. And Stanton also went from 0-2 to a full count before crushing a three-run homer.
So the Yankees had their first five runs via Judge’s might, plus fright of his might, en route to jumping the Guardians (73-54) for the AL’s best record at 75-53.
“Just historic,” Cole said. “What a wonderful experience to be around.”
Cole delivered six shutout innings despite walking five and striking out just one. But he yielded just one hit — a single leading off the game by Steven Kwan. That was the only hit Cleveland registered. The Guardians were hitless in 10 at-bats with runners on and the Yankees were 1-for-11 — the one being the Stanton homer. But the Yankees nevertheless had stellar at-bats up and down the lineup by everyone not named Alex Verdugo, which made them a superb chorus to Judge.
“What elevates him beyond just how strong he is, is that his ability to hit is super elite — one of the most elite on the planet,” Cole said. “You combine that with the power, you know, and then even mishits are 101 mph doubles, not just base hits or he hits 102 [mph] to the opposite field in the air and it is gone. It’s just so deadly, so efficient.”
One more public service announcement: Try to watch as much of it as you can because who knows when we will see this again.