Best of BP 2025: Aaron Judge Vs. Garrett Crochet: A Breakdown

Aaron Judge’s plate appearances are always appointment viewing. He’s having the sort of season that makes you want to savor every pitch he faces because we may never see anything like it again…for the third time in four years. On Friday, he tested his mettle against Garrett Crochet, one of the best pitchers MLB has to offer.

Crochet was dominant throughout the entire game and took a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning. Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay noted that he had never before recorded an out in the ninth—not technically true, because he used to be a reliever—but he had never lasted longer than eight innings in a game in his professional career. He began the inning with a pitch count of just 96, having scattered three singles and a walk while striking out seven.

Ben Rice opened the inning by grounding out to second base. That brought up Judge to face Crochet for the fourth time that evening.

Pitch One: 98.1 MPH Fastball, Ball (1-0)

Once upon a time, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and Yankees owner Dan Topping got drunk and traded Ted Williams for Joe DiMaggio. The theory was that the left-handed Williams would put up even more ridiculous numbers taking aim at the short porch in Yankee Stadium, and the right-handed DiMaggio would similarly benefit from the Green Monster. They sobered up the next morning and nixed the deal.

The majority of the great Yankee legends—you know the names—have been left-handed hitters, or a switch-hitter in Mickey Mantle’s case. Yankee Stadium has always been one of the most lopsided ballparks in MLB, even if it’s not as drastic since they remodeled in the 1970s and built a new stadium in 2009 with the same dimensions. Judge, DiMaggio, and Alex Rodriguez are the three standout Yankee power hitters who batted from the right side, persisting despite outfield dimensions intended to curtail them.

One would think Judge would feast when he visits Fenway Park with such an inviting left-field wall, but that hasn’t been the case. Leading up to this at-bat, he had a career .207/.332/.435 batting line in Boston through 49 games and 229 plate appearances. His .767 OPS at Fenway was his third-lowest in any ballpark in which he’s had at least 50 trips to the plate. By comparison, he’s a .305/.423/.639 hitter over 528 games at Yankee Stadium.

This defies the long-understood maxim that right-handed power hitters benefit from shorter fences in left field. There’s no greater difference in ballpark dimensions than Boston and New York, and there’s no better right-handed power hitter than Judge, but take a look at his career fly ball spray chart:

This illustrates every ball he has ever hit in MLB with a launch angle in the 25-50 degree range. There’s a much denser concentration in right field than in left.

All of this means if there was ever a place to challenge Judge with an elevated fastball, it’s best to do it in Fenway. There has never been a stadium that could contain his might, but he thrives in The Bronx because he sprays his fly balls like a left-handed hitter, and Boston hasn’t been the paradise for him that it has been for so many righties over the years.

In this case, Crochet’s fastball was a bit too high for Judge’s liking, and he let it go for a ball.

Pitch Two: 95.3 MPH Cutter, Swinging Strike (1-1)

This was a filthy pitch from Crochet in a vacuum, but it’s even more impressive in context. This was the deepest he had ever gone in a game, having already recorded 25 outs, and it was his 102nd pitch of the day. There are only 10 qualified starters in MLB who have thrown a 95-mph cutter even once all year, and he threw three of them in this game—all in the eighth and ninth innings. The only other starter who fired a 95-mph cutter in the eighth inning or later this season was Spencer Schwellenbach, who threw just one in the eighth frame of his June 11 outing.

No one else in baseball has this kind of stuff, or could hold it this deep into a start. The pitch looked like a fastball right over the middle of the plate, and Judge swung with the appropriate ferocity for a mistake heater, but it took a sharp right turn to avoid his bat for strike one.

Not many pitchers can consistently fool Judge, but Crochet was perfect against him to this point. They faced each other three times on June 7 and three more times earlier in this game, and Judge was 0-6 with six strikeouts. The only contact he made through 29 pitches was on three measly foul balls. This pitch represented his 10th swinging strike—a miscalculation Judge would not make again in this plate appearance.

Pitch Three: 98.7 MPH Fastball, Foul (1-2)

Judge fought off this fastball in on his hands. That’s something of a personal victory for him given how much he had struggled against Crochet so far, even though he certainly didn’t see it that way. Besides, he should’ve let it go for a ball—easy for mortal observers to say, nearly impossible for a hitter to do.

Judge has been posting such incredible numbers for so long that it’s easy to let them wash over us. He’s compiling a historic season—what else is new? We should live in the now and take time to appreciate the absurdity of what he’s accomplishing. Here is an incomplete list of statistics in which he leads MLB through Saturday’s games: batting average (.384), on-base percentage (.479), slugging percentage (.767), OPS (1.246), OPS+ (244), home runs (26), WARP (3.8), SEAGER (25.5), ISO (.384), BABIP (.462), and wOBA (.513). He has eight Statcast sliders at the 98th percentile or higher.

Right-handed hitters aren’t supposed to hit .384 anymore. In the Expansion Era, only two righties have batted .370 or higher in a season: Andres Galarraga hit .370 for the Rockies in their inaugural season of 1993 before we had any idea what the altitude effects would be, and Nomar Garciaparra batted .372 in 2000 during MLB’s peak offensive explosion. They finished their seasons with 21 and 22 home runs, respectively, which is fewer than Judge already has.

