After a record-setting rookie season that may earn him the American League Most Valuable Player award, Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge has put himself in the record books in the postseason. The record he broke? Most strikeouts in a postseason series. Judge managed to do that in the five game ALDS against the Indians, striking out 16 times in only 20 at-bats. It’s incredible that he struck out 80% of the time in that series, and he’s continued that trend into the ALCS as well. Through five games, Astros pitchers have struck out Judge eight times in 16 at-bats, which is good for a 50% strikeout rate. Overall, he’s running a 60% strikeout rate in the playoffs, and yet he somehow has put up a .847 On Base+Slugging% (OPS).

Judge has been remarkable for his failures, and even more so for his successes in spite of his failures. For that reason, I decided to figure out how Judge clearly looks “on” at the plate (at the very least, far removed from his mid-summer slump) while carrying a strikeout rate that makes Chris Carter feel useful.

To be fair, sometimes we conceive notions in our head based off of what we see with our eyes. It’s well documented that Judge has the largest strike zone in Major League history, and it’s been noted that his unique measurements have tested umpires like no other. When a pitch is thrown a few inches below Judge’s knees, it has to be called a ball by umpires, but the challenge is that they are conditioned to see it as a strike, because that pitch location is in the strike zone for anybody who isn’t 6’7.” Anybody who watches a handful of Judge at-bats can see that he occasionally gets burned and ends up in a 2-2 count that should be a 3-1 count. To his credit, those setbacks don’t seem to change his approach at all; he refuses to consistently chase. Like I said, that is simply a notion conceived by my eyes — let’s see if the numbers actually back any of this up.

The first thing to consider is whether Judge himself has had discipline issues in the playoffs. Baseball Savant, our statistical tool for today, has a detailed strike zone which can divided into 25 different zones, which I’ll display for you here:

via Baseball Savant

Yes, the zone numbers go up to 29, instead of 25. That’s because 10, 15, 20, and 25 are all skipped by Baseball Savant.

You can see the strike zone represented by the green outline. Clearly, pitches in the first nine zones are absolutely strikes, while pitches in zones 11-19 are borderline, and pitches in zones 21-29 are absolutely balls. As a principle, it’s never really a great idea for a hitter to swing at pitches in zones 21-29, because they are bad pitches; difficult to hit with any authority, but certain to be called balls. Let’s look at Judge’s plate discipline on these pitches in the regular season and playoffs, with the league averages also there for reference:

via Baseball Savant

In the regular season, Judge swung at roughly 15% of the bad pitches he saw, which was an impressive 4% better than the rest of the league. It becomes even more impressive when one considers that he saw bad pitches 6% more often than the rest of the league.

In the playoffs, you see both Aaron Judge and the rest of the league increasing their swing rate on bad pitches by a percentage point or two, which can be easily explained. The league as a whole is swinging at bad pitches slightly more often, because the pitchers in the playoffs are generally of higher quality and, because batters have seen a proportionate increase in the volume of bad pitches thrown to them. However, this is not the case for Judge. While Judge has increased his swing rate on bad pitches in the postseason by a percentage point (which is still about 5% better than the rest of the league), he hasn’t just seen a slight increase in the volume of bad pitches thrown at him — it’s been a massive increase.

You’ve probably noticed that I went out of my way to make the Bad Pitch% to Judge stand out, which is no accident. While Judge has always seen more bad pitches than everyone else (nobody wants to be nonchalant with baseball’s best hitter), the rate of bad pitches thrown to him spiked in the playoffs by 3.7%. For reference, the increase that the league saw as a whole was only .8%, so Judge has had the difficulty quadrupled compared to everybody else. That he has maintained an extremely low swing rate on these bad pitches is a testament to the polished hitter he has become.

Fun Fact: One of those bad pitches from the playoff sample was thrown by Dallas Keuchel in Game 1 of the ALCS. The bad pitch, which would have been ball four, preceded a strikeout for Judge. Had the pitch been called correctly, the Yankees would have had runners on first and second (Brett Gardner) with two outs, which Tom Tango calculates to be worth .343 expected runs. Instead, Judge’s strikeout ended the inning, which I calculate to be worth 0 expected runs. The Yankees lost that game, 2-1.

Now that we have established that Judge deserves our praise, let’s examine whether that same goodwill has been granted to him by umpires on close pitches. To refresh your memory, here’s how Baseball Savant breaks down their strike zone:

via Baseball Savant

Because the strike zone is represented by the green outline, we can’t definitively say that pitches thrown in zones 11-19 are strikes or balls the same way we can for pitches thrown in zones 1-9 and 21-29. Thankfully, our sample sizes are large enough to get some sense of what balls and strikes are, so let’s dive into the numbers on zones 11-19:

via Baseball Savant

First, let’s establish that the rate at which pitchers have thrown “close pitches” has been absolutely consistent to both Aaron Judge and the rest of the league in both the regular season and the playoffs (you can see that in the column on the right). Ironically, the only small difference is in how few were thrown to Judge in the regular season, which is incredible, considering that he was a 173 wRC+ hitter with literally the biggest strike zone ever.

From here, we can infer something interesting. If Aaron Judge saw close pitches as often as the rest of the league this season, then the rate at which those pitches were called strikes should be roughly the same as the rest of the league. That’s not exactly what happened, with Judge getting called strikes on him 4% more than the league average during the regular season. However, this is expected, considering the new challenge he was to umpires.

When we move on to the playoff statistics, we see umpires calling slightly more strikes on the league as a whole. While some might call this definitive proof of “big game bias,” the increase is minimal at most and likely the result of the playoffs being a smaller sample size. However, it’s been an absolute nightmare for Aaron Judge.

You’ll see I again made sure that one statistic stood out more than the rest. This time, I highlighted the called strike rate on close pitches to Judge in the playoffs. We know the league has experienced a minimal increase, but Judge, who was already suffering 4% more than the rest of the league, has seen his called strike rate jump from 25.8% in the regular season to 32.7% in the playoffs. This is an astounding 7% increase and unless every pitcher he’s faced has turned into Greg Maddux, I think the umpires have been seriously burning him here. Let’s dissect one specific instance from Game 5 of the ALDS:

After that brutal called strike three, Brett Gardner was thrown out attempting to steal second base to complete the double play and end the inning for the Yankees. Had the umpire made the right call, Judge would have walked, and Gardner would have been automatically moved to second base. According to Tom Tango’s calculations again, the number of expected runs with runners on first and second with one out are .908. According to my calculations, the number of expected runs with no runners on base and three outs are 0. These calls add up and they hurt.

While Aaron Judge’s 6’7” frame is certainly a challenge to umpires, it should probably be more of a challenge in April than in October. This postseason, there have been more than a handful of at-bats in which Judge has made an out (often a strikeout) after having a rough strike being called against him. Is the human error from umpires part of the game? Yes, so long as we have human umpires, but the volume of errors hasn’t been burdened proportionally between Aaron Judge and the rest of the league. A bad call turning a would-be 3-1 count into a 2-2 count can derail an at-bat, and a bad call turning a walk into a strikeout is even worse. These are things that possibly contributed to the Yankees severely under-performing their BaseRuns and Pythagorean record projections in the regular season (by an astounding 10 wins), and they can especially play a role in the remainder of the playoffs.

Let’s hope they don’t.