Aaron Judge

[scott6649]

The Yankees were 31-22 from July 14 to Sept 10. In that time span Judge hit .191 with 11 home runs and 24 RBI. One could argue that they did fine without him. With his second half followed by his playoff showing one could also maybe argue that the league figured him out. Sure he got fat on September callup pitching.. Big deal. His home road splits are obscenely in favor of Yankee Stadium. .312 hitter at home, .256 on the road. He set a home run record in a juiced ball year, breaking a home run record set by McGwire in 1987 which was a juiced ball year. So it's not really the slam dunk that some might think it is, let alone my personal opinion that giving the MVP to a rookie is dumb. Gotta prove you belong.

[packs]

Like by breaking the rookie home run record and leading the league in multiple offensive stats?

[MattyC]

Originally Posted by scott6649

Sure he got fat on September callup pitching.. Big deal.

Let's see who he homered against in September...

I see ONE "call up" pitcher, Richard Rodriguez, on Sept 14th. The rest are:

Sept 3 - Addison Reed 468 feet
Sept 7 - Kevin Gausman 420 feet
Sept 10 - Nick Martinez 379 feet
Sept 10 - Yohander Mendez 461 feet
Sept 14 - Mike Wright 418 feet
Sept 18 - Ervin Santana 395 feet
Sept 20 - Bartolo Colon 349 feet
Sept 22 - Marco Estrada 469 feet
Sept 24 - Marcus Stroman 378 feet
Sept 24 - Ryan Tepera 391 feet
Sept 25 - Jakob Junis 389 feet
Sept 25 - Trevor Cahill 408 feet
Sept 28 - Jake Faria 357 feet
Sept 30 - Marcus Stroman 484 feet

Hitting 52 homers at the MLB level is certainly a big deal, and any attempt to slight that comes across as sour grapes.

It is hard enough to get drafted, let alone hit 52 homers with a .400+ OBP.

As to the "juiced ball," he led the league in homers using balls that every other man in the league got a chance to hit. I would also venture most of his homers would be homers in most ballparks. Tangentially, Minute Maid isn't exactly a pitcher's park.

The whole "they did fine without him in the second half," line of thought is specious and intentionally reductive; it utterly chooses to omit the benefit of his first half production. He was on base at a .448 clip in the first half, and a .391 clip in the second half. As to his playoff showing, he had some big hits and absolutely saved their season with a stellar piece of glove work.

Bottom line, all subjective MVP discussions aside (Altuve is a fantastic baseball player and the likely MVP), trying to hate on this Judge kid is a bad and petty look. It is a fact that he had a historic debut campaign and plays the game right.

[scott6649]

Mike Wright and Yohander Mendez would count as September call-ups too, but whatever. Not exactly a list of Cy Young candidates or anything. My point was never that he's terrible. I'm not "hating on" him as you suggest. I'm saying he's not the MVP and giving some reasons as to why I might think that. You can also look at his clutch stats, and his leverage stats and his stats against teams above and below .500. They're not good enough to me to be considered "Most Valuable". They're good enough to be considered second most valuable. To me.