Aaron Judge defies what we all believe is possible for a hitter without the usage of PEDs, and the New York Yankees are reaping the benefits for a second jaw-dropping campaign. While he may not hit as many home runs as he did in 2022, which is partially due to a worse run environment, the star slugger has been better than he was in his runaway MVP season. The ability to do damage on contact has been his calling card since he was drafted by the Yankees back in 2013, but over a decade later it’s the finer skills that he’s learned how to master.
Looking once again like the best hitter on the planet, Aaron Judge is having a run the likes of which we haven’t seen since Barry Bonds.
The Yankees Are Seeing Aaron Judge Take Another Leap Offensively
Back in 2017, it looked like Aaron Judge was having the kind of season that you couldn’t reasonably ask for again considering he hit over 50 home runs and had a 1.049 OPS. In the following four seasons, he had a 147 wRC+ and 102 home runs across 390 games, which is a clear step back from where he was in 2017, but still objectively awesome. He went from someone who should have won the AL MVP to a perennial All-Star, and that was good-enough as long as Judge could figure out how to stay healthy.
2021 was a huge year because he finally stayed healthy for the first time since 2017, posting a 150 wRC+ and 5.5 fWAR across 148 games. A good season, definitely not one that could contend with Shohei Ohtani for AL MVP honors that season, but still a year you love to see from your star player. There was one aspect of Aaron Judge’s game that he hadn’t utilized in 2021 that created a large discrepancy in his wOBA and xwOBA, and that was the ability to get out in front and do damage on contact.
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There’s a huge increase in the pulled flyball rate from 2018 to 2024 (ignore 2020, which was a 28-game sample), and that one small tweak has allowed Aaron Judge to perform around his expected numbers. He ranked in the 13th Percentile in Pulled Flyball Rate in 2021 and the 61st Percentile in Pulled Flyball Rate this season, but trying to pull the ball in the air comes with a trade-off, as it requires a hitter to make an earlier swing decision to get out in front. Usually, that results in more chases and strikeouts, but somehow it’s been the opposite for Judge.
Right now Aaron Judge is striking out at a career-low rate (24.4%) while making the best swing decisions of his career, ranking in the 100th Percentile in SEAGER which measures both your decisions in-zone and out-of-zone. He’s in the 90th Percentile in Hittable Pitch Taken%, meaning when pitchers give him a pitch to crush he’s often swinging, and he’s in the 95th Percentile in Chase Rate which means he rarely expands the zone when thrown something off the plate. That kind of presence coupled with a generational ability to put balls in play at high EVs and ideal launch angles is unprecedented.
Everyone knows that Aaron Judge is awesome, but he’s gone from a hitter with serious issues trying to lay off pitches down and away to one who has ZERO weaknesses in terms of pitch match-ups. The only pitch he “struggles” with this season is the slurve, but that’s a pitch he’s thrown a grand total of six times this season and is the least common pitch you’ll see in the Major Leagues. Teams like having guys who either fall in the sweeper or slider territory, but every other pitch is something Judge will hammer.
With a 200 wRC+ and 23.4 fWAR since 2022, Aaron Judge has been the best hitter in the sport over the last three seasons, and the gap between him and second place is unreal. He has been 29% better than Yordan Alvarez who is the second-best hitter in baseball over that stretch in terms of wRC+ and is slugging rough 70 points higher than Shohei Ohtani. The offensive production he’s had is unmatched, and he’s vying to post the first wRC+ at or above 210 since Barry Bonds.
If we ignore Barry Bonds because of the PED allegations, then you have to go back to 1957 when both Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle posted a wRC+ above 210. Aaron Judge already has the eighth-best post-integration wRC+ (min. 400 PAs) in a single season ever, which he accomplished back in 2022, but he has a chance to further immortalize himself. Nobody currently breathing can say they’ve had the season Aaron Judge is currently having, and he’s one of the greatest Yankees we have ever had the privilege of watching.