-
David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior WriterNov 21, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
- Covers MLB for ESPN.com
- Former deputy editor of Page 2
- Been with ESPN.com since 1995
Remember Aaron Judge? The guy who hit 58 home runs? Had the highest single-season WAR for a New York Yankees player since 1957? Had a 50-game stretch in which he hit .403 with 26 home runs? With the Most Valuable Player Award being announced today, here’s a reminder that Judge had a season for the ages and that he will win the American League award for the second time.
While the lasting memory of his season will be his struggles in October, when he hit .184 with three home runs in 14 games, Judge had an amazing regular season — and that’s all that counts in MVP voting. He hit .322/.458/.701 with 58 home runs and 144 RBIs. For the second time in three years, Judge topped 10 WAR and advanced metrics point to the historic nature of his 2024 performance: the highest adjusted OPS ever for a right-handed batter, the highest adjusted OPS ever for a center fielder, the highest adjusted runs created for any hitter besides Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds.
With his third career 50-homer season, Judge became only the fifth player to do that at least three times, joining Ruth and three others whose numbers now exist in a cloud of suspicion (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Alex Rodriguez).
It’s this fact that raises a fun question as we await the MVP announcement: Is Judge the greatest pure home run hitter of all time? Let’s put his numbers into perspective and compare him to some of baseball’s greatest sluggers.
The case for Aaron Judge
Judge doesn’t hold the single-season record for home runs and he’s 447 homers behind Bonds’ career mark (Judge would have to average 50 per season for the next nine years to pass Bonds, so he’s unlikely to get there). Judge hit 52 home runs as a rookie in 2017, but he was already 25 years old. He has sat out significant time because of injuries in 2018 (50 games), 2019 (60 games) and 2023 (56 games) and had another season mostly wiped out by COVID-19. But when he plays, nobody hits home runs as often as Judge.
Here’s the rate of home runs per 162 games for Judge compared to the top-five home run hitters of all time:
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
Judge: 51
Bonds: 41
Henry Aaron: 37
Ruth: 46
Albert Pujols: 37
Rodriguez: 41
Only McGwire, 11th on the all-time home run list, is in the same vicinity: He averaged 50 home runs per 162 games played.
Judge has done this against the best pitching the sport has ever seen: high-velocity fastballs, unhittable sweepers, splitters and splinkers. He also has to face a greater number of pitchers throughout a season — and doesn’t benefit from facing a starting pitcher a third or fourth time in a game as often. Consider:
Ruth in 1927 (60 HRs): 64 different pitchers faced
Aaron in 1957 (44 HRs): 89
McGwire in 1998 (70 HRs): 201
Bonds in 2001 (73 HRs): 205
Judge in 2024 (58 HRs): 301
And then consider how often each player faced the same pitcher a third or fourth time in the same game:
Ruth, 1927: 260 plate appearances
Aaron, 1957: 171
McGwire, 1998: 153
Bonds, 2001: 145
Judge, 2024: 119
Ruth is one extreme: He slugged .649 and .637 the first and second times facing a starting pitcher in his career, but .745 and .730 the third and fourth times. Judge doesn’t get that advantage nearly as often (35.4% of career plate appearances for Ruth, 16.2% for Judge) but still hits home runs at incredible rates. McGwire falls between the two, facing a pitcher a third and fourth time in a game 22.6% of the time. He’s actually pretty even with Judge the first, second and third times, but worse the fourth time.
What holds Judge back
Judge does not rate as the best home run hitter by the simplest of measurements: at-bats per home run. That honor belongs to McGwire:
1. McGwire, 10.61
2. Judge, 11.31
3. Ruth, 11.76
4. Bonds, 12.92
5. Jim Thome, 13.76
Judge has improved that rate in recent seasons, however, averaging a home run a remarkable every 9.53 at-bats since 2022 — highlighting what an incredible three-season stretch we’ve seen from him.
MLB free agency: Predictions, best fits
The hot stove season is upon us. Where will the biggest names in this winter’s class land? Offseason tracker »
Predictions, suitors for Soto »
Best fits for Alonso, Burnes, more »
It’s worth noting that Judge plays in a generation of players who excel in the at-bats/home run ratio. That list above? The next five players in the all-time top 10 are all active: Joey Gallo, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber, Pete Alonso and Giancarlo Stanton. This era of baseball is more conducive to the three true outcomes of hitting than ever: home runs, walks (which don’t count as at-bats) and strikeouts. More than ever, today’s hitters know how to launch the ball in the air. The five highest overall rates of home runs per game across the sport have all come since 2017.
Indeed, if we look at how often the top players homered compared to the average hitter during his career, we see this:
Judge: 2.50 times as often
Aaron: 2.59 times as often
Bonds: 2.67 times as often
McGwire: 3.36 times as often
Ruth: 7.77 times as often
Judge’s number is the lowest of the bunch due to the sheer number of home runs being hit across the sport in today’s game, whereas Ruth was hitting home runs far more often than his peers at the time.
How Judge compares to other greats
Now that we’ve contextualized Judge’s career numbers, let’s dig into a few of the best sluggers of all time.
Babe Ruth
As you can see, a discussion about home runs will inevitably begin with Ruth, the original Sultan of Swat, the first player to hit 50 home runs in a season and then the first to hit 60. In 1920, Ruth’s first season after the Boston Red Sox dealt him to the Yankees and he gave up pitching to become a full-time hitter, he belted an unfathomable 54 home runs — breaking his major league record of 29 set the season before.
Ruth went out and hit 59 home runs the next season. In 1927, he hit 60. In 1928, he added yet another 50-homer season, belting 54 — one of the 12 times he led his league. If we only consider Ruth from 1920 through the rest of his career, he jumps up to 10.96 at-bats per home run, surpassing Judge’s rate (although not McGwire’s).
