On the Greatness of Aaron Judge

NOT AN MVP ARGUMENT!!!

[Yes, you read that subheader correctly: this is not a post arguing over who should be MVP of the American League this year, Aaron Judge or Cal Raleigh. I don’t need a post for that; the answer is obvious — the accomplishments of Cal Raleigh are historic and unprecedented, and so are the accomplishments of Aaron Judge. They should be co-MVPs. End of story. Everyone happy? No? No one’s happy? Everyone wanted to crush the other guy? Well, boo freaking hoo.]

I wanted to put this post out now because the baseball playoffs start tomorrow and everything that happened in the regular season will immediately cease to exist once that happens.

But I actually wrote most of this post earlier in the year, in June, in response to a friend’s post on Facebook:

Since my brain is currently 95% baseball, and will probably remain so as long the world continues to spin off its axis and I need to retain my sanity, OF COURSE I went there.

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Okay, so, the Yankees have a superstar player named Aaron Judge, right? If you’re a baseball fan, you’ve definitely heard of him, if you’re not, you might have seen him on Paw Patrol with his tiny doggos?

The dogs’ names are Penny and Gus, because I know you wanted to ask

Either way, he’s a literal giant superstar (6 foot 7 inches, 280 pounds) and he routinely hits 50 home runs a year, and even broke the American League record of 61 in 2022. To put that in a bit of perspective, Hank Aaron, the record-holder for non-steroid-era home runs (755) never hit more than 47 in a season.

And what’s more phenomenal, especially this year, is that Judge also hits for an extraordinarily high batting average¹ — ie, he gets a ton of hits, not just home runs. That is very unusual, because it is widely accepted that if you swing hard, you sacrifice some of your ability to make contact with the ball. Swing slower, and you have a higher chance of putting the bat on the ball, but less chance at power. So it’s a trade-off — for most players. But Judge is doing both: making tons of bat-to-ball contact, and hitting for tons of power.

Nowadays if you tune into baseball broadcasts when he’s playing, you’ll likely hear announcers comment that “he might be the best right-handed hitter of all time.” You might be like “WAIT A MINUTE, what about Babe Ruth?” Well, he was left-handed. Many other great hitters like Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig — all hit left handed. Hank Aaron was right handed, but as I mentioned, even he didn’t have quite this consistent level of power. Willie Mays also (although Willie was known for many other talents as well, like his speed and defense — Judge is a good defender, but not Mays level, and he’s not especially speedy). But in terms of pure hitting, people are ranking him above some of the all time greats, and declaring him the best right-handed hitter ever.

Which prompts the question: Why are so many great baseball hitters left-handed? Does being left-handed make a difference and contribute to the fact that until now, no right-handed hitter has been able to do what multiple left-handed hitters have done?

I’m glad you asked!

In fact, YES, batting left-handed is, overall, a slight advantage for most hitters against most pitchers. Why is that? Because most pitchers (like most humans) are right-handed, and so from a left-handed batter’s perspective at home plate, the pitcher is throwing from a point fractionally further away, which gives lefty hitters a fraction of a second more time to see the pitch out of the pitcher’s hand and decide how to swing. Let me try to diagram this with my keyboard lol:

Exhibit A: View of right-handed hitter vs right-handed pitcher:

WHEREAS:

Exhibit B: View of left-handed hitter vs right-handed pitcher:

(I had to add dots so that the spacing would hold. They signify nothing.)

As these very professional diagrams hopefully show, the hitter is on a diagonal from the pitcher’s throwing hand, which means he can see the ball’s flight path for a fraction longer, and in a game where pitches can go 100 miles per hour, giving you only a split second to decide whether to swing and how to swing, those fractions of seconds matter. Of course, this is the opposite dynamic for lefty batters when facing lefty pitchers — but there are so many fewer lefty pitchers.

Being a left-handed batter is enough of an advantage that there are in fact many hitters who are naturally right-handed, but trained themselves to bat left-handed. Plus hitters (like Cal Raleigh BUT WE AREN’T TALKING ABOUT HIM RIGHT NOW) who have trained themselves to hit from both sides of the plate, so that they will always have that split-second advantage, no matter the handedness of the pitcher.²

(This is also something that some pitchers have done, because lefty pitchers are so valuable against good lefty batters, to take away that split-second. The retired Barry Zito, for example, trained as a child to throw left handed but does everything else right-handed. And I believe Max Fried of the current Yankees does this as well; he pitches left-handed, but you can see him signing his contract with his right hand in this video.)

The handedness of the pitcher and the handedness of the hitter being relevant to the matchup is such an accepted part of baseball that there are teams that utilize “platoon” pairings, which is to say, 2 players, a righty and a lefty, who play the same position, but will play at different times depending on who is pitching.

It’s such a given that no one really talks about the logic behind it, which is why I felt compelled to write this out.

One other thing that is even less discussed but is also built into baseball in such a way that it gives a fractional advantage to left-handed hitters: first base is on the side of the infield that is closer to lefty batters.

Exhibit C:

As you can see here, lefty hitters are a good 2-3 feet closer to first base. Which means that on occasion, in a game of inches and fractions of seconds, they will make it to first base on a play that would most likely have been an out on a right-handed hitter. So lefties probably get a few more scrappy infield hits here and there, which is a nice bonus.

I find it worth noting that baseball has never done anything to try to negate that inequality. I don’t think any other sport would allow participants to have two different starting points, but baseball kinda just accepts that different players are built differently and sometimes those inherent inequalities just exist. Lefties can hardly ever play shortstop or third base, for example. Baseball players don’t come out of a factory or a cookie cutter; some will be 6’ 7” and others will be 5’ 5”, some will be right-handed, some left-handed, some built like dancers and some like brick walls. You learn to maximize your abilities within your specific sphere of existence, find your niche and where your talents and physical capabilities serve you best, and there may not be another player just like you. Direct comparisons often fall short, because there are so many variables, and so many ways to be. That’s the beauty of it.

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So in conclusion, yes, it makes sense that so many of history’s great baseball hitters have batted lefty. And it makes Aaron Judge’s accomplishments all the more impressive, that he is arguably playing at a hitting disadvantage in his sport and still in the conversation with all these other historically great players who had the lefty-hitting advantage.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Go Yankees.

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Thank you for reading this edition of SM’s Movie Cramming Project, where I, SM, mostly watch movies so that you don’t have to, but evidently also poetically explain baseball to my friends who may or may not care. If this for some reason happens to be your jam, there are some baseball pieces you might enjoy in my book, Millennial Quarter-Life Crisis: A Mosaic of Thinky Thoughts.

1. He officially won the batting title yesterday, finishing with the highest batting average in the league by about 20 points. Which is a lot of points in batting average.

2. There are also some left-handed batters, like Cody Bellinger, that, bafflingly, have more success against left-handed pitchers than righties, but there’s a simple scientific explanation for that: Cody Bellinger is a freak.