Exploding into the MLB scene during the 2017 season, Aaron Judge took the MLB league by storm, posting exit velocity and barrel numbers that make sabermetricians like me droll over him back then. Of course, there are certain flaws with his playing style such as his high K% and weakness with breaking pitches (most notably the slider). However, despite these flaws, Aaron Judge's power and strong control of the plate has allowed him to have an insanely high BABIP during his MLB career, offsetting the high K% he consistently posts. There is an issue with Aaron Judge's home run production during the last season, but I think that more consists of the launch angle problem of Aaron Judge rather than his raw power. His launch angle drop from 15.8 degrees from the 2017 season to 11.2 degrees from the 2019 season.

But I am not here to talk about Aaron Judge's offensive production. No, I think that we should focus more on Aaron Judge's increased defensive abilities and why I think that such an improvement is optimistic for a player such as Aaron Judge. Looking at his UZR and his UZR/150, he jumped from an above-average 6.1 UZR rating to a 12.7 UZR rating during the 2019 season. His UZR/150 jumped even higher, going from 7.1 during the 2017 season to 24.2 during the 2019 season, having one of the highest during that season. His OAA is also quite impressive, posting an 8 OAA during the 2019 season.

The reason for being optimistic over a great increase in defensive production from Aaron Judge is that his strong defensive production almost offers a backup if he cannot offensively perform well. We know that his offensive production is quite volatile as he is prone to many injuries and strikeouts, but he has insane power potential. However, if he cannot harness that explosive power then he can always use his glove to be quite useful for his team