No slugger dominated his peers the way Ruth did. In that first 54-homer season in 1920, he hit more home runs than every other AL team (and seven of the eight National League teams). When he hit 60, he again outhomered every AL team. Yes, you had other players reaching high home run totals at times — Hack Wilson hit 56 home runs in 1930, Jimmie Foxx hit 58 in 1932 — but Ruth often remained well above everyone else on the leaderboard. When he hit 59 home runs in 1921, nobody else hit more than 24. When he hit 46 in 1924, nobody else had more than 27. When he hit 47 home runs in 1926, Wilson was second with 21. When he hit 54 in 1928, the next highest total was 31.
Mark McGwire
McGwire certainly has a strong case, depending on how one feels about his admitted steroid use. But he also played in an era when elite sluggers across the league were hammering more home runs than ever before. In the eight seasons from 1995 to 2002 — McGwire’s peak home run years — 10 different players hit 50-plus home runs 18 times. In Judge’s eight seasons in the majors, five players have hit 50 home runs a combined eight times (and only Judge has done it more than once). When McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998, 13 players hit at least 40 home runs; when Judge hit 58 this past season, only three other players hit 40. So while more home runs are getting hit across the sport, the elite sluggers aren’t hitting as many blasts as Judge, making his total even more impressive.
2024 MLB All-October team
From wild-card sensations to World Series heroes, these are the stars who ruled the 2024 playoffs.
MLB All-October team »
Barry Bonds
Bonds, of course, falls under the same judgment as McGwire. From 1986 to 1998, he averaged a home run every 16.11 at-bats. From 1999 to the rest of his career, he homered every 9.19 at-bats. In the end, Judge’s career home run rate still remains better.
Henry Aaron
The all-time home run leader until Bonds broke his record, Aaron homered every 16.38 at-bats, good for 49th all time. Aaron led his league four times in home runs, although never hit 50 in a season. His hallmarks were consistency and longevity, although he had his best home runs seasons late in his career (he homered every 9.8 at-bats in 1973, when he was 39 years old). Overall, however, he wasn’t the pure slugger Judge is.
Mike Schmidt
With so many variables to consider, maybe we should look past some of the more obvious candidates. Schmidt led the NL eight times in home runs — only Ruth led the American or National Leagues more often. Schmidt did this in the 1970s and ’80s, an era that lacked both the juiced ball and the relative bandboxes that Judge gets to hit in today. In Schmidt’s time, the NL was full of multipurpose stadiums that had deeper power alleys and were tougher home run parks than most of today’s ballparks.
Schmidt is 16th all time in total home runs with 548 and 26th on the all-time at-bats per home run list at 15.23, but the only other player in the top 50 who primarily plied his trade in the ’70s and ’80s is Dave Kingman. Even one of Schmidt’s contemporaries, slugger Reggie Jackson, falls well below him, homering every 17.52 at-bats. Schmidt homered 2.88 times as often as the average hitter during his career — more often, relative to the league, than Judge.
Josh Gibson
What about the Negro Leagues? Gibson, one of the greats, led his league in home runs 11 times out of the 12 full seasons he played. From the stats we have, he homered every 13.06 at-bats. Like Judge, Ruth and McGwire, he was also known for his monstrous blasts (he might or might not be the only player to hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium).
So, is Judge the king of the home run?
In the end, it feels as if it’s Ruth versus Judge. We’re left to imagine and argue about what Ruth would have done facing 100-mph fastballs — but with a thin-handled bat he’d get to swing with the same imposing gusto. We’re left to imagine how Judge would have done facing spitballs and hitting in the original Yankee Stadium, which measured 490 feet to deep left-center field.
Now, Ruth dealt with a lot that Judge doesn’t: no batting gloves, no batting helmet, a heavy wool uniform, a much heavier bat, he had to travel by train and he didn’t get to look at an iPad between at-bats. On the other hand, the biggest knock against Ruth in a comparison to Judge is, of course, that he played at a time when pitchers didn’t throw as hard. I do believe, however, that if we time-machined Ruth into 2024, he would make the necessary adjustments.
Sure, few pitchers threw 95 mph in Ruth’s day, but he fared well against those who did. Lefty Grove, the hardest-throwing pitcher of the time, actually had a thoroughly modern power delivery. There’s little doubt he was throwing 100 mph or close to it; indeed, his fastball was so dominant, that was often all he threw. Ruth hit a respectable .311/.372/.526 against Grove — even though Grove had the platoon advantage — and that includes the decline phase of Ruth’s career.
Jeff Passan’s ultimate MLB offseason preview
Starting with the best free agent in years, here are the players, teams and themes that will dominate the hot stove headlines.
Grove was not the only elite pitcher that Ruth found success against. Ruth hit .292/.405/.769 against George Earnshaw, another hard-thrower with a great curveball that was compared to Sandy Koufax (although Earnshaw was right-handed). Against Walter Johnson, arguably the greatest pitcher of all time with a legendary fastball, Ruth hit .350/.467/.740. He faced Firpo Marberry, the game’s first great relief pitcher, 120 times and hit .327/.412/.592. Tommy Thomas was regarded as having one of the best fastballs of the era, and Ruth hit .456 and slugged .975 against him.
You get the idea.
Still, Judge has put up historical seasons against more difficult competition. He turns 33 in April, so it’s hard to say how many more of these years he has in him or how many more MVP Awards he might win, but he’s playing at one of the highest peak levels we’ve ever seen from a hitter. You have to imagine there’s more greatness yet to come.
Maybe it’s foolish to try to determine who the best pure home run hitter ever is with all the variables to consider, but it’s hard not to reach this conclusion as the AL MVP is handed out tonight: Aaron Judge is the greatest home run hitter of all time.
