David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior WriterJul 6, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
Whenever Aaron Judge hits a home run, especially one of those prodigious blasts when you hear the crack of the bat echo throughout the ballpark, I'm reminded of late Negro Leagues star Buck O'Neil, who said he heard three batters in his lifetime where the ball sounded different off their bat from all others: Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson and Bo Jackson.
O'Neil never had the opportunity to see Judge -- but I'm pretty sure Judge would be a fourth hitter on that list.
The New York Yankees slugger is on one of the great heaters in baseball history. Judge just completed a 50-game stretch when he hit .398/.507/.937 with 25 home runs -- and it has come against the highest level of pitching in the game's history. Just to give you perspective on the kind of company he keeps: The only players with a 1.430 OPS over a 50-game span have been Ruth (five different years), Lou Gehrig (once), Ted Williams (once), Barry Bonds (four seasons) and now Judge.
We're past the technical halfway point in games played, although we're not yet at the All-Star break, which is the traditional halfway point of the season. To put some of Judge's numbers in perspective, let's compare him to the best totals in history from the first half (the All-Star Game began in 1933, so we're only looking at since then) -- and, since the first half doesn't always feature the same number of games, we'll also compare Judge to other historic seasons through 90 team games (the Yankees' total through Friday).
Home runs
Judge's number: 32
Most in first half: Barry Bonds, 2001 (39)
Season to remember through 88 games: Judge, 2022 (31)
Bonds' 39 home runs came in 81 games played. He would then break the single-season record with 34 more in the second half in 72 games, finishing with a total of 73. Judge isn't on pace to challenge Bonds, but he has given himself a chance to challenge his own American League record of 62 set two years ago.
Note that Judge was even better in the second half that year, hitting .349 with 29 home runs in 68 games. In fact, from the second half of 2022 through Tuesday's game when he went 3-for-4 with a home run, Judge hit .306/.443/.692 with 98 home runs in 259 games, averaging a home run every 9.2 at-bats.
Quick math here: He has averaged 3.6 at-bats per game in 2024; if he plays 72 games the rest of the way, that's 259 at-bats the remainder of the season. If he keeps homering at the same rate he has maintained since the second half of 2022, that's 26 home runs -- putting him at 58. And if he keeps homering once every two games like he has been doing the past 50 games, well, that takes him to an absurd 68 home runs. We can't expect him to keep up that pace, but a second 60-homer season is within reach.
RBIs
Judge's number: 83
Most in first half: Juan Gonzalez, 1998 (101)
Season to remember through 88 games: Manny Ramirez, 1999 (98)
Of all of Judge's numbers, his RBI total might be the most impressive -- or, at least the most surprising, because we don't really see these types of RBI figures in today's game. The last 140-RBI season came in 2009 (Prince Fielder and Ryan Howard), the last 150-RBI season in 2007 (Alex Rodriguez) and the last player to average an RBI a game was Ramirez in that 1999 season (165 in 147 games).
Gonzalez had 101 RBIs in 87 games at the break in 1998; he had missed four games, so his overall pace was 180. But RBIs are as much about opportunity as timely production: Gonzalez hit .353 and slugged .686 in the second half compared to .293 and .590 in the first half, but his RBI pace slowed to 56 in 67 games, and he finished with 157.
One advantage for those players is they played in much higher offensive environments. The AL in 1999, for example, averaged 5.18 runs per game; in 2024 it's averaging just 4.33. Ramirez had the added advantage of hitting fourth in a more traditional lineup where the top three hitters -- generally Kenny Lofton, Omar Vizquel and Roberto Alomar -- had OBPs of .378, .379 and .406, but they also didn't drive themselves in with a ton of home runs. Today's teams have power up and down the lineup and, combined with the low averages and on-base percentages, that leaves fewer RBI opportunities for the middle of the order.
Of course, Judge has one key reason to average an RBI a game: Juan Soto hits in front of him and Soto is on base all the time (although Soto also hits home runs). Leadoff hitter Anthony Volpe, however, has just a .311 OBP; he needs to have a big second half to give Judge more runners on base.
