In 2022, Shohei Ohtani posted a career-high 2.33 ERA, led the American League in strikeout rate, finished fourth in Cy Young Award voting, hit 34 home runs, and slugged 44% better than league average. He did not win MVP.
Instead, Aaron Judge topped the sensation in a historic year in which the Yankees slugger set the American League record with 62 home runs. Two years later, in a season the likes of which Major League Baseball hasn’t seen since Barry Bonds’ unrivaled streak in the early 2000s, Judge is even better.
Even if Bonds’ performance back then is not surpassed this year, we have never seen a right-hander perform like Judge has this season.
In 130 games, the favorite for American League MVP has posted a batting average of .333/.465/.732 with 51 home runs and 122 RBIs. Entering Tuesday, Judge is on pace to post 63 home runs, 188 hits, 128 runs and 150 RBIs. Sammy Sosa is the only player to ever achieve those numbers in a season, doing so in 1998 and 2001. Judge’s OPS of 1.197, as well as his OPS+ of 229 and wRC+ of 225 (adjusted for the park and league environment), far exceed Sosa’s numbers in both years.
In fact, no right-handed hitter in the history of the American League or National League has ever matched Judge’s current OPS+ or wRC+, let alone hit 50 home runs.
By wRC+, the only right-hander to come anywhere close to Judge’s mark is Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, who hit .424/.507/.696 in 1924. Hornsby had a wRC+ of 214 that year and only half as many home runs as Judge. (It’s worth noting that Hall of Famers and Negro League legends Josh Gibson and Mule Suttles posted a higher wRC+ than Judge that year, albeit in far fewer games played and thus without the same counting stats.)
Judge is the only right-handed pitcher since baseball’s integration to have a season with a wRC+ of at least 205, and now he’s on pace to do it a second time.
He leads the majors in home runs by 10, RBIs by 18, on-base percentage by 38, and slugging and OPS by more than 100 each. As exceptional as his numbers are and likely will be by year’s end, his rate stats might be even more astounding.
If he stays on track this year, he will break every slash line total from his 2022 MVP season, in part because he’s taking more walks and making fewer strikeouts than he did this season.
Bonds (2004) is the last hitter to hit every mark in Judge’s current slash line over the course of an entire season, but the Giants hitter has never done so while simultaneously hitting more than 50 home runs. (Bonds had a .328 batting average during his 2001 season with 73 home runs.)
Only two players in the history of the game have matched or exceeded Judge’s slash line totals for that season while hitting at least 50 home runs, and both came before MLB integration. Babe Ruth did it three times. Right-hander Jimmie Foxx did it once, for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1932.
1920: Babe Ruth (.376/.532/.847, 54 HRs, 255 OPS+, 234 wRC+)
1921: Babe Ruth (.378/.512/.846, 59 HRs, 239 OPS+, 218 wRC+)
1927: Babe Ruth (.356/.486/.772, 60 HRs, 225 OPS+, 208 wRC+)
1932: Jimmie Foxx (.364/.469/.749, 58 HRs, 207 OPS+, 194 wRC+)
2024: Aaron Judge (.333/.465/.732, 51 HRs, 229 OPS+, 225 wRC+)
Aaron Judge hits his 50th home run of the season
This year, Bobby Witt Jr. — whose .347 batting average is the only thing standing between Judge and the Triple Crown — may have the best all-around season ever as a shortstop. And as far as awards voting goes, that might not matter. That’s how ridiculous Judge has been in a season where he leads the majors in Wins Above Replacement, in addition to all of the counting stats mentioned above.
It didn’t start that way.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Judge’s absurd season: On May 2, 33 games into his season, he had a batting average of .197 with six home runs and an OPS of .725. At that point, it was fair to wonder if last year’s lingering toe problem would also torpedo his 2024 season.
Since then, he has posted a .381/.510/.853 batting average with 45 home runs and 104 RBIs over the last 97 games. Had he started the season with that success, he would now be on a 75-home run trajectory, bringing back memories of Bonds’ record-setting 2001 season.
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Although he doesn’t seem likely to beat Bonds’ home run record this year, the Yankees superstar seems to be setting new all-time highs every week. Two weeks ago, Judge became the fastest player to hit 300 home runs. With his performance on Sunday, in which he hit two home runs, he became the fifth player in MLB history to hit at least 50 home runs in three seasons, joining Ruth, Sosa, Mark McGwire and Álex Rodríguez.
By the end of the year, he has a chance of joining Sosa and McGwire as the only players ever to have multiple 60-home run seasons. Neither of them has ever managed to reach that mark while also hitting a .330 batting average, as Judge is doing now, in what could go down as the best offensive season by a right-hander ever.
And considering the MLB environment in which Judge is doing this—an integrated, post-steroid era where hitting has never been more difficult—at least by Game 162, you could argue that this is the most impressive offensive season ever, regardless of handedness.
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the LA Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. Rowan, an LSU graduate, was born in California, grew up in Texas and moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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