#13: Behold the peak of Aaron Judge
Also: Some un-fun facts for the Twins
Does this statistic mean anything? On Sunday, the scuffling Braves (8-13) beat the free-falling Twins (7-15). This was the Braves’ 11th consecutive victory over the Twins, dating back to August 6, 2019. That ties the longest active win streak against a specific opponent with the Rangers’ 11 straight victories over the White Sox.
Hey, it’s Hannah and I learned this because of the incomparable research team at MLB Network, which sends out a dossier every single day packed with potentially relevant storylines, matchups, and statistics about each game before it is played. I adore this resource and can hardly fathom the sheer effort involved. Sometimes, though, it can be so thorough I learn something that doesn’t exactly feel worth learning.
Of course, not every nugget is earth-shattering, but this one in particular struck me because I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s not especially esoteric or laden with qualifiers. It’s (tied for) THE LONGEST — that is, actually superlative — streak of WINNING GAMES — literally the point of baseball. On its face, it’s incredibly simple — telling you in no uncertain terms that the Braves are better than the Twins. And, they are! Or at least, they both were on Sunday and, to an even greater degree, they have been over that stretch. Since the streak started almost six years ago, the Braves have the second-most wins in baseball (455) while the Twins are smack-dab average at 15th (394).
But by that logic, the Dodgers should be working on win streaks against every other team. They have the most wins in that time by far. The difference between the second-place Braves and the 15th-place Twins: 61 wins. The difference between the first-place Dodgers and the second-place Braves: 49 wins. And yet, they just lost on Saturday — to a team that was 22nd in wins over that same time frame.
Which is, remember, completely arbitrary! The start date is defined by the resulting fun fact itself.
And even more saliently, what can you learn about the competitiveness of a “team” when considering fewer than a dozen games across parts of seven seasons? Because this is the Braves we’re talking about, there is some overlap between the lineup at the start of the streak and on Sunday — but not much! And none at all on the Twins’ side. Whatever flaws or ineffectiveness afflicted the August 2019 team is not to blame for this most recent loss.
In summation: who cares, right? Except — bless the research team and their commitment to being comprehensive — the second-longest active head-to-head win streak is the Orioles’ 10 consecutive victories … over the Twins. The Twins! Who, you may recall, were once the unwilling owners of an 18-game playoff losing streak that spanned nearly two decades.
All of this could be random. It’s useful to remember in instances of notable coincidence that an almost infinite number of things could strike you as meaningfully coincidental if they occurred so the fact that any one of them does is not inherently significant.
But we often do conceive of sports teams as if they have a consistent identity — the Mariners’ playoff drought, the LOLMets, the ruthless Astros, or your own rooting interests wherever they may lie. In reality, these throughlines are a confluence — a variable alchemy of happenstance and core truth.
For individual players, it can be simpler to differentiate the signal from the noise in a particular statistic, by considering the sample size, for instance. But teams are even more mutable than the obsessively improvement-minded athletes. Ultimately, I just don’t know if there is something uniquely hapless about the Twins — in relation to the Orioles, or the Braves, or the Yankees (because that’s also a dynamic that definitely exists), or October.
I kind of hope there is. Not because I want them to suffer a series of small ignominies but because I don’t want that suffering to be totally meaningless. As a random distribution of wins and losses, it’s cruel. If it means something, reflects something about the Twins as a team, perhaps then it can be surmounted.
Have you processed just how amazing Aaron Judge has been?
by Zach Crizer
A Yankees fan friend texted me last week in awe of Aaron Judge. Specifically, he said: “I’m trying to process where Judge’s peak ranks all time” for right-handed hitters. This is where I should mention that the conversation started with Ben Rice, the Yankees’ upstart 26-year-old rookie who is 255 plate appearances into what may or may not be a major-league career of significance.
I’m a huge nerd, so Rice is interesting for being new, for his newfound relevance being in question. But it was good to be jolted out of the vision-questing, novelty-seeking mode that can rule April. Judge is dealing in history.
No one has missed the gist of the two-time AL MVP: He’s a like a Monstars sketch from a lost baseball Space Jam movie come to life, 62 homers in a season, the avatar of this generation’s Yankees. But I’ll speak for myself in saying I think I’ve failed to fully appreciate the monumental scale of his recent record. So I’m going to try to rectify that now.
In 2022, the 62-homer season, Judge topped a 200 wRC+ (and OPS+) for the first time. That means he was twice as good as the average major-league hitter. These era- and park-adjusted index stats provide a helpful historic measuring stick. (For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to be referring to wRC+, FanGraphs’ hitting metric, but know that OPS+ produces very similar results.)
Doubling up the MLB average batting line for a full season is a gargantuan feat. Judge was just the sixth player since integration to do it over at least 500 plate appearances: Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Frank Thomas, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Judge. There are adults who can walk into a liquor store and make a purchase — with their real IDs! — who have never witnessed another ballplayer achieve what Judge did.
Then he did it again. That put him in an even smaller group of hitters who have managed it more than once: Just Williams, Mantle, Bonds and Judge.
