The New York Yankee slugger Aaron Judge is having a great season for the Yankees, he has been mostly healthy, and as of yesterday, he has racked up a .285 batting average with 27 home runs and 65 runs batting in. He leads the Yankees in many categories. But Judge is being cheated regularly by MLB umpires. Image the player and stats he could rack up if he were treated fairly by the umpires. Instead, judge consistently get strikes called on him that are not strikes. Judge is not alone in being called out, but he is the poster boy for umpire mistreatment.
Through no fault of his own, Judge’s hulking body stands 6′ 7″ tall. Obviously, that helps him in reach, but it also hurts him when umpires continually call strikes below the zone on him. After five years in, the major’s umpires just don’t get it; he’s tall you have to adjust the strike zone.
Somehow it seems that umpires, in general, hold the New York Yankees to different standards than other teams, although that can be argued. What can’t be argued is that they constantly call strikes on Aaron Judge that are balls. Computer replays have shown it over and over again.
The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler shared a mid-summer pitch plotting during the next-man-up season of 2019. The plotting showed the bad calls against Judge, but that has not gone away; it is as much today as ever. The New York Yankees can’t accept this nonsense as they pursue a race to the postseason.
Typically, Judge doesn’t lose his cool much and takes these bad calls in stride. But maybe with the postseason on the line, he needs to show a bit more emotion when he loses out on those bad low calls. All we New York Yankees fans ask is that Judge is treated fairly, and this is not happening and may not happen until the era of the robot umpire that is computer controlled and adjust for a hitter’s height.
Plain and simple, Aaron Judge is at the disadvantage of protecting the egregiously low strike calls.
@CodfiyBaseball has put together a video showing the strike calls that Judge has had to ignore and suck it up as he is cheated time after time.
Not too high, not inside, not outside, but definitely low.
Aaron Judge has suffered considerably more of these called strikes during the last few season than any other batter in MLB.
Yes. These were ALL called strikes.
What does he do if you have to throw it in the zone? pic.twitter.com/PL6gz4vXiT
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) August 23, 2021