Aaron Judge should win his first AL batting title while hitting 50 home runs for the fourth time.
Judge is in a tight battle with Cal Raleigh for AL MVP, an award Judge has won twice.
‘He’s one of the greatest players of our time,’ says Yankees batting coach James Rowson.
And to somehow, despite already stashing a pair of American League MVP awards on his shelf, continue raising the ceiling for how great he can be.
Judge is just one week away from adding a bullet point on his resume that closes the case on his standing as one of the greatest hitters of all time: The three-time home run champ, whose 62 long balls in 2022 set an AL record, is about to lead the major leagues in hitting.
He enters the final seven games of the season with a .329 average, 11 points ahead of the Athletics’ Jacob Wilson. Additionally, he’s about to lead the majors in the slash line categories of average, on-base (.452) and slugging percentage (.677).
This century, only Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols have managed both a batting title and home run crown. And only Bonds (2002) and Miguel Cabrera (2013) can claim they led the major leagues in batting, on-base and slugging percentage.
Judge stands above them all, in a literal sense, as a 6-foot-7, 282-pound force who will become the tallest player to win a batting title. His perspective also affords him a glance at the long view of his evolution.
“Over the course of my career,” Judge tells USA TODAY Sports, “you go from being a minor leaguer who strikes out too much, to a big leaguer that can’t hit for high enough average and try to find different things to motivate you. OK, they said I can’t do that. Let me try to prove them wrong.
“Having a lot of great coaches around you, a lot of great players around you, help motivate you and show you the way. They may say this, but they don’t know what kind of player you are.”
Here’s what kind of player Judge is now: His next home run will be the 50th this season, joining Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa as the only players with four 50-homer seasons.
But also this: Judge can become the first player since Mickey Mantle in 1956 to bat at least .330 and hit 50 home runs. The entire list: Ruth (three times), Jimmie Foxx (twice), Hack Wilson and Mantle.
It is a testament to the incredibly comfortable place Judge resides as a hitter, a physical outlier with an impeccable command of his powers.
“It’s pretty cool to have this guy go out and win a batting title – which is really significant in the fact that he’s such a power hitter yet can hit for such a high batting average,” says Yankees batting coach James Rowson. “His name is there right now with some of the best players who’ve ever played our game. And he’s still going. His story’s not finished yet.
“He’s still writing his story. It’s so cool to watch this live and really have no idea where the story ends. He’s one of the greatest players of our time.”
With, Judge says, the good fortune to be a Yankee.
Knowledge is power
As Judge noted, his 144 strikeouts between Class AA and AAA in 2015 made him a polarizing prospect. Since fighting his way to the big leagues, Judge’s career has been a remarkable act of compartmentalization, going from relatively late bloomer – he didn’t debut until he was 24 – to instant smash.
And even as he was winning Rookie of the Year honors in 2017 – smashing 52 homers and just missing his first MVP award to Jose Altuve, an outcome that still rankles the organization – he struck out 208 times.
The Yankees have only missed the playoffs once in that span, with gut-punch ALCS losses to the Astros in 2017 and 2019 and a five-game defeat to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2024 World Series their deepest championship flirtations.
Judge bore the load of resident superstar in all those years, eventually becoming the club’s 16th captain in its history. All the while, he hasn’t stopped growing.
His strikeout rate has been in steady decline since debuting with a 30.7% rate that peaked at 31.5% in 2019. He’s currently on pace to match last year’s career low of 24.3% – even as his home run total and batting average have climbed.
It is both a result of hard work and, Judge believes, environmental factors. He’s been the constant in a Yankee lineup that’s featured All-Star or MVP talent such as Giancarlo Stanton, Juan Soto, Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu.
This past offseason, the club added former MVPs Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger to the mix, giving the club four MVPs in the lineup most nights.
Yet it was a conversation with Alex Rodriguez in one of his first spring trainings with the Yankees that instilled in him the notion of never-ending growth.
“I think it was A-Rod,” says Judge, “who told me this: ‘You’ll do well in high A or Double-A and get moved to Triple-A, and it’s a whole new bunch of pitchers you’re facing. And then you get called to the big leagues. This is my 18th year in the big leagues. You’re seeing the same pitchers, the same teams, seeing the same sequencing.’”
