Minor League Notes: New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge finds his power stroke

A New York Yankees prospect who is finding his power stroke and a dominant Double-A pitching rotation highlight this week’s minor league notes.

(Note: All stats entering Wednesday unless noted otherwise.)

After the 2015 season, New York Yankees outfield prospect Aaron Judge had the baseball world wondering when he would be launching home runs in Yankee Stadium. An absolute behemoth listed at 6 foot, 7 inches and 275 pounds, Judge was coming off a season in which he hit 20 home runs between Double- and Triple-A.

Sure, he only slugged .373 in 61 games at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, but it was his first exposure to the highest level of the minors. More repetitions would surely bring him up to speed.

This season started much like last season ended. He limped to a .300 weighted on-base average through June 2 and hit seven home runs. But there was one number suggesting he was going to turn things around: he was hitting .270 on balls in play (BABIP), 84 points lower than what he had hit over the previous two seasons.

Judge has come roaring back. Since June 3, Judge is slashing .368/.491/.759 with nine home runs and has a .541 wOBA. His strikeout rate also dropped from 26.2 percent to 17.6 percent and his walk rate jumped from 7.2 percent to 17.6. His BABIP over that span is .390.

The slow start to the season may have been because Judge was getting used to a new hitting approach. According to StatCorner, 32.7 percent of Judge’s batted balls this season are fly balls, the highest rate of his career, and his 33.6 percent groundball rate is the lowest of his career.

Entering Wednesday the Yankees were 27th in the league in slugging (.390) and 23rd in on-base percentage (.310). An injury to first baseman Greg Bird forced the Yankees to give way too many plate appearances to aging veterans such as Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez. If the Yankees somehow find a way to mingle in the playoff chase, Judge could provide a powerful kick down the stretch.

After a week off, we’re back at it with another week of minor league notes.

Next: Triple-A

The Kansas City Royals have one of the best rotations in minor league baseball. The Northwest Arkansas Naturals, the Royals’ Texas League affiliate, has the four highest strikeout-to-walk ratios in the league; the third best team ERA (3.52); and all four of the team’s starters are in the top eight in the league in FIP.

Three of the starters—Jake Junis, Matthew Strahm and Eric Skoglund—are still with the team, while the fourth, Alec Mills, was promoted to Triple-A on June 16. Mills leads the league in K/BB (5.67) while Junis (4.82), Strahm (4.67) and Skoglund (4.53) are second, third and fourth, respectively. All four have a FIP under 3.18—Mills is first in the league, Skoglund if fifth, Strahm is sixth and Junis is eighth—and Junis and Mills were among the top 10 in batting average allowed.

Junis also tossed a scoreless inning with two strikeouts in Tuesday’s Texas League All-Star Game.

The Colorado Rockies’ Raimel Tapia flat-out knows how to hit. There were questions about the legitimacy of his 2015 performance in the California League, but facing advanced pitching hasn’t slowed him. He’s second in the Eastern League with a .318 batting average and is ninth in OBP (.370) and 14th in slugging (.449). He’s been particularly hot lately, hitting .389/.463/.528 since June 8.

Like Tapia, the Chicago Cubs’ Ian Happ has had no trouble adjusting to more advanced pitching. In five games in Double-A, Happ has hit two home runs, two doubles and is slashing .733/.706/1.267. Granted it’s an incredibly small sample size, but it’s impressive that he has continued to hit after slashing .296/.410/.475 with seven home runs in Class A Advanced.

Next: Class A Advanced

Minnesota Twins pitcher Felix Jorge is having a career year. He leads the Florida State League in ERA (1.58) and K/BB (6.40) and is fourth in FIP (2.60). If the fact that his FIP is more than a run higher than his ERA jumped out at you, it should, because he has the ninth highest negative difference in the league.

Part of the difference may come from Jorge’s ability to strand base runners. Jorge is second in the league in left on base percentage (82.2), which measures the percentage of base runners a pitcher doesn’t allow to score. Prior to 2016, Jorge stranded 70.4 percent of base runners, which is average for a pitcher.

For an example of what could happen the rest of the season, consider Chih-Wei Hu, a pitcher in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. Hu had a 1.42 ERA and 2.31 FIP through May 14 for the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits. During that span he stranded 87.2 percent of base runners. His LOB% was 70.0 entering 2016, and from May 20 to June 16, that strand rate regressed to 65.3 percent and his ERA ballooned to 3.48.

Texas Rangers pitcher Ariel Jurado is having a good season in the California League. While Tuesday’s outing doesn’t inspire praise—he went four innings and allowed three earned runs on seven hits and five strikeouts—he is second in the league in FIP (2.74), third in home run rate (0.14 per nine innings) and sixth in K/BB (3.75).

Cleveland Indians prospect Yu-Cheng Chang is second in the Carolina League in slugging (.496) and hit his ninth home run Monday, which tied him for fifth in the league. He hit nine home runs all of last season.

Next: Class A

Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Soroka on Tuesday had one of his best starts of the season. He pitched seven innings and allowed one earned run on two hits and seven strikeouts. The performance put his ERA at 2.77 and his FIP at 2.58, third best in the South Atlantic League.

Soroka’s performance so far has been impressive, but he might get even better. Soroka has a 67.4 LOB%, one of the lowest in the league, which is a few percentage points lower than what is typically average—according to Fangraphs, 70-72 percent is average. If Soroka does indeed regress toward average, then he might be keeping even more runs off the board as the season continues.

Over in the Midwest League, Matt Esparza of the Cleveland Indians has the third highest strikeout rate (10.32/9 IP). Even more importantly, he’s not walking many batters, which is why he has the league’s highest K/BB (5.73).

Next: Congress introduces bill to 'save' minor league baseball

Eliezer Alvarez of the St. Louis Cardinals is putting together his third above average season in a row. He had a .480 wOBA in a brief 2014 season in Rookie Ball. He followed that up with a .365 wOBA in 52 games last season. This season, he’s hitting .312/.395/.450 with a .393 wOBA. A big factor in his success this season is his 10.8 percent walk rate, which is his highest since 2012.