Aaron Judge on Opening Day

Aaron Judge had a historic opening day that I'm sure he would like to forget. He went 0-5 with 4 strikeouts. Headlines all over the media are questioning if something is wrong with him, if there is something wrong with his swing or if he's done being the dominant force he's been. Today I want to talk about his day and highlight some important takeaways that we often talk to hitters about.

Every hitter, even the best have really bad days

Aaron Judge is the best hitter of the past decade in baseball. You can make a case for Shohei Othani or Mike Trout, but in my opinion, its Judge. He will also be a first ballot hall of famer and will retire as one of the top 3 right-handed hitters of all time. He has dominated the American league for a long time, won multiple MVPS awards, and that same guy is capable of having a historically bad day at the plate. The message to every hitter in the game: if Aaron Judge can have a terrible day, you are going to have a terrible day.

Hitting is Hard, really hard

As good as Aaron Judge is, he, like every other hitter fails way more than they succeed. Aaron Judge hit .331 last season. This means that he fails 67% of the time. Many times as hitters, we expect to have success every single game, every single at-bat. This game was designed for hitters to fail at an incredible clip, more than just about any other activity in sports. While we always want hitters to strive to have success every at bat, the reality is that's not going to happen.

There is another game

While baseball is an incredibly mentally challenging game, there is one aspect that is awesome: the schedule. Baseball usually has the fewest off days and the least amount of time between games. If you have a bad game in football, you have to sit with it for a whole week. In baseball, if you have a bad game, there is another game shortly after, often times the very next day.

This means that when we have a bad game, we can move on. If and when you have those bad games, we want to learn from them, but also have the realization that we can forget the bad one and redeem ourselves the very next day.

Conclusion

This time of year is one of our favorites. We get to watch an entire off-season of work pan out in success for so many of our hitters. However, this is the time of year when hitters venture out and inevitably will experience some bumps in the road. Every hitter does, even Aaron Judge. Realize that there will be tough days, learn from them, move on and get to the next game.