Aaron Judge continues to give people new ways to try to put his greatness into context.
ESPN’s Buster Olney found one on Saturday before the Yankees played their second game against the Rockies in a weekend series.
Olney wrote on X: “To put Aaron Judge’s 4.4 fWAR so far this season into context… Last year, only 21 position players reached 4.4 for the entire 2024 season. Judge got there this season by May 23.”
That was through 50 games. Then in Judge’s 51st game of the season, he promptly blasted his 18th homer of the year on Saturday.
That pushes his WAR into a spot that could very well finish in the top-20 of position players if he didn’t play another game all season.
After Judge’s homer Saturday, he was hitting .399.
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One of the best parts of Judge’s monster season so far is how nicely his traditional stats align with his advanced stats.
Old-school baseball fans can look at .399 with 18 HR and a league-lead in RBI and know Judge is balling out. That’s the same thing his WAR and other analytics tell us, too.
Every day he plays, Judge moves more and more thoroughly into the center of the conversation about the best right-handed hitters of all time.
In an era of dominant pitching and low batting averages, Judge isn’t just a slugger. He’s an absolutely pure hitter.
He’s a solid right-field defender and baserunner, too.
Judge will probably do another thing tomorrow that requires his greatness to be summed up in another new way.
But for today, it’s this: If Judge didn’t play the rest of the season, his statistical achievements would still finish in the top 20 or so position players in the entire league.
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