Can Aaron Judge supplant greatest Yankees? He's trending toward the unthinkable

New York Times

5 days ago

Aaron Judge gets dressed at a locker right next to a getaway exit, which serves its purpose in the Bronx. Judge adores baseball's daily rituals with this sole exception: pregame media access in the clubhouse. The big man has made it known he could live without that one.
Judge believes the hours before that first pitch are meant for serious prep work, not small talk. But as a team captain raised the right way, he finds it hard to be disrespectful. People around Yankee Stadium swear he leads the league in balls tossed to kids and fist-bumps given to ushers, electricians and maintenance staff.
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So on this day, Judge agrees to spend a few minutes humoring a visitor who informs him that he'll soon pass Alex Rodriguez, Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio on the all-time Yankees home run list.
He lowers his head as if to hide his sheepish smile. 'To get near those guys, wow,' Judge said. 'That's a special trio right there. It's kind of crazy to judge a career against somebody who did it for 20 years and had such a great career, so maybe when I'm done playing, I can look back and see the things that I've done. Any sentence with those three guys is special.
'I'm aware of a lot of Yankee history. I definitely pay attention to it, especially being in this organization and what we are built on. It's about a lot of great pasts that we've had and also what's to come.'
What's to come in Judge's world is hard to pin down, because at 6-feet-7 and 282 pounds, he is something baseball has never seen before — an NFL defensive end or NBA power forward with enough agility to play a perfectly credible center field when asked. You can stand all the towering figures in Yankee lore next to Judge and they'd all look like Phil Rizzuto.
Judge basically plays at the same weight in right field that Nikola Jokić plays at in the paint. Yet, in one night, you can see him clear the top of the wall and beat a fan to what would've been a Cubs home run ball, make a diving catch on a sinking liner and crash his body into the corner dirt to preserve Carlos Rodón's scoreless outing while leading by eight runs in the eighth.
AARON JUDGE DOES IT AGAIN 😮 pic.twitter.com/k0spQwzFc7
— MLB (@MLB) July 12, 2025
'We can guess at what Judge will do in the future, but that's all we can do,' said his hitting coach, James Rowson, who also worked with him in the minors. 'He's not normal. Nothing he does is normal. So, I would never bet against him, and I would count on him to do more than anyone has done before him.'
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As baseball reopens for business following the All-Star break, the fastest man ever to 350 homers is trending toward the unthinkable. If Judge stays relatively healthy over the long haul, he is going to supplant someone among the true Core Four in Yankee mythology.
Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle.
At least one of those titans is toast.
You can cherry-pick stats to death to support almost any argument, but it should be noted that Judge has a better career slugging percentage and OPS than DiMaggio's and Mantle's. According to FanGraphs, Judge's wRC+ beats Gehrig's, Mantle's and DiMaggio's and ranks third among MLB players, behind Ruth and Ted Williams. In May, The Athletic's Jayson Stark made an incredibly detailed statistical case for Judge as possibly the greatest right-handed hitter of modern times.
Now 33, Judge wants to play into his 40s. 'That's the plan,' he told The Athletic, which means he expects to sign another contract after his nine-year deal expires in 2031, when Judge will be 39.
'When I signed this deal,' he said, 'one of the things I promised was that I wanted to come in and be a contributor all the way to the end of that contract. So hopefully we'll continue that.'
Again, assuming relatively good health, Judge will likely pass Gehrig (493 homers) and Mantle (536) and finish second on the franchise's career list, behind the Babe. Asked if he thinks Ruth's 659 Yankee homers is a realistic target, Judge said, 'We can dream. We can hope.
'It's tough, though. I've got to be hitting 50 homers all the way into my early 40s. I don't know. It would be something good to strive for. I never really thought about it, to be honest. I just try to go out there to do my job.'
If Judge finishes with 55 homers this year (he has 35 now) for a career total of 370, he'd need to average 36 homers over eight seasons to reach Ruth. Given Judge's athleticism, work ethic and availability to become a full-time DH to protect his legs near the end of his career, that math doesn't seem crazy.
