Aaron Judge

[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.