An Aaron Judge time capsule
I have written extensively about Aaron Judge. Just a few months ago, I cautioned that we should not take his talent for granted and enjoy every second of it while we can. Still, I do not feel like I’m doing The Guy justice – even as a verbose, hyperbolic Yankee buff. I have largely run out of words to articulate his greatness. I have failed to capture the depth of his majesty. And so, as we marvel again at this freak of athletic possibility, my only recourse is to explain how he makes me feel, as a fan, and how sensational it is to watch him in his prime.
I often wonder what it was truly like to witness Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle every day. We can learn a lot from books and documentaries, statistics and mythology, but experiencing such extraordinary ability up close, in real time, must have been magical. And just as contemporaneous chroniclers memorialised the genius of such legends, I now feel compelled to do so for Judge, so future generations can appreciate this moment.
Right now, you see, Aaron Judge is must-watch TV. He is a game-on-the-phone-at-the-supermarket, rearrange-your-life-around-every-at-bat phenomenon. Every plate appearance is an event, stunning history in motion. There is a chance he will do something astounding whenever he steps into the batters’ box, and missing the accumulation of his oeuvre is a terrifying prospect for any hardcore seamhead.
Such appointment viewing is vanishingly rare. In my time as fan, the distinction has probably been accorded to a handful of hitters – Barry Bonds and Ichiro Suzuki as they chased history; Manny Ramirez during his peak; Alex Rodriguez bidding for his 500th career home run; Mike Trout at his best; and Giancarlo Stanton with the Marlins. Bryce Harper came close in 2015, with one of the greatest offensive seasons of modern times, while I was too young to actively follow Ken Griffey Jr., Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire in the late-1990s.
Similar to those feted peers, there is just an irresistible aura to Judge at the plate. Of course, at 6-foot-7, he is a hulking colossus. Counterintuitively, though, Judge’s sharpness and agility is a sight to behold. He is so cool, calm and collected, yet the thunder unleashed from his effortless motion is devastating. He is a smiling assassin with a level, languid swing that causes incongruous destruction. It all looks so easy for Judge, a pinstriped Paul Bunyan wielding a wooden club, but the damage is so often emphatic, among the most jaw-dropping we have ever seen.
Take this past weekend as a pertinent example. In a season-opening series against Milwaukee, Judge went 6-for-11 with four homers, two doubles, three walks and 11 RBI. The Saturday game was particularly astonishing, as Judge authored the third three-homer game of his career, moving one shy of Lou Gehrig for the franchise record.
His first blast travelled 468 feet and almost cleared the left field bleachers at Yankee Stadium – rarefied air. Judge then launched a 425-foot homer and a 396-foot grand slam, reaching a total distance of 1,289 feet.
Watching live, I could barely believe my eyes. Indeed, even away from the actual games, the mere thought of Judge brings a smile to my lips. And that, ultimately, is the essence of fandom: to marvel at the magnificent, in escape of the mundane.
Already this year, it seems Judge is playing angry, with a point to prove following his infamous fielding error during the 2024 World Series, which New York lost to the Dodgers. And when Judge plays with a chip on his shoulder, with a quiet determination to silence the critics in dignified style, monumental feats typically ensue.
We saw that, most explicitly, during the 2022 season, when Judge compiled the greatest free agent walk year in baseball history – swatting 62 home runs en route to winning the first of his two MVP awards. The baseball cognoscenti is still yet to fully grasp the true magnitude of that herculean achievement, which broke the Yankees’ hallowed single-season homer mark. Sixty-one years after Roger Maris hit 61 taters, surpassing the previous record set by Babe Ruth, Judge joined the pinstriped immortals with lyrical symmetry. Not enough was made of that evocative accomplishment at the time, and its full historical meaning is yet to dawn on fans who have become accustomed to Judge’s heroics.