Total bases
Judge's number: 219
Most in first half: Chris Davis, 2013, and Luis Gonzalez, 2001 (246)
Season to remember through 88 games: Miguel Cabrera, 2012 (204)
There have been 29 seasons in which a player recorded 400 total bases. All except three occurred in the two high-scoring eras in MLB history: the 1920s/1930s and the 1990s/early 2000s (the exceptions are Stan Musial in 1948, Henry Aaron in 1959 and Jim Rice in 1978). The last players with 400 total bases all did it in 2001: Sammy Sosa (425), Gonzalez (419), Bonds (411) and Todd Helton (402).
It's a hard number to get to: Even in Cabrera's Triple Crown season of 2012, when he hit .330 with 44 home runs and 40 doubles and played 161 games, he didn't get there, finishing with 377 total bases. Davis had played 95 games in the first half in 2013, which did put him on a 400-total bases pace, but his OPS fell more than 200 points in the second half, and he finished with 370.
But Judge has come close before, tallying 391 total bases in 2022. Besides hitting for a high average and with power, he's also hitting more doubles this season -- in fact, he's tied for the AL lead with 23, already closing in on his 2022 total of 28. A remarkable 56% of his hits have been for extra bases. If he can keep swatting the doubles to go with the home runs and stay healthy, he has a chance at 400 total bases -- assuming pitchers keep pitching to him. Getting there in this year of relatively low offense across the league would be a ridiculous accomplishment.
OPS
Judge's number: 1.123 OPS
Highest in first half: Barry Bonds, 2004 (1.421)
Season to remember through 88 games: Albert Pujols, 2008 (1.094)
Yes, another reminder that Bonds was so good he broke the game. He would finish that season with a 1.422 OPS -- hitting .362/.609/.812 with 232 walks (120 of them intentional). Judge had a 1.111 OPS in 2022; the last player to finish with a higher OPS over a full season was Pujols in 2008, when he finished at 1.114 (Soto was higher in the shortened 2020 season).
Even that comparison doesn't do justice to what Judge is doing in 2024. Again, he's playing in a lower-scoring environment and still putting up historic numbers. OPS+ adjusts for that, and Judge is sitting on a 215 OPS+, which would be the highest non-Bonds OPS+ since Ted Williams (233) and Mickey Mantle (221) in 1957. The raw numbers tell us Judge is having a historic season; the advanced metrics tell us it's even better.
WAR
Judge's number: 6.3
Highest since 1933: Carl Yastrzemski, 1967 (12.5)
Season to remember: Mickey Mantle, 1956 (11.2)
We can't sort Baseball-Reference WAR into half-season totals, so the above are full-season results.
Ruth had three 12-WAR seasons earlier in his career, but since 1933, Yaz is the only position player to score that high, in his Triple Crown year with the Boston Red Sox when he hit .326/.418/.622 with 44 home runs. He led the AL in home runs, RBIs, average, OBP, slugging, runs, hits, total bases and OPS+ (193) while winning a Gold Glove. That all came in an extremely low offensive environment: The AL averaged just 3.70 runs per game. Yaz was the best hitter in the league by a mile and is also credited with 23 runs saved on defense, about two wins of value. That's how you get to 12 WAR.
Bonds never got there. He tops out at 11.9 in 2001 and 11.8 in 2002. Willie Mays never got there. Williams or Mantle never got there. Heck, even a 10-WAR season is an incredible total: Since Bonds, only Mike Trout (twice), Mookie Betts in 2018 (10.7) and Judge in 2022 (10.5) have gotten there as position players. Judge is on pace for 11.7 WAR. While Judge is regarded as a neutral defender via Baseball-Reference's metrics, playing center field gives him a positional adjustment, so that creates a little additional value under the WAR calculations. He has a chance to get to 12.0.
Like Yaz in 1967 and Mantle in 1956, Judge is also chasing a Triple Crown. He leads Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson by six home runs, Cleveland Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez by seven RBIs and Los Angeles Angels infielder Luis Rengifo by two points in batting average. Mantle once wrote a book called "My Favorite Summer" -- his memories of that 1956 season. We're not yet deep into the summer of 2024, but Judge might consider taking some notes.
Here's the kicker to all of this though: Henderson is right here with Judge at 6.2 WAR. Are we seeing two legendary seasons in the same year?
