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From the 2023 Baseball Prospectus annual about Judge:
"An aspect of Judge's herculean season that hasn't gotten nearly as much press as his exploits at the plate is the fact that he was essentially playing a new position this year, and a challenging one at that. The ineffectiveness of Aaron Hicks and the injury to Harrison Bader pushed Judge into center field, which accounted for the majority of his defensive innings for the first time in his career. Prior to this season, Judge had played only 3.9% of his defensive innings in center. Among players this century with at least 4,000 prior defensive innings in the outfield, that 3.9 rate is the third-lowest for a player who made center their primary outfield position (in 2013, both Andre Ethier and Shin-Soo Choo made the move to CF with less experience in center than Judge did.) Not only was it an unusual switch that helped his team fill a hole, Judge was good out there, too: all publicly available metrics pegged him as an above-average defensive center fielder last year, and his arm is nearly as impressive as his bat. Though it's not what people will remember most about his MVP season, Judge's defensive abilities are a big part of what's made him such a superstar."
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