Bolstered by career-best approach numbers, Judge’s 2024 season mathed out even a touch better than 2022 despite the slightly less historic homer total (a measly 58). The .322/.458/.701 regular season line was dripping with fun facts that needed no smoke or mirrors to impress. It was the first time a major-leaguer had eclipsed the .700 slugging percentage threshold since Bonds.
His 11 WAR years in 2022 and 2024 stand as the most valuable seasons overall since Bonds at both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference. Off to a blistering start this year, batting .390/.495/.707 heading into Monday, he’s well on his way to notching a third 200 wRC+, 11+ WAR season.
Since the start of 2022, a 443-games stretch that included actual worries about actual slumps, Judge is running a wRC+ over 200.
A Statcast freak show from the beginning, Judge has matured into a hitter whose easy step-and-torque stroke harnesses his raw power to not just put a charge into the ball, but to do so at the right angles over and over and over. I suspect that what seems like a natural progression, for a player who essentially debuted alongside detailed tracking metrics, will age into something more like a marvel of athletic prowess in league with Randy Johnson figuring out where the ball is going.
To answer the initial prompt: Judge’s peak already stands alone since integration among right-handed hitters. His two best seasons are the two-best seasons on the basis of hitting and overall value. We’re watching a right-handed version of the early 2000s Bonds bonanza without the steroid cloud hanging overhead. Does it feel like that to you?
In the study of topographical peaks, there are two ways of measuring and understanding a mountain. Elevation tells you how far the pinnacle reaches above sea level, something pretty equivalent to how we use WAR in baseball. It’s cumulative, all-encompassing and uninterested in circumstance. Prominence tells you something closer to the awe factor. That’s the measure of how far a peak rises above its surroundings. How singular is that peak?
From my vista, it seems Judge is reaching into the stratosphere in a crowded range. Shohei Ohtani’s two-way, new-way-every-year act is the unmistakable shape on the baseball horizon. Bobby Witt Jr. seemed to grow before our eyes in 2024.
There’s also a way of viewing Judge as an island. His closest stylistic forebear is late-career Bonds, whose accomplishments must be discussed quickly and in a low whisper, lest a sports talk radio show appear behind you like Beetlejuice. His closest chronological forebear is Mike Trout, and that really gets at the heart of the matter. Trout’s impossibly efficient combo of optimized power and speed-influenced secondary skills shaped how WAR is discussed and really drew lines around the entire conception of all-around greatness in modern baseball. He also started with the trappings of full-career history that Judge, a relatively late arriver to the majors, was never on track to replicate.
With Judge, it’s about the startling omnipotence of right now.
I think it was easier to retroactively grasp Bonds’ case for being better than Trout at his peak in large part because it was retroactive. It’s easier to grasp Ohtani’s case because he probably has the best elevator pitch in the history of sports.
No one thought about Bonds’ WAR in real time; they were too busy covering the strategic hysteria of the intentional walk. No one defaulted to explaining Ohtani with numbers until he served up an irresistible offering on a silver platter.
There’s something just a little too obvious and a little too technical about making Judge’s case. He looks like he should be the best baseball player you’ve ever seen, but our habit of gawking at his Statcast pyrotechnics actually undersells his all-time credentials by leaving the sentences with Bonds, Williams and Mantle on the back burner.
So let’s just say this to be clear on the facts, however we might feel them: Aaron Judge, right now, is the most dominant hitter you’ve seen since Barry Bonds.
I’m hoping to carry this perspective through the rest of the season and through the rest of his peak. And I’m going to start by watching each Judge swing and envisioning what should happen on contact. What would you think would happen when a mere mortal makes that smooth motion? I’m going to wait for the camera cut. I’m going to see how far the ball is flying beyond those expectations — so, so much further — and I’m going to think about whether I’ll ever see such a sight again.
What we’re chatting about
Elly De La Cruz roamed to the left of second base and leapt, full extension, to snare a line drive on Sunday that would have been a single against … any other shortstop in baseball history? His particular brand of impressive diving grab evokes something totally different than most fast-twitch infield plays we’re used to. A pouncing lion came to mind for me. An eloquent response on that Bluesky post said “That MFer Gumby.” I’m open to other comparisons. Please leave them in the comments. –ZC
There are some emotions baseball players exhibit that seem easy enough to understand even without analogous personal experience — elation at a walk-off home run, frustration when a close call goes against you. But I feel like an alien watching the video of currently unemployed journeyman reliever Brent Honeywell receiving a World Series ring from the Dodgers team that employed him for all of a few months and deployed him for mop up duty to save their higher leverage arms in the postseason. The current Dodgers seem utterly genuine in their appreciation and Honeywell is moved almost to tears. I mean this in all sincerity: as someone who didn’t invest in team sports growing up, I don’t exactly understand the emotions involved here, but I’d like to. –HK
The opposite of nominative determinism to the most extreme degree. For his sake, I hope, at least. –HK
Shohei Ohtani writing, in the Instagram announcement of his daughter’s birth, “thank you for making us very nervous yet super anxious parents” is probably a quirk of translation — or it’s the most relatable thing he’s ever done. If I may be so bold, you get a little less “very nervous yet super anxious” that they’ll just stop breathing out of the blue, but by then there are all new things to be “very nervous yet super anxious” about. —HK