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Lost in the excitement of the Yankees winning the series 3-1 from the Houston Astros Thursday afternoon is the fact that Aaron Judge is quietly struggling at the plate.

While Giancarlo Stanton seemingly found his mojo against Dallas Keuchel this week, going 3-4 with two home runs, Judge has not been hitting and has not been walking at his usual rate since the Yankees went west.







Prior to the west coast swing, Judge was batting .337/.482/.640 with seven home runs. In fact, he’s been sitting on seven home runs since April 24, when he hit one out against Minnesota Twins’ pitcher Jose Berrios.

In the past seven games, including the Los Angeles Angels and Astros series, Judge’s slash line is .179/.207/.250 with five hits, two RBIs, 1 walk and 12 strikeouts.

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Against Angels’ pitching Judge was 3-15 with 13 strikeouts and against Houston pitching, he was 2-13 with 2 strikeouts.

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After striking out 10 times in a row to end the Angels series, Judge got some rest to begin the series in Houston on Monday. While Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said the reason he was out of the lineup was the tough stretch of games ahead of them, fans were hoping the rest would restart Judge’s offense.

The offensive highlight of Judge’s three games against Houston came in the ninth inning of Thursday’s game when he hit an RBI grounder for a fielder’s choice that drove in Aaron Hicks for the winning run.

Granted, Astros pitching is not the ideal way for a player to get going offensively, but the fact that Judge wasn’t getting on base with walks and was striking out at a high rate suggests how aggressive he was at the plate against Justin Verlander, Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers, Jr.—-as formidable a threesome as any in the league.

Judge and the Yankees are back in the Bronx tonight to face the Cleveland Indians and pitcher Josh Tomlin, who, according to MLB.com, has an 8.57 ERA in 21 career innings in Yankee Stadium. Tomlin has been struggling of late, giving up 10 home runs in 18 2/3 innings.

Yankee fans will be cheering for Judge to take advantage of Tomlin’s numbers in Yankee Stadium to break out of his funk and get his offense rolling again.