Aaron Judge’s Eye Movements On The Pitch Sparked Cheating Rumors

Aaron Judge, a hitter with the Yankees, frequently gets enthusiastic comments from broadcasters when he hits towering home runs. However, a few pitches before to his second of the night and 462-foot bomb against the Blue Jays on Monday, he completely perplexed the Toronto broadcast staff with some odd eye movement while in the batter’s box.

Aaron Judge’s Eye Movements On The Pitch Sparked Cheating Rumors

The hero of the New York Yankees clinched a 7-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in the eighth inning with a 462-foot home run.

But during that at-bat, Judge looked to cast a peek in the direction of the Yankees’ bench. In a video that rapidly went viral, the Toronto Blue Jays broadcast crew of play-by-play announcer Dan Shulman and analyst Buck Martinez questioned what Judge was doing.

“Where’s he looking? And he did it more than once,” Shulman said.

“It’s really, really unusual,” Martinez noted.

When Judge hit a moonshot to center field to give the Yankees a 7-0 lead, they were still wondering what the reigning home run champion could have been observing.

Judge explained the agitation in his eyes as being a result of his teammates continuing to approach home plate umpire Clint Vondrak.

“There was a lot of chirping from our dugout, which I really didn’t like in the situation where it’s a 6-0 game,” Judge said. “I know Boonie got tossed — I was trying to save Boonie by calling timeout, like, ‘Hold up here, let me work.’ I was trying to see who was chirping in the dugout. It’s 6-0. Boonie got tossed, let’s just go to work.”

“I feel like after the manager does his thing, it’s like, ‘Fellas, our pitchers still gotta go out there and make some pitches. We got the lead, let’s just go to work here,’ ” Judge said. “I said a couple things to some guys in the dugout and especially after the game. But hopefully, it won’t happen again.”

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays appeared to believe there was more going on.

“It’s kind of odd that a hitter would be looking in that direction,” manager John Schneider told reporters. “He’s obviously looking in that direction for a reason.”

“There was some chirping going from our side, obviously when I got thrown out, and then it continued,” Boone said. “I think a lot of our guys were still letting them hear it, and Judgie was kind of looking over like, ‘I’m hitting here.'”

Following MLB’s crackdown on sign theft, baseball fans are more vigilant than ever about any actions that may be mistaken by competitors trying to get an advantage. Martinez said that was implausible considering that Judge never rotated his head and didn’t appear to be focusing his eyes downward. Shulman hypothesized that Judge may have been trying to glance back at Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk to get a sense of what pitch was coming.

 

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