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Jorge Castillo, editor at ESPN
Every day, or almost every day, Aaron Judge does something remarkable, if not unprecedented. A massive home run – or two. An intentional walk with – oh horror – two outs and the bases empty in the second inning. A record is set. Another record is broken. For five months now, jaw-dropping has become a daily occurrence.
And so his teammates and his manager were asked almost daily to describe what they experienced from the extraordinary hitter. The questions are now answered with a shake of the head. Formulating an answer has become an increasingly difficult mental exercise for the members of the New York Yankees.
“I’m honestly running out of words,” manager Aaron Boone said Sunday after Judge hit home runs Nos. 50 and 51 in a win over the Colorado Rockies. “I’m just running out of words for what he’s doing. We’re getting on the train (to Washington). I’ve got to get the thesaurus out and get to work.”
Judge has hit 51 home runs in 129 games, putting him on pace to break the American League record he set with 62 in 2022. He has a .333 batting average with a .465 on-base percentage and a .732 slugging percentage despite playing center field almost every day. He leads the majors in fWAR. At 32, he’s better than he’s ever been.
“I guess we’re in the phase where we’re in a good place,” Boone joked last week. “Look, with him, anything is possible. I think he just wants to be great every day and help us win. So nothing would surprise me.”
All of that success comes despite a start to the season in which Judge posted a .178 batting average with a .674 OPS and four home runs in 27 games. Since then, he’s become a pitch-mashing machine, posting a .377/.506/.844 batting average with 47 home runs and 109 RBIs in 102 games. On Monday, he added a defensive gem: a diving catch off the wall to prevent an extra-base hit against the Washington Nationals.
“It’s tough,” said Gerrit Cole – one of baseball’s most thoughtful and articulate stars – when asked last Thursday to describe Judge’s four-month onslaught.
Cole had just watched Judge hit his 48th home run and draw his 16th intentional walk in a win over the Cleveland Guardians.
“It’s so impressive because when you look around the league and you see there are guys with high batting averages — .330, .340, .350, the guys from back in the day — there’s a whole lot of bunt hits and infield hits. This guy is .330 and I’m not quite sure he has a single infield hit all year. It’s all doubles and home runs.
“It’s like there’s nobody else that compares to him. He’s certainly not running around right now – except (Barry) Bonds. I mean, it’s just … what a wonderful experience to have him on my team and to be around him.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Giancarlo Stanton, one of the few people who knows what it’s like to hit home runs at that pace, offered a contemporary measure of his teammate’s crack.
“He’s playing a video game,” said Stanton, who hit 59 home runs for the Miami Marlins in 2017. “We’re all out here on the ball.”
Three days later, Marcus Stroman decided that video games were a thing of the past.
“It might even be better than the numbers from video games,” Stroman said. “You say, ‘Oh, this guy is like a video game.’ It’s better than that.”
“To be honest, I just try to be present and take it all in because it’s something you may never see again. I just try to experience it and really feel it in the moment.”
During a game last week, Stroman stood next to fellow starter Nestor Cortes in the Yankees dugout and admired Judge’s skills.
“He was like, ‘Oh man, this guy is incredible,'” Cortes recalled. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been watching this all year in 2022. It felt like every time he went to bat, it was either a home run or a walk, and that’s what’s happening now.”
The reality is that Judge is better than he was in 2022 and reached a new level in August. In 21 games this month, he has a .425 batting average with 12 home runs and an OPS of 1.544 – all major league tops. Of 181 qualified players, 169 have an OPS at or below Judge’s slugging percentage of .986. He has hit four home runs in his last five games, seven in his last seven games and nine in his last 11 games.
With that outburst, he became the first player to hit 50 home runs, 120 RBIs and 100 walks before September. He is the fifth player to hit 50 home runs in three different seasons. With a month and change, he is on pace to become the third player with multiple 60-home run seasons. There are no signs of him – or the questions – slowing down.
“It’s hard to comprehend,” Boone said. “We talk a lot about what he’s doing because I get asked about it all the time. Not just at these press conferences, but when people come up to me. I’m kind of at a loss for words to say you’re experiencing something great. You really are. He’s just somehow better than anybody else.”
