Aaron Judge unfairly blamed for Jazz Chisholm’s reported attitude issues

Fantasy baseball 2027 early ADP takeaways show Shohei Ohtani holding firm as a top-two pick while Aaron Judge slides almost out of the first round.

Judge, who has been a consensus top-five pick for more than five years, is now going near the end of the first round in early NFBC drafts.

He will turn 35 shortly after the scheduled 2027 Opening Day.

In 2026, Judge missed 106 games — a massive chunk of the season.

More concerning: his strikeout rate jumped from 24% to 30%.

His expected wOBA on contact (.537) would still have been the best in baseball, but the margin shrank dramatically.

In 2025, Judge was 35 points clear of Ohtani in that metric.

In 2024, he was a whopping 67 points better.

By 2026, that gap had narrowed to just four-thousandths of a point ahead of James Wood.

That is a red flag for fantasy managers.

If Judge is still the best hitter in baseball, he is worth a top-five pick even with injury risk.

But if he is no longer a true four-category outlier, the downsides become much harder to overlook.

Separately, there have been reports connecting Judge to Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s reported attitude issues in the Yankees clubhouse.

Those reports have been described by some as unfairly pinning blame on Judge.

The source material for this story does not contain any details about what those attitude issues are or what specific accusations were made.

What is clear from the ADP data: Judge's fantasy value is declining regardless of any off-field narrative.

Meanwhile, Shohei Ohtani remains the No. 2 overall pick in early drafts.

Ohtani finished as the No. 40 hitter in 2026 — his worst ranking since 2022.

He will be 33 by midseason 2027.

The case against drafting him second overall: his stolen base potential has diminished, and the aging curve suggests a drop-off is coming.

The case for him: he hit .300 with 50-plus homers in 2024, was not far off in 2025, and was on pace for a .293 average and 40 homers in 2026 before a second-half slide.

If you draft Ohtani second overall, you are betting that the 2026 decline was a blip, not a trend.

Other notable ADP takeaways include Konnor Griffin going in the second round after an 80-game rookie season.

Griffin's full-season pace: .272 average, 12 homers, 86 runs, 66 RBI, and 46 steals.

That is not worth a second-round pick on its face.

But his final 61 games tell a different story: .297 average, 16 homers, 94 runs, 66 RBI, and 50 steals.

That pace would be worth a top-20 pick.

Jacob Misiorowski is the clear No. 1 starting pitcher with an ADP of 9.12.

Tarik Skubal is second at 14.06.

Cam Schlittler (16.65) rounds out the top tier.

Paul Skenes is still a top-10 SP at SP8 despite a deeply disappointing third season.

Skenes has a career 2.62 ERA, 2.83 xERA, and 2.73 FIP over three seasons.

But his velocity collapsed as the 2026 season went on.

Projection systems may not fully account for that decline.