Ryan Garcia
Aaron Judge has flirted with hitting 60 HRs again after surpassing fellow Yankees‘ slugger Roger Maris to set a new American League home run record (62).
In 2024 he hit 58 HRs in 158 games, with a serious argument to be made that a hit-by-pitch against the Orioles might have been the reason why he didn’t get to the big 60 again.
In 2023 he had another ridiculous power display but was limited to 106 games due to two separate stints on the IL, and last season he hit 53 home runs in 152 games with an IL stint in the mix there as well.
I think that 2026 he’s going to outright hit 60 home runs; the way he looks at the plate resembles that 2022 version of Aaron Judge a great bit, and with one remarkable change, he could threaten to break his own record.
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Why the Yankees Could See Another 60 HR Season From Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge needed 34 games to hit his 14th home run of the season in 2022, and he’s at 14 home runs right now in 2026 despite playing in some abnormally cold weather at the start.
One of the biggest reasons for this is a massive spike in his Pull AIR%, which is a key indicator for a hitter if they want to optimize the damage contact they generate in the air.
It’s well-known at this point that pulling a flyball provides the greatest chance of hitting a home run compared to a center-hit or opposite-field one, but it’s very difficult to sustainably crush the ball to the pull side.
To pull the ball, a batter must attack the ball out in front which means making an earlier swing decision, giving less time for tracking the ball to identify whether it’s a strike or not.
As a result, hitters often concede contact and plate discipline in order to generate pulled contact, but somehow Aaron Judge has made a massive improvement to his Pull AIR% without hurting his Whiff%.
This is incredibly impressive when you layer on the fact that Aaron Judge is 34 years old, he’s at the age where bat speed and overall twitchiness are supposed to decline.
What we’re supposed to be seeing is a decline from a top-flight all-time great hitter to something beneath that, it’s not “hating” or “pessimism”, it’s just projecting out a similar career trajectory to 99.9% of all players in MLB history.
Yet somehow, Aaron Judge is shaping up to have another historically dominant season where he wins another MVP unless breakout star Ben Rice has something to say about that.
Here’s the freakiest part; Judge is running what would be the lowest BABIP of his career in a full-season (.290) while his career BABIP is .347.
To put it in layman’s terms; Aaron Judge should be hitting considerably better than he is right now; his .462 xwOBA is better than what we saw in 2025 where he finished with a 204 wRC+ and won his third AL MVP.
This is still the best hitter on the planet, which nobody should be putting into question until he proves otherwise, but there’s a chance he gives us another absolutely ridiculous season.
If he continues to hit home runs at this rate, he will only need to play 155 games to reach the 62 HR plateau, and with the weather beginning to heat up, we could see a nice summer surge from the Yankees’ Captain.
In an era where pitchers throw harder than ever before, teams are smarter than ever before, and players have more information to utilize in order to attack hitters, Aaron Judge remains transcendant.
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