Fantasy Baseball: Aaron Judge making needed changes, so go get him if you can

Aaron Judge's power isn't in question, but his ability to apply it in-game has been. But that hasn't been an issue so far, and Chris Towers says that makes the young slugger worth pursuing in Fantasy.

If you just looked at Aaron Judge, you might be able to figure out what type of baseball player he is. OK, first you might assume the 6-foot-7, 275-pounder is Rob Gronkowki's backup, or a pass-rushing defensive end, or perhaps an especially beefy undersized power forward.

But once you established his place on a baseball field, you probably wouldn't need 20 questions to figure out he is a big-time power hitter. You probably wouldn't need many more questions to figure out that he's got some holes in his swing, too. Swinging a two-inch wide piece of wood at a two-inch wide ball traveling 95 miles per hour is tough enough, and you're bound to have a few holes in your swing when you try to do it at 6-7.

So, nothing we've seen from Judge so far in his major-league career should come as much of a surprise to anyone. Not the 44.2 percent strikeout rate in 95 plate appearances last season, and not certainly not the impressive run he's been on to start this season. And, neither of these likely represents the true face of Judge; neither the .608 OPS he sported last season nor his .984 mark through the first nine games is likely to represent a real baseline for him.

On the contrary, both probably represent the opposite poles of Judge's potential output. Judge was overmatched last season because he was lacking in experience, sure, but also because that's just who he is. He is going to have stretches where he has trouble making contact and looks lost at the plate, no matter how good he ends up getting.

He is a lot like Giancarlo Stanton in that regard. If you're looking for a comp for Judge, that's the obvious one. Stanton has fallen into some deep slumps, but he's never more than a few hung sliders from breaking out of it. Judge is actually bigger than Stanton, and probably has more holes in his swing as well. However, what we're seeing right now is how good he can be when he is on his game.

The big change Judge has made in the early going is pretty straightforward: He isn't swinging at as many bad pitches. It's simplistic, but that's what we're dealing with so far.

His swing rate on pitches in the strike zone has roughly remained consistent, at 61.1 percent, per PITCHf/x data. However, Judge has cut his rate on pitches outside of the zone from 34.9 percent to 24.2, and that's exactly what we want to see from a hitter like him. Plate discipline isn't just about walking -- though he's done a decent amount of that in the early going -- but also about identifying which pitches you can do something with. For a player with the kind of holes Judge has in his swing, that's obviously a key.

Because, like Stanton -- or Miguel Sano, Kris Bryant, Joey Gallo to name just a few other players with varying degrees of success overcoming swing-and-miss issues -- there's no question about what Judge can do when he makes contact. He has comparable raw power to anyone in baseball, and even sported a 48.8 percent hard-hit rate on his 43 batted balls last season. In the early going, he is at 54.5 percent so far, and his average exit velocity of 92.3 MPH is more than four MPH above the MLB average.

Nine games isn't enough to say Judge has complete overcome his contact issues, but it's a nice sign that he isn't completely overmatched up there. He has a plan and, so far, has managed to execute it as well as you could have hoped. That wasn't a guarantee after his cup of coffee last season, but after watching him through the first couple of weeks of the season, you have to be optimistic about what he has shown.

Judge has rare raw power, and he looks like he has made some adjustments that are helping him tap into that. Whether they stick or not remains to be seen, but he's currently un-owned in 25 percent of CBSSports.com leagues, and I want to make adding him a priority wherever I can, based on what he has shown so far.