Following Saturday’s 4-2 loss in Game 2 of the World Series, the New York Yankees is in a 2-0 series deficit against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Other than Juan Soto’s solo home run in the third inning, the Yankees’ offense was quiet until the ninth, when Soto, Giancarlo Stanton and Jazz Chisholm Jr. all singled, and an Anthony Rizzo hit by pitch given permission run to first base. Unfortunately for New York, captain and regular season MVP Aaron Judge looked lost at the plate.

Judge whiffed on a first-pitch sweeper, watched a 95-mph pitch be called for a strike up the middle, fielded a fly ball well out of the zone and then chased a sweeper off the plate for strike three. He finished the game 0-for-4 with three hits, taking his postseason totals to 6-for-40 (.150) with 19 hits and 1-for-9 (.111) with six hits in the World Series.

The presumptive AL MVP put up historic regular season numbers at age 32, finishing with a .322/.458/.701 slash line and a league-leading 58 home runs in 158 games. So what caused this drastic drop in October? In the end, it comes down to two changes in his approach.

Extending the strike zone

Pitchers have been trashing him out of the zone all season. While Judge fired those pitches during the regular season, he’s chasing them now.

Through 158 regular season games, Judge had the second-lowest walk rate in the American League (18.7%), trailing only Juan Soto (18.3%). Through 11 postseason games, his field goal percentage has increased to 29.3%.

More concerning is his declining contact rate. Since the regular season ended, his rate has gone from 30.7 percent to an alarming 44.1 percent, missing 49 of his 111 postseason swings. For context, the highest slugging rate in the regular season was 36.4 percent, posted by A’s outfielder Zack Gelof.

During the regular season, Judge swung and missed on just 12.1 percent of the pitches he saw. So far in the World Series, that number has skyrocketed to 32.6 percent.

Shoot-happy

If you’ve ever seen Judge take batting practice, you’ll notice that he rarely attempts to hit home runs in that frame. With his power, that comes naturally. Instead, he focuses on staying closed and consistently hitting line drives over the second baseman’s head.

However, during games this postseason, Judge has opened up in an effort to shoot pitches in the outer half of the zone, abandoning his usual approach of driving the ball the other way. As a result, he was repeatedly exposed to breaking pitches in the outer third, a tactic that Dodgers closer Blake Treinen exploited late in Game 2.

In a background story of Greg Joyce of the New York Postit was revealed that a key factor in Gleyber Torres’ resurgence after the All-Star break was Gio Urshela’s observation that Torres was often rolling and heading left instead of driving the ball to the opposite field, where he had found it. past success.

Torres is still an aggressive hitter, but now when he’s not getting the pitch, he’s staying patient, taking walks and handing off the bat to the talented hitter behind him – Juan Soto.

Judge showed that ability during his first 158 ​​games this year, which is why pitchers eventually had to challenge him in the zone. The result? 58 home runs, 144 RBI and an OPS of 1.159.

Even if Judge simplifying his approach like Torres leads to more walks than the heroic swings expected of a team’s star player on the biggest stage, it would still position his team well to score runs. After all, ALCS MVP Giancarlo Stanton is batting right behind him, waiting to do damage.