Eventually, a player settles in.
“It helps a hitter, I think, from that standpoint: The older you get, the more knowledge you get, the more information you can download,” says Judge. “Especially playing with a team like this – we go out and sign some of the big guys out there who have been around the league, now I get the chance to pick their brains a little bit – it’s Stanton, it’s Goldschmidt. I can take a little nugget here, a little nugget there.
“It goes back to everybody in this room: They want to get better every year. You want to learn from the good things that happened the year before and the bad things that happened the year before and find a way to shorten those bad things and make them a strength of yours.”
Trophy season
While plenty has changed for Judge in his near-decade in the game, one thing remains the same: A pitched battle for the AL MVP award. Judge and Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh are the consensus 1-2, each with historic, even overwhelming pitches for the honor.
Raleigh set major league records for home runs by both a catcher and a switch-hitter (his 57 homers broke Mantle’s record) while again putting in Gold Glove-caliber work behind the plate. Judge is batting .329 to Raleigh’s .247, has a large OPS advantage (1.129 to .948) and leads in fWAR (9.1 to 8.5).
Judge’s added value in his Wade Boggs Era is a situational awareness that is off the charts most nights: Knowing where the game’s at and what pitch to expect and firing off the appropriate swing to match the moment.
Thursday night, it was coming up in the eighth inning of a 4-0 game, runners at the corners and a desire to tack on and stay away from the Yankees’ highest-leverage relievers. So he shortened up and pumped a fly ball to medium deep left for a sacrifice fly – and a 5-0 lead that stayed that way.
“Even before the pitch comes, it’s just understanding the situation,” says Judge. “The game’s going to tell you what to do. It always tells you. It could be your first at-bat of the game, it could be your last at-bat in the ninth with the game on the line. If you’re watching the game, you’ll see it.
“Especially with our lineup. If I’m hitting 2, that means I have to get on base. If that’s a base hit, if that’s a single, taking a walk, let Belli, Goldy, Stanton finish it up, that’s what you gotta do.”
A couple hours later, Judge proved his point.
With two outs and nobody on in the top of the first, Judge calmly rapped a single to right field off Orioles starter Tomoyuki Sugano. Bellinger followed with a single. Stanton then slammed a Sugano pitch over the wall in short right field – the 450th home run of his career – for a 3-0 Yankees lead.
Two innings later, Judge unloaded on a Sugano full-count sweeper and golfed it deep over the left field fence for home run No. 49. A 3-0 game became 4-0 and a 6-1 Yankees victory. And Judge’s 364th career home run – trailing only the hallowed trio of Ruth, Mantle and Lou Gehrig in Yankee history.
“With his experience, you understand yourself more and more,” says Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who has managed Judge for all but his rookie season of 2017. “He’s definitely gotten better in that regard. More than anyone, he gets pitched to carefully.
“That’s part of what makes him ‘quote,’ the best player in the league. His ability to lay off pitches. I felt like he had that in him when he first got here. And it’s steadily gotten a little better over the years.’
The Yankees are now within two games of the Toronto Blue Jays in the AL East and firmly in control of the No. 1 wild card spot, which would guarantee a home playoff series. And Judge will get yet another shot at rounding out his to-do list with a World Series championship.
It was a tough Fall Classic debut for Judge, who went 4-for-18 against the Dodgers and muffed a fly ball to kick-start the clinching Game 5 rally. Yet another to grow on.
“We had a chance to go to our first World Series. It didn’t end the way we wanted to,” says Judge, a center fielder in 2024 but now back in right field. “But just getting those at-bats, that experience, ultimately it will just help us the next time we get there.
“It’s all learning. A lot of negatives, a lot of positives. Can you take your pride and ego out of it and look at from, what did we do well, what did we do bad? How can I improve? And just kind of move forward.”
If Judge’s postseason arc ever matches his regular season exploits, the outcome will almost surely fall in his favor.
“There are a lot of guys that gain a certain level of experience who get satisfied with what they are. The beauty about Judgey is he’s never satisfied. He’s always trying to get better,” says Rowson. “As great as he is and what he’s done, he’s always thinking, what can I do today to get better than I was yesterday?
“That’s what separates him from so many people.”