To that end, I recently wrote about the GOAT candidacy of Shohei Ohtani, whose incredible exploits continue to draw comparisons with Ruth and other legendary icons. I sided with Ruth in that premature debate, and a compelling case can be made that Ohtani is not even the best player on the planet right now. Yes, the whole two-way threat thing is stupendous, in theory, but Ohtani has not actually thrown a big league pitch for 19 months. And in terms of offensive output, the comparison to Judge is not even particularly close:
Aaron Judge v Shohei Ohtani comparison, 2018-2025 inclusive:
G
AVG
OBP
OPS
OPS+
SLG
HR
RBI
H
WAR
Judge
814
.293
.408
1.020
178
.612
263
603
863
44.8
Ohtani
865
.282
.372
.947
157
.575
227
569
884
28.8
Source: Baseball-Reference
Sure, the above does not account for Ohtani’s pitching, but it also does not consider Judge’s first 182 major league games, in 2016 and 2017, when he established a new first-year home run record and won Rookie of the Year honours. Sure, Ohtani boasts a World Series ring, whereas Judge does not, but Aaron is also a strong defensive contributor – last fall aside – while Shohei does not play the field. They are at least peers, even if the novelty of Shohei’s skillset earns him additional hype. And if Ohtani is in the GOAT debate, Judge should be, too.
To that point, in my time watching baseball, the only hitter who has made the game look easier – who seemed certain to do something amazing every time he stepped to the plate – was peak Bonds, who may or may not have been chemically enhanced. Like Bonds during his unprecedented 2001-2004 stretch, pitched baseballs look like beachballs to Judge right now. Anything in the strike zone is swatted away with brute authority, and Bondsian carnage is wrought by his bat.
Such is Judge’s near-automatic dominance, I already find myself tracking his home run pace – three games into the season. When position player Jake Bauers retired Judge deep into a 20-9 Yankees victory on Saturday, I winced, thinking the big guy may rue that opportunity later in the season, when every homer will be scrutinised.
Could Judge scale an assault on Bonds’ single-season home run record of 73, salvaging a sacrosanct landmark from baseball’s scandalous scrapheap? Maybe. When Judge hit 62 in ‘22, he mashed only six through April. And last year, when he finished with 58, the tally also stood at six when the calendar flipped to May. It is a lot of pressure to put on a guy, and a whole panoply of things can go wrong in the months ahead, but Judge is already 66% of the way to matching those April figures without playing a game in April yet – a mind-blowing accomplishment.
Judge is not just a home run hitter, though. He also has an outside shot at Bonds’ single-season OBP and OPS records, of .609 and 1.421, respectively. Why? Because in a lineup freshly devoid of Juan Soto, Jazz Chisholm Jr. currently hits behind Judge, and although the live-wire second baseman has electric pop of his own, opposing managers would rather pitch to him than #99, 100% of the time. So Judge will be walked a whole lot in 2025, again redolent of Bonds at his best. Comically, Judge has a 2.461 OPS through 14 plate appearances – a completely unsustainable rate, but perhaps a diluted harbinger, nonetheless.
All of this has me in a place I never thought possible: contemplating whether anyone other than Derek Jeter is the greatest Yankee I have ever seen in my lifetime. Derek and Aaron are vastly different players, so they are very difficult to compare, but in terms of pure explosive talent, Judge probably wins. Still, Derek has five World Series rings and a slew of all-time franchise records, so I place him ahead of Aaron, but these are potential permutations I once thought impossible. I thought Jeter’s mix of comportment and productivity would go unmatched in my lifetime, but Judge is right there beside him – a worthy successor to the Yankee captaincy.
Judge is not just chasing pinstriped gods, however, because one can legitimately argue he is the greatest right-handed power hitter of all-time. In MLB history, the only righty batter with a higher career slugging percentage is Jimmie Foxx – by one mere percentage point. In that particular category, Judge has outperformed legends like DiMaggio, Mays, Hank Aaron, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols. And what would we give to relive their prime years? A whole lot, I’m sure.
When all is said and done, Judge’s traditional counting stats may fall short of the all-time greats, simply because he was a relative late bloomer, having debuted aged 24. Nevertheless, without wishing to jinx the big guy, he seems to have found a way of playing that is less taxing on his huge body, and he should still have a reasonable shot at 500 homers and 2,000 hits. That darned World Series ring looms over his legacy like a black cloud, ominous and inescapable, but the Yankees should have consistent opportunities to address that – if they go all-in and build the best supporting cast around their transcendent star.
Alas, there is a limit to the light emitted by that star – a limit to the ability of any human to produce superhuman results over an extended period of time. Sadly, at some point, in the not-too-distant future, Aaron Judge will not be this good. His prime will elapse and his peak will diminish. He is 32-years-old, and will turn 33 in just under a month. At most, then, we may have one or two seasons of him at this majestic level. And so, again, I implore you to savour every second. There has never been a player like Aaron Judge, and we will not see a facsimile anytime soon.