Aaron Judge Is Having A Historic Season, But He's Not Babe Ruth, 1920

Forbes

7 hours ago

New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge reacts after he struck out swinging in the third inning of a ... More baseball game against the Boston Red Sox, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Aaron Judge is off to an absolutely brilliant start this season, batting .384-.479-.767 with a 240 wRC+ through Saturday's games. It has led many onlookers to say that he is having the best season a hitter has ever had - better than Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, even Babe Ruth.
Judge has hit for immense power before - he's topped 50 homers three times, hitting 52 in his 2017 Rookie of the Year season, and 62 and 58 in 2022 and 2024, his two MVP campaigns. The big difference this time around? He's hitting for extreme average as well - though he has topped .300 twice in the past, his peak of .322 is nowhere near what he's doing thus far in 2025.
So there are questions here - how real is Judge's outburst this season, is he actually forging a new career peak, and how does it compare to the game's inner-circle all-time greats?
Before we go any farther, let's introduce a new stat, and make a judgment call or two with regard to methodology and priorities with regard to measurement of offensive greatness.
The first judgment call is that we're going to largely weed out plate discipline/walks out of this discussion. Yes, they are very important, and central to offensive production. But we're talking all-time most dominant HITTERS here. This is where the concept of Unadjusted Contact Score comes in.
It basically measures actual production relative to the league, with 100 representing league average, the higher the number the better. I have gone back to 1901 and calculated Unadjusted Contact Scores for every regular in both leagues, and calculated career Unadjusted Contact Scores for every player with five or more seasons as a regular. The #98-101 players (Ronald Acuna Jr., Carlos Delgado, Tony Conigliaro and Mark Reynolds) all had career Unadjusted Contact Scores of 157.4. What's Reynolds doing here? Well, he struck out a ton, but when he did hit it, watch out. We're essentially measuring the most authoritative hitters of all time.
Only 10 hitters have posted a career Unadjusted Contact Score of 200 or higher - nine Hall of Famers, and Aaron Judge. And the Yankee Crusher is way up at #2 on the list, with a 229.9 career mark entering this season.
Now, in this day and age, we can do better than Unadjusted Contact Score. We have complete batted ball data, featuring exit speeds and launch angles. We can figure out what Judge 'should be' producing - his Adjusted Contact Score. And guess what? Judge who plays his home games in Yankee Stadium, which allows more than its share of homers but suppresses runs in general, has actually posted a much higher Adjusted Contact Score, at 255.6.
Even before this incredible first half, Judge had established himself as one of the premier ball-strikers of all time. Now, let's take a closer look at his present offensive exploits to see if they're supported by the batted ball data, and how it measures up to his past seasons.
Judge's offensive greatness is primarily due to his ability to hit the ball very, very hard. His 2025 overall average exit speed of 95.4 mph, fly ball average exit speed of 96.3 mph and line drive average exit speed of 99.3 mph are all over two full standard deviations higher than league average. Elite level stuff. His 91.6 mph average ground ball exit speed is almost two full standard deviations above average. Thing is, none of these are career highs, or even that close to it. His overall and line drive average exit speeds are his lowest since 2018, his fly ball average exit speed his lowest since 2021.
In addition to smashing the baseball, Judge is a fairly refined hitter, with a solid batted ball frequency profile. He's combining a fly ball rate of over a full standard deviation higher than average (41.3%) with a pop up rate of over a full standard deviation lower than average (2.2%) - not easy to do. Thing is, his current fly ball rate represents his lowest since 2021.
His K rate is quite good for an extreme power hitter, in the league average range at 24.4%. While his 14.7% BB rate, over two standard deviations higher than league average, is an asset, it's way down from 18.9% last season, and is his lowest since 2021.
So we've identified an awful lot of areas in which Judge, while still quite good, is down fairly sharply off of career bests. How on earth is he putting up career best raw numbers?
Well, Judge has had significantly good fortune on all batted ball types thus far in 2025. His 356 Unadjusted Fly Ball Contact Score towers over his 256 unadjusted mark. Ditto his 208 to 125 and 355 to 137 advantages on line drives and grounders. Judge is batting a ridiculous .905 AVG-1.238 SLG on liners; the league is hitting .650 AVG-.819 SLG, he 'should be' batting .697 AVG-.968 SLG based on his batted ball profile. Despite an extreme grounder-pulling tendency (he's hit exactly two grounders the other way all season), he's batting .364 AVG-.400 SLG on the ground. The league is hitting .213 AVG-.232 SLG, he 'should be' batting .250 AVG-.271 SLG.
All in all, Judge has an obscene 355 Unadjusted Contact Score, but adjusted for context, it drops sharply to 229. Add back the Ks and BBs, and he should be hitting .299-.403-.626 for 203 'Tru' Production+, well below his current 240 wRC+.
Let's go back to that 355 Unadjusted Contact Score. If the season ended today, that would be the third highest single season mark of all time, behind Babe Ruth 1920 (381) and Babe Ruth 1923 (360). Ruth's career mark is 270.1, far above even Judge's elevated adjusted level. The batted ball data suggests that Aaron Judge isn't having his best season, let alone one of the best seasons anyone has ever had. But for a moment, let's assume his raw numbers represent the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
And he still doesn't quite measure up to peak Ruth.
1920 wasn't Babe Ruth's most prolific home run season. Or his second most. He hit 60 in 1927, 59 in 1923, and 'only' 54 in 1920 and 1928. But let's take a step back and look at the game of baseball in 1920. The game was still emerging from the dead ball era, and Ruth was just coming of age as a position player for the Yankees, after experiencing sustained excellence as a pitcher for the Red Sox.
1920 was actually Ruth's third straight season as the AL's home run leader - he hit 11 in 1918 and 29 in 1919 in Boston. Then he became a Yankee and went ballistic as a full-time hitter for the very first time.
The American League hit 369 home runs in 1920. Ruth hit 14.6% of them. He hit more than any other TEAM in the AL. Process that for a moment. 11 AL hitters reached double figures in homers in 1920, and only Ruth had more than 19. What Aaron Judge is doing this year is dominant, for sure, but it's not even on the same plane as peak Babe Ruth.
So while we are watching one of the game's elite ball-strikers of all time do some of his best work, take a moment to appreciate the almost inexplicable brilliance of the man almost singlehandedly responsible for the power-driven game we are watching today.
(NOTE: The rest of the all-time Top 10 Career Unadjusted Contact Scores:
#3 - Jimmie Foxx - 220.1
#4 - Dick Allen - 219.4
#5 - Ted Williams - 213.7
#6 - Mickey Mantle - 210.6
#7 - Hank Greenberg - 206.0
#8 - Willie Stargell - 205.0
#9 - Rogers Hornsby - 201.1
#10 - Lou Gehrig - 197.7)