The rookie had tried everything, literally. A new stance. A new swing. Swinging at the first pitch he saw. Taking a strike. Taking two strikes. Choking up. Aiming for right field. Nothing worked. Nothing.
When he stepped to the batter’s box on the evening of April 20, 1970, top of the first inning, he felt all alone, and practically was: there were only 4,626 people dotted throughout the 45,016 seats at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. Then he looked up at the scoreboard and saw something truly horrifying.
His batting average: .033.
“I’m not nervous,” Thurman Munson would say later that night. “But I am worried.”
To that point in his rookie season, Munson had made 40 plate appearances and gotten exactly one hit (along with seven walks and a hit-by-pitch). Rookies slump. Veterans slump. Ted Williams slumped. But 1-for-30 to start the season is a good way to see a stark number — .033 — on a scoreboard.
“I’m not worried about Munson hitting,” the Yankees’ manager, Ralph Houk, had insisted before the game. “I’ve told him that already. We expected him to hit better, of course, but we know he will.”
Perhaps it was that unflinching confidence from his manager, an ex-catcher who knew the additional burdens a rookie at the position carried. Perhaps it was the fact that the Yankees had already pounded Senators starter George Brunet for five runs by the time Munson’s spot in the order — seventh — came up. Or maybe it’s just that — as Phil Rizzuto almost assuredly told the viewers back home that night — he was “over-due.”But Munson ripped a single (almost doubling his average to .065), added two more hits, and was on his way. Across the final 123 games of that ’70 season, Munson hit .322, far more in line with what he would do the rest of his career. From .033 he rose his average to .302 by season’s end, won Rookie of the Year by earning 23 of 24 first-place votes.
Which brings us to Aaron Judge.
Judge, of course, had the good sense to start this season as hot as any player in baseball. His signature quickly became the moon-shot home run, of course, and he hit them in bunches, and on July 7 he blasted a home run off Milwaukee’s Josh Hader, his 30th, breaking Joe DiMaggio’s team record for homers by a rookie. He was on pace for 58, which would’ve smashed Mark McGwire’s all-time rookie record (49, in 1987).
But Judge was more than raw power. Though his own early-season average bottomed out at .133 on April 8, four days later he cracked .300 for the first time and after going 2-for-4 in a 12-4 rout of the Orioles on April 29, he reached .301. It was the first of 94 consecutive days in which he would go to sleep as a .300 hitter, hitting a high of .347 on June 12.
And … well. Maybe you’ve heard about what’s happened since.
It’s been in all the papers.
Thursday, starting a critical four-game series with the Red Sox, Yankees manager Joe Girardi finally did what so many have screamed for him to do for weeks: he dropped Judge out of a premium slot in the order, installing him in the 6-hole, hoping that will revive what once was an epic season and is now a hard-to-define one (that still leaves him as the favorite to win Rookie of the Year, despite it all).
“You move hitters around,” Girardi said. “Then they earn spots higher up in the lineup. So sometimes you do different things when guys are struggling. We’ve tried him at 2, 4 and 5, now I’ve moved him to 6. He’s still very important to us.”
Forty-seven years ago, Houk kicked himself for starting Munson off in the 2-hole, ultimately moving him down five slots (and giving him a couple of days off) to 7, where he finally discovered his stroke and stopped pressing. By season’s end he was back in the 2-hole, on merit.
What the Yankees want — what they need — is for Judge to earn a similar promotion because the lineup was at peak effectiveness when Judge was settled in the 3 slot.
On merit.