The Yankees hope they can jump-start Aaron Judge and get him ready for everyday right field duties. The plan is to have him work with Minor League hitting coordinator James Rowson in Tampa to improve his numbers. The 24-year-old struck out 42 times in 95 plate appearances across 27 games in the Majors last season while belting four homers and 10 RBI.
Throughout his career, Judge has slowly but surely adapted while moving up the ranks. In his first stop at Trenton, the big man hit just .224 while struggling with the advanced pitching. However, he made it back in 2016 to hit .270 with 19 homers. He will work with Rowson to improve pitch recognition and hasn’t been too concerned about the K’s.
“Same thing as last year. Got a little taste of Triple-A, got used to it and the same thing here,” Judge said in October. “Got a couple of games up here, saw what it’s like and now just get ready to prepare and come into next year not an unknown. I’ll know what’s going on and what the league is and I’ll be prepared.”
Brian Cashman has said he expects Judge to compete with Aaron Hicks, Rob Refsnyder and Tyler Austin for the right field starting job.
