American League MVP frontrunner Aaron Judge crushed his MLB-leading 48th home run for the New York Yankees in Thursday’s win over the Cleveland Guardians. The victory kept New York atop the division and kept Judge on pace for his second 60-home run season.
If Judge can continue his prodigious power streak, he would become just the third player in baseball history with multiple 60-home run seasons. It would be an incredible accomplishment but it’s not foremost on the Yankees slugger’s mind. “If it comes with a ring and a lot of fun in the playoffs, then definitely, that’d be cool. But I’m just trying to do whatever I can each day to put ourselves in a good position to win a ballgame,” Judge said of joining the ultra-exclusive club per Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News on X.
Judge is certainly doing his best to help the Yankees win games. The six-time All-Star has gone deep in three consecutive contests, helping New York take two of three games against the Guardians and giving the Yankees a one game lead over the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East (Baltimore plays the Houston Astros Thursday evening).
Judge is up to four homers in his last three games. Despite calling teammate Juan Soto the greatest hitter in baseball, Judge has been on another level in 2024. The nine-year veteran leads baseball in home runs (48), RBI (118), on-base percentage (.465), slugging percentage (.726) OPS (1.191), OPS+ (226), total bases (322), intentional walks (15) and bWAR (8.9). The 32-year-old center fielder also has 30 doubles, 101 runs scored, 103 walks and a .334 batting average.
Aaron Judge is powering the Yankees to the postseason
Yankees’ pitcher Gerrit Cole took the mound for New York Thursday and tossed six scoreless innings of one hit ball en route to his fifth win of the season. After the game, Cole acknowledged that “no one can compare to [Judge] … outside of [Barry] Bonds.”
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While Bonds probably is the closest comparison for Judge’s pure offensive dominance of late, not even Barry has multiple 60-homer seasons. Outside of the record shattering 73 bombs Bonds hit in 2001, his career high is 49 home runs.
Only Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa have accomplished the insanely difficult feat. And their efforts were artificially assisted. McGuire hit a then-record 70 homers in 1998 and followed that up with 65 dingers in 1999. Meanwhile, Sosa is the only player to have three 60-home run seasons. Sosa had 66 round-trippers in 1998, 63 long balls in 1999 and 64 dongs in 2001 – which no one remembers because that’s the year Bonds hit 73.
Judge entered play on Thursday with a home run percentage of 8.4, just slightly off the 8.9 HR percentage he had when he hit 62 homers in 157 games during the 2022 season. Judge already made baseball history when he became the fastest player to reach 300 career home runs. But clearly, these accomplishments mean little to Judge if they don’t lead to a World Series ring.
