NOTE: I’ll be publishing a soccer piece Monday that, if I do it right, won’t come to the mailing list. This isn’t a soccer site so I don’t want to hit your email box with something you might not want. I like to keep those “off the rails” posts minimal. If you are interested in two American backed clubs that will be making a big jump next season and want to know who Wrexham and Birmingham City might need to pick up to stay in the Championship or even get to the Premier League, it will be free on Monday. The normal UTK will go out as planned.
Reader George brought up something last week that stuck with me. In a conversation about the Kris Bryant signing, he stated that the Rockies “have to overpay to get hitters.” While the Bryant deal clearly hasn’t worked, the larger point raised a question I couldn’t stop thinking about. Is it actually true that the Rockies have to overpay for hitters?
For pitchers, absolutely. You’re asking someone to take a wrecking ball to their ERA and, potentially, their next contract. But for hitters, Denver should be a dream. The air is thin, the gaps are huge, and the baseball doesn’t just fly — it floats. Even with the modern understanding of park factors and the Coors “penalty,” raw numbers still play a role in Hall of Fame cases and legacy.
That got me thinking — what if it hadn’t been Kris Bryant? What if, in 2022, the Rockies had made a legitimate run at Aaron Judge? What if they’d matched the Yankees’ offer and pitched him on the idea of making baseball history at altitude?
Let’s look at the numbers. In 2024, Aaron Judge hit .322 with 58 home runs and a .701 slugging percentage while playing half his games in Yankee Stadium, which is already a hitter-friendly park, particularly for lefties, though Judge certainly hasn’t struggled there. Coors Field, though, is a different kind of hitter’s park. It had a home run park factor of 1.317 last year, compared to Yankee Stadium’s 1.087. That means Coors inflates home run output by about 21% relative to what Judge already had.
Apply that adjustment, and Judge would be sitting somewhere around 70 home runs. His slugging percentage climbs to a projected .725. Not a fantasy number, not a joke—just math. Not quite Bonds in 2001, but enough to join the short list of hitters who have ever cleared .720 over a full season.
That kind of season doesn’t just make a highlight reel. It reshapes legacies. It sets Judge up for a real shot at 700, maybe 750 career home runs. That’s the Hall of Fame on the first ballot with the pen still drying on it.
Of course, there are tradeoffs. Hitters struggle on the road after adjusting to the high-altitude environment. There’s always skepticism about numbers put up at Coors — just ask Larry Walker or Todd Helton. But Aaron Judge isn’t a product of altitude. He’s a generational slugger who happens to play in a neutral-to-positive home park already. If anything, Coors would have exaggerated an already terrifying skill set.
So yes, George had a point. The Rockies just paid for the wrong guy, though we can ‘what if’ a healthy Bryant’s career arc. But if they’d gone after Judge, and pitched him not just on dollars but on history, on immortality … even Charlie Monfort might pay for that. They might’ve made Coors Field a place we see in October.
Judge, chasing 70 in the Denver night, would have been worth every cent. But that dream done, let’s get to the injuries:
MIKE TROUT, OF LAA (bruised knee)
If Angels fans had a deja vu to last season’s knee recurrence with Mike Trout on Wednesday night, they probably should have. Trout “felt something” in the knee, later telling the media he felt it was “scar tissue or something.” Scar inside the meniscus is unusual, given that the damaged portion of the meniscus was removed in the second surgery. In a repair, the healing is of course scar, but there’s a poor blood flow in most of the meniscus, which is why repairs so often fail.
If what Trout felt was scar tissue, that’s not necessarily good - or bad. The question would be the consequences of it. What was the scar tissue there for? Was it an adhesion, where it connects two things that shouldn’t be and is pulled loose later, or was it connecting something that had been damaged and is now heal. The simple word for the latter is “recurrence” and that’s the most worrisome for Trout and the Angels.
Trout remained out on Thursday and late word came on Friday morning that Trout will go to the IL with what the Angels are calling a knee bruise. The team hasn’t said if there was imaging, but a bruise would indicate it happened in a similar area to last year’s meniscus issues. Ron Washington said “no structural damage”, but that was never really the worry. As I said at the start of the year, moving Trout to right field didn’t fix the problem. We’ll have to see if the Angels can fix their own structural issues now.
JORGE POLANCO, 3B/DH (oblique strain)
LUKE RALEY, 1B SEA (oblique strain)
Reader Ian asked whether Jorge Polanco’s recent run while dealing with an oblique strain is unprecedented. I’ve held off writing about this one because Polanco has been able to to play, but is only hitting lefty while the strain - and the location is unclear - heals. He’s also made significant changes to his batting stance, which have to be considered the genesis. The limitation, as it were, seems to actually be helping him. He’s always had a bit more power from the left side, though nothing like this.
So is the strain, no matter where it is, limiting him? It’s certainly not helping, unless we say that only batting lefty is helping. It’s a mild strain, more taxed by swinging righty, and monitored regularly. Without that, I’m not sure the medical staff would feel as confident sending Polanco out there. On this heater, losing him the way they have with Luke Raley would be brutal. A win? Maybe, though being limited to DH has actually helped by limiting his defensive negative value against WAR.
What Polanco is doing right now is unsustainable, even with the changes. He’s not going to turn into Aaron Judge overnight and there’s really no good comps for someone doing this at age-31. Jose Bautista comes to mind, but Justin Turner might be the better comp for the sudden power with mechanical changes. What I’m curious about is why it’s seemingly just Polanco that’s responded to this, when you’d think everyone has access to the same coaches, tools, and data.
As for Raley, the oblique strain is not only more significant (Grade II), but located in a bad spot. There’s no good spot, but the obliques are oddly shaped and inconsistently constructed. Raley could miss six to eight weeks, though current treatments tend to have all but the worst back on the lower end of that on the rehab, plus time to work on the swing.