During Barry Bonds' prime, opposing teams decided the best way to attack him was... to just not pitch to him. In 2004, he was intentionally walked 120 times. That's just intentional walks. Overall, he was walked 232 times. There are 162 games in an MLB season, for those who forgot.
Aaron Judge isn't Barry Bonds. No one ever has been, and it will likely be a long, long time before anyone is again. But he's the closest thing we've seen to Bonds in the past two decades, and now, he's starting to get a similar treatment that Bonds did. In Wednesday's game, the Los Angeles Angels have intentionally walked Judge twice... in the first two innings.
Angels intentioanlly walk Judge twice in two innings
With an OPS of 1.234 and an on-base percentage of .488, there's already a pretty good chance Judge is going to reach base. LA has just decided that it's better if he's at first than second, third, or back on the bench after a home run. Can you blame them?
I personally cannot blame them, especially considering there is no Juan Soto stepping to the plate after Judge. Granted, Cody Bellinger is a pretty dang good hitter in his own right, but it's not quite a "pick your poison" scenario for opposing managers anymore. It's more like "avoid the drink with the certain poison and hope the next drink has non-lethal levels of poison." You know, that classic scenario?
Plenty of fans are anti-intentional walk. I get it. When the best players are hitting, you want to see the best players hit. But there's no way you can convince teams that they have to pitch to superstars. The easiest way around it would be the "not" intentional walk, where a pitcher just happens to throw four balls in a row.