Only five right-handed hitters have hit .350 with 40 home runs in a season in MLB history: Jimmie Foxx (1932 and 1933), Rogers Hornsby (1922), Mike Piazza (1997), Albert Pujols (2003), and Hack Wilson (1930). Judge is on pace for 61 home runs this year, which would tie him with Mark McGwire, Babe Ruth, and Sammy Sosa for the most 50-homer seasons ever, and he could join Mac and Sammy as the only players with multiple 60-homer campaigns.

His 1.246 OPS looks more like the WHIP of a mid-rotation starter. Only one hitter has surpassed that mark since integration, and you know who that was. His .462 BABIP would demolish Babe Ruth’s record of .423—unless you count Levi Meyerle’s .480 from the 1871 National Association, and you really shouldn’t. In an earlier period of sabermetrics, we thought of BABIP as a measure of pure luck. There’s probably an element of that, but the main reason so many of his batted balls result in base hits is that he clobbers the ball so damn hard—just not when Crochet busts him inside with a fastball.

Pitch Four: 98.2 MPH Fastball, Ball (2-2)

Again, Crochet tries in vain to get him to chase above the zone, and the count levels at 2-2. He isn’t quite having an all-timer kind of season like Judge, but he absolutely deserves some appreciation. Tarik Skubal would probably win the Cy Young Award if the season ended today, but Crochet could give him a run for his money. He leads the league with 3.0 pitching WARP, 66 DRA-, 117 strikeouts, and 96 ⅓ innings pitched.

His approach to pitching wouldn’t work for just about anyone else, especially a starting pitcher:

Pitch
Usage%

Four-Seamer
42.8%

Cutter
28.7%

Sinker
13.1%

Sweeper
10.3%

Changeup
4.9%

Slider
0.3%

If you consider cutters a type of fastball, he throws the number one, or 1A, or 1B, on 84.5% of his pitches. Usually, only relievers with elite heaters and light workloads can get away with that, but he’s thriving with a heavy diet of fastballs in the starting rotation. Of course, he was a reliever from 2020-2023, then started 32 games last year with the White Sox. Pumping gas is working for him even when he faces batters multiple times in a game.

Pitch Five: 100.1 MPH Fastball, Foul (2-2)

This is bonkers on so many levels:

He hit 100.1 mph in the ninth inning! This is the same guy who didn’t throw more than four innings in a start last year from the beginning of July through the end of the season. He emerged as an ace after converting from relief with a scar already on his elbow, so he refused to go deep into games unless he got a new contract. He signed a six-year, $170 million extension after he was traded to Boston, which kicks in next year. Now, not only is the innings restriction gone, but he’s lighting up the radar gun in the ninth.
He threw a four-seam fastball…right down the middle…to Aaron Freakin’ Judge! That’s probably not where he intended to locate it, but then again, the catcher set up middle-middle. Who needs finesse when you can Nuke LaLoosh it with a fastball that averages 15.9 inches of induced vertical break and can touch triple digits?
Judge fouled it off! The best hitter on the planet got a fastball down the pipe—the 28th fastball he had seen from Crochet in the past week—and he couldn’t get around on it! His mythical, Roy Hobbs-like bat was a hair too slow.

Pitch Six: 100.2 MPH Fastball, Ball (3-2)

This pitch came in a smidge faster than the previous one, but Judge laid off to bring the count full. It’s an impressive and somewhat uncharacteristic take. Amidst all the jaw-dropping numbers on his stat page, there’s one category in which black ink is conspicuously absent this year. He’s “only” tied for second in the AL in walks with 45, and 14 of those have been intentional. His 10.1% unintentional walk rate is the lowest of his career (excluding small samples in 2016 and 2020). His previous low was 11.5% in 2021.

For whatever reason, he’s chasing pitches outside the zone more often this year. His 27.6% O-Swing% is up from 23.0% last season. This has led to a lot more whiffs because his O-Contact% is way down from 47.1% to 34.8%, and his overall whiff rate is up from 30.6% to 36.4%.

Normally, if a guy expands out of the zone more and increases his whiff rate, his numbers plummet. That obviously hasn’t been the case for Judge. With his cartoonish BABIP, this might mean he’s headed for some regression, but on the other hand, maybe he has room to improve? That’s a terrifying thought.

Pitch Seven: 99.6 MPH Fastball, Lansdowne Street

The mouse gets the cheese. On the 36th pitch from Crochet to Judge this year, the 21st of the day, and the seventh of the at-bat, the batter finally got the better of the pitcher. On the broadcast, it looks like the ball disappears into the Citgo sign. It traveled 443 feet at 115.5 mph off the bat, making it the 21st home run hit at least 115 mph by anyone in MLB this season. Judge and Oneil Cruz have done it four times, Shohei Ohtani has done it twice, and 11 others have accomplished it once each.

Crochet’s strategy against Judge has been to pound him upstairs with four-seamers. The lower, inner part of the strike zone is the last place he wanted to put one. He only located two pitches in that spot out of the previous 35 pitches he threw him, and both were cutters that resulted in swinging strikes—such as pitch two, shown above.

The Red Sox won the game in the 10th inning, but Crochet and Judge both completed their involvement with this at-bat, other than Judge catching a fly ball in the bottom of the ninth. Aroldis Chapman came on in relief immediately after the blast. Regardless of what happened afterward, this was as good as baseball gets in a one-on-one matchup, and both players demonstrated why they’re atop the batter and pitcher WARP leaderboards.