It is not often a question like “who is the best pitcher in baseball?” or “who is the best shortstop in baseball”? has a clear and inarguable answer. These things are almost always up for debate. Right now, the “who is the best hitter in baseball?” question has a clear and inarguable answer. It’s Aaron Judge, reigning American League MVP and captain of the New York Yankees.
Judge finished April with a thunderous .427/.521/.761 slash line. He leads baseball in batting average by 71 points, on-base percentage by 50 points, slugging percentage by 104 points, and OPS by 154 points. And the thing is, April 2025 was only Judge’s fourth-best month over the last calendar year. This is bonkers production:
- May 2024: 293 OPS+
- June 2024: 288 OPS+
- August 2024: 276 OPS+
- April 2025: 250 OPS+
- July 2024: 202 OPS+
OPS+ adjusts offensive performance for ballpark and the league’s offensive environment, among other things, and presents it on a scale where 100 is league average. The higher, the better. Judge’s 250 OPS+ in April essentially means he was 150% better than the average hitter. The next best in Pete Alonso with a 219 OPS+. Judge is so far ahead of every other hitter right now.
“Right now he’s Tony Gwynn,” Yankees left-hander Carlos Rodón said after Judge went 7-for-12 in a three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians last week. “Next week he’ll probably be Hank Aaron.”
Judge’s 2025 production is so outrageous that, this past Sunday against the Toronto Blue Jays, he went 3 for 8 with a home run in a doubleheader, and his season OPS went down from 1.223 to 1.217.
It’s funny to think that, at this time last year, we were wondering what was wrong with Judge. He started the 2024 season slowly and even got booed on his own bobblehead day at Yankee Stadium. On the morning of May 1, 2024, Judge woke up with a .200/.331/.400 line. That’s not horrible, though it was well south of his usual production. Judge was decidedly un-Judge-like in April 2024.
Over the last calendar year though, Judge has authored one of the greatest offensive performances in baseball history. Here are his numbers in 159 games since last May 1:
|
Batting average |
.362 |
Bobby Witt Jr. (.333) |
|
On-base percentage |
.489 |
Juan Soto (.408) |
|
Slugging percentage |
.759 |
Shohei Ohtani (.630) |
|
OPS |
1.248 |
Ohtani (1.019) |
|
Home runs |
62 |
Ohtani (54) |
|
WAR |
13.6 |
Witt (10.4) |
“It’s baseball, you’re going to have that,” Judge said recently about the difference between this April and last April (via MLB.com). “You guys could be talking to me when I’m having a tough month and I’d be saying the same thing. It’s all about keeping things simple. I wanted to have a better April than last year.”
The gap between Judge and everyone else — some of the greatest hitters in the sport — over the last 365 days is enormous. We’re talking 29 points of batting average, 81 points of on-base percentage, 129 points in slugging percentage, and 229 points of OPS over a full year, not a month or two. Lots of guys can have Judge months. Only Judge can have Judge years.
Just to put into perspective the OPS gap over the last 365 days, Barry Bonds out-OPS-ed the next best hitter (Sammy Sosa) by 205 points in 2021, the year he hit a single-season record 73 home runs. Judge has out-OPS-ed Ohtani, a fantastic hitter and brilliant talent himself, by 229 points over the last calendar year. Judge is outpacing the rest of the league more than Bonds did in 2001.
Now 33, Judge has made a habit of not just staving off decline, but somehow getting better with age. He hit a then-rookie record 52 home runs in 2017. In 2022, he swatted an American League single-season record 62 homers. His 2024 was even better than his 2022 on a rate basis. Judge hit four fewer homers but had a higher on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Since 2022, Judge is hitting .312/.438/.678 (209 OPS+) and averaging 60 home runs per 162 games. Ignoring the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, only 20 players in AL/NL history have had a 200 OPS+ season, and those 20 players did it a combined 51 times. Judge has done it across parts of four seasons and nearly 2,000 plate appearances.
Most 200 OPS+ seasons
- Babe Ruth: 11
- Barry Bonds: 6
- Ted Williams: 6
- Rogers Hornsby: 4
- Ty Cobb: 3
- Lou Gehrig: 3
- Mickey Mantle: 3
- Aaron Judge: 2
Judge’s 209 OPS+ since 2022 is something that has been done only 13 times by a right-handed hitter in a single season, and he’s done it across three-plus years. Simply put, Judge is in the middle of one of the greatest offensive peaks ever. He is beginning to push the limit of how good a hitter can be relative to his peers and the era in which he plays.
This season, Judge has brought his strikeout rate down to a career-low 20.6% of his plate appearances, which is a