It’s awfully hard to beat 73 home runs. As Aaron Judge himself has said, it remains the single-season MLB record, and in the 20-plus years that saw power hitters like Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, David Ortiz, and Giancarlo Stanton, nobody has come particularly close to matching it. Even Judge, arguably the single best pure power hitter in baseball history, has come 11 dingers shy in his best season.
Although it’s very possible that 2022 doesn’t stay Judge’s best season for long. His wRC+ is 19 points better in 2024, his strikeout rate is down, his walk rate is up, and he’s added more than 90 points to his OPS over what we thought was the best offensive season in two decades. He is, heading into play Sunday, projected by Depth Charts to still fall short of 62, although just barely.
Here we see an even stronger parallel to Bonds. 2001 is the season of 73, but 2004 is the season of Sam Miller’s bike lock combo. Bonds’ 1.422 OPS is the AL/NL record, but his track of improvement over 2001 is actually below Judge’s own step forward:
Bonds of course was better overall by their OPS, but Judge has gotten better compared to his own standard. As Michael Kay is fond of saying, Judge is also doing it at a time when offense is down around the league, rather than Bonds’ relatively high-offense era. We see this as we start to adjust:
Judge’s numbers are as of the start of play on August 24th
For all intents and purposes Bonds was as good relative to his competition in both seasons. Judge, meanwhile, is considerably better. Of course so much of Bonds’ improvement comes from fear — a 38-percent walk rate, 120 intentional walks (incredibly over 100 more than Judge this year), and the inspiration for perhaps Jon Bois’ best work.
Judge has been walked a lot this year too, but “only” in 18.4 percent of his plate appearances. That’s below last year, and his 2017 campaign as well. 15.1 percent of his walks have been of the intentional variety, compared to 51.7 percent of Bonds’ in 2004.
With all due respect to Bobby Witt Jr.’s excellent work in bringing the Royals back from complete irrelevance, the AL MVP is Judge’s to lose at this point. Something could happen in the season’s final month, another ice-cold stretch like his April or God forbid an injury, but should he maintain his pace the rest of the year the trophy will have his name on it within moments of the year’s last game. If he plays to his Depth Charts projections, he will end the year with 61 home runs, not 62 or 63.
It’s going to be hard to ever forget the 2022 season, and that late, great chase for Roger Maris’ 61. There was a cinematic, almost mythical nature to the whole year, and reaching the milestone in the final game of the season only added to that feel. 2024 has felt less cinematic and more clinical, an icebreaker smashing its way north. Some 15 years from now, whatever whippersnapper on PSA will be writing about Judge’s Hall of Fame induction, and that chase for 62 will probably be the biggest piece of his legacy.
There’s still a chance Judge tops that this year, but even if he doesn’t, like Bonds his best campaign isn’t the one with the gaudiest home run totals—merely the one where he was the best all-around hitter of a generation.