His sophomore campaign was a massive disappointment for Julien, whose patient approach sometimes crossed over into outright passivity. Opposing pitchers put together a rock-solid scouting report against him, as evidenced by Julien leading the league in called strikeouts—despite spending a good chunk of the season at Triple A. It was time for Julien to make a big adjustment, and that’s precisely what he’s done.
For the first time in his major-league career, Julien is swinging at more than half the pitches he sees. After constantly finding himself down in the count last season, he’s no longer willing to let the borderline pitches sneak by. While he hasn’t worked counts and taken walks as much as we’ve come to expect, he’s also cut down on the strikeouts so far this season.
The quality of contact has also remained steady in the early going. Julien’s hard-hit rate is back to the level it was in his breakout rookie season, and his barrel rate is better than it’s ever been. He’s not just selling out to try to make contact of any kind, he’s consistently putting a charge into the ball.
More encouraging is Julien’s performance against non-fastballs. Last season, he had no chance in non-fastball counts, and pitchers repeatedly attacked him with soft stuff when he was behind.
While Julien may not be punishing fastballs like we’ve seen him do in the past, it’s hard to imagine he’s lost his ability to do so long-term. More importantly, the talk of spring training regarding Julien was his need to compete against other pitches, and so far, he’s doing so at a level we’ve never seen from him before. While the sample size is small, it coincides with a change in approach, which should always be given at least some attention.
It’s not just that he’s timing his swing to the softer stuff, either—though there might be truth in that, and he might need to make a next wave of adjustments because of it, so he can catch up to the heat. Julien is also hitting from a slightly more spread-out stance, and using a slightly shorter stride this year. That’s allowed him to make contact farther in front of his own body, and to catch the ball in front of home plate—which usually means more thump, particularly against breaking and offspeed pitches
Julien likely still has a bit to iron out with his plate approach in 2025. Swinging so often can also be taken advantage of, particularly when chasing pitches outside the zone. Julien has chased nearly 30% of the time this season, a notable increase from the 18% rate he showed in 2024. While his strikeout rate has declined, his per-swing whiff rate has increased from 30.9% to 35.7%.
It’s hard to expect Julien to come out this season with a completely different plate approach and have it optimized, but this is a start. Instead of looking for the perfect pitch, it appears he’s more willing to expand what he’s hunting for, and so far it’s worked.
Julien has shown plenty to be excited about early this season. Watching him take strike three so consistently in 2024 became maddening, and we’re seeing some encouraging signs of him putting that tendency in the rearview mirror. He’s a different hitter in 2025. Can he keep it up?
