"Aaron Judge batting in 2017 (36260697604) (cropped)" by Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 
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New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge celebrated a remarkable milestone on Monday: the one-year anniversary of the moment he transformed into Babe Ruth.
On May 5 of last season, Judge was mired in one of the worst slumps of his career, sparking panic in the Bronx. So when he stepped to the plate for the first time, he decided to try something different.
Up to that point, Judge had always used an open batting stance, which angled his left foot toward the third baseman. Against Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal that afternoon, Judge moved the placement of his front leg ever so slightly back toward the pitcher. He promptly blasted a home run into the right-center field bleachers, followed by a booming double a few innings later.
The change to Judge’s setup was almost imperceptible at first, but it had an unimaginable impact: In the year since, he has put together one of the greatest stretches of hitting that baseball has ever seen.
Judge has a batting average of .369 over that span, nearly 40 points better than the next-best player, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He has hit 63 homers and driven in 158 runs; the No. 2 in both of those categories, Shohei Ohtani, has 55 and 121. Judge’s on-base-plus-slugging percentage of 1.278 exists in a realm matched only by Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds at his peak.
The early part of 2025 has been no less extraordinary. Judge is hitting .414 with 11 homers and 33 RBIs. And it all started with the tiniest of tweaks.
“He’s just better than everyone else,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “He’s just playing a different game.”
Thanks to new batting stance data, launched by Major League Baseball this spring, it is now possible to track Judge’s evolution with numbers. At the beginning of the 2024 campaign, Judge stood 20 degrees open, meaning his left foot would begin at the outer edge of the right-handed batter’s box. He finished April with a batting average of .207 and vowed to “make a couple adjustments” that would fix the problem.
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