Aaron Judge's stats hitting another level. How they compare to Ohtani, others

USA Today

2 days ago

Aaron Judge's stats hitting another level. How they compare to Ohtani, others
By nearly every metric, the Yankees' Aaron Judge's offensive performance during the first two months of the 2025 season ranks among the best in baseball history. Whether he can maintain this torrid pace for the next four months could determine if he joins the ranks of the all-time greats. Consider just a few of his numbers:
◾ Batting average: Judge finished May with a .398 batting average – a hit short of topping .400 and 24 points ahead of Dodgers' Freddie Freeman, who is also having a career year.
◾ Power: Two of every five hits have gone for extra bases, including Judge's 21 home runs. He finished May just one shy of league leaders Shohei Ohtani and Cal Raleigh. Judge's slugging percentage, though, is more than 100 points of ahead of Ohtani's.
◾ On base percentage: Add 38 walks to Judge's 86 hits, and he's been on base almost every other time he steps up to the plate.
Exclusive: Aaron Judge opens up on historic season, life as a Yankee – and that error
How Aaron Judge's 2025 offensive numbers compare to some of MLB's best
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The OPS statistic combines a player's on-base percentage with his slugging percentage. The sum shows how consistently a player reaches base along with how often the player hits for power – the more bases a player reaches per hit, the higher the slugging percentage.
With exception of his rookie season, Judge's OPS has been at least 150 points higher than the league average, and his OPS has been trending even higher during the past four seasons. He led the MLB in OPS in 2022 and 2024 – the same years he won the American League MVP award.
Aaron Judge's OPS continues to club
What the Yankees' Aaron Judge has accomplished at the plate in the first third of the season would rank among the best seasons ever in MLB history if could maintain this pace. Judge's 1.268 OPS would trail only the best years in the careers of Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Ted Williams – who was also the last to hit .400 that year in 1941.
With more than 100 games left in the season, the long grind could pull Judge's numbers back down to Earth. Consider some of the other strong starts in the first two months of the season during the past decade.
Players with league-leading OPS in first two months of the MLB season
If you dig a little deeper into Judge's numbers this season, you see he's not hitting the ball quite as hard as he has in previous years. According to MLB, his average exit velocity ranks third at 95.4 mph behind the Pirates' Oneil Cruz and Ohtani. Judge led the league last year with a 96.2 mph average.
So while Judge's hits are a tick down in velocity, he's on a pace to set a record for balls hit into the field of play, or batting average on balls in play (BABIP). The MLB average is .290 this season, the lowest since 1992. At .461, Judge's BABIP is the third-highest in the first 54 games of a season since 1969, behind Jim Edmonds in 2000 and Yasiel Puig in 2013.
Where Judge's BABIP would rank among best seasons since 1901
In 2024, Judge had one of his more typical slow starts, batting .207 in April. But he ultimately won his second MVP last season, finishing with a .322 average, 1.159 OPS and 58 home runs. His 10.8 WAR was the same he produced in his 62-homer 2022 MVP campaign.
At this pace, it's not hard to image Judge claiming another American League MVP. He'd join an exclusive club among Yankees three-time MVPs: Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. Consider all the other firsts he vaulted into by the end of May:
Hitting categories where Aaron Judge ranks first in the American League
Contributing: Jesse Yomtov, Scott Boeck and Gabe Lacques