What does seem crazy to fans of a certain age is a suggestion that any modern-day Yankee could be better than DiMaggio or Mantle, or at least just as good. You don't talk about Joe D. and the Mick like that. You certainly don't talk about Ruth and Gehrig like that.
Berra, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera made their spirited runs at the franchise's first mythological tier and landed a few feet short. But it doesn't look like Judge is about to settle for Tier 1A. After all, he needed 241 fewer games than the Babe needed to get to 350 homers.
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'I think Judge has moved up into that category of DiMaggio and Mickey with what he's accomplishing,' said Roy White, a former Yankees teammate of Mantle's. 'I watched DiMaggio on film as a kid, and I saw Mickey a lot on TV before I played with him toward the end of his career.
'Mantle was a switch hitter with power and speed, and Judge is probably physically stronger with his size. I think Aaron has a stronger arm than Mickey had, and Mickey had a good arm. They could both carry your club. If I had to flip a coin, Aaron or Mickey, I don't know. I'll take them both.'
Longtime pitcher Al Downing, a Mantle teammate who competed against various all-time greats (he famously gave up Hank Aaron's record-breaking 715th homer as a Dodger), said he admired Judge and called him a great talent who could play in any generation. But when asked if it was fair to put Judge on Mantle's level, Downing maintained that his switch-hitting teammate's power from both sides gave him the edge.
'I don't think you can put him in a category with Mickey,' Downing said, 'and I'm not taking anything away from Judge.'
Retired Yankees play-by-play legend John Sterling saw a little of DiMaggio, a lot of Mantle and a ton of Judge, and he has a different view. 'Do I see Judge in that light of Yankee greatness? Well, absolutely,' Sterling said.
The announcer raved about the captain's disposition and said he had grown close to Judge's parents, Wayne and Patty. 'Terrific people,' Sterling said, before referencing his dramatic home run call for their son. 'Wayne said to me once, 'I love your Judge-ian blasts.''
In the end, it's a shame that Judge didn't become an MLB regular until he was 25. It's a shame that many scouts (including one from the Yankees) saw him as a non-prospect as a high schooler in Linden, Calif., steering him to a three-year career at Fresno State. It's a shame that Judge lost time to injuries and the pandemic in the bigs.
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But DiMaggio lost three years to his wartime service, and Mantle had those terrible knee issues. Nobody has a seamless career, and on that note, a word is required about Judge and the things that matter most in the Bronx.
Championships.
Ruth won seven, including four with the Yanks. Gehrig won six. DiMaggio won nine. Mantle won seven.
We all know how many Judge has won. Of course, he's had to confront all these playoff rounds that weren't part of those straight-to-the-World-Series days, and he's had to do it without the kind of talent the previous captain, Jeter, had around him.
Judge could use a couple of titles to round out his legacy and mute the questions that could hound him down the road. But the slugger can't be judged by his ring count, not when he is cursed by a sport that doesn't allow its superstar position players to impact winning like an NFL quarterback or NBA wing can. The all-time home-run leader, Barry Bonds, retired with no rings. A-Rod once told me that Bonds would have had six or seven if he'd played in the NBA.
Whatever. Judge does need to play better in October, whether or not that leads to a ticker-tape parade. And it will happen. He's too good for it not to.
Meanwhile, he'll keep wearing that signature No. 99 jersey and that signature eye black and keep making memories as the ultimate video game Bambino. When the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009, four years before Judge was drafted, Babe Ruth's daughter described to me what it was like to see the real Bambino fill the old place with his overwhelming presence.
'When Daddy stepped to the plate,' Julia Ruth Stevens said by phone, 'everyone was kind of breathless. You knew something big was going to happen. It was thrilling, absolutely thrilling. I remember how Daddy would hit it high and the crowd would stand up and try to follow the ball, and when it landed deep in the bleachers, they'd let out a tremendous roar.'
That's how Aaron Judge makes people feel with his Judge-ian blasts.
And that's why he's going to hurdle some of the true giants in Yankees history. It's just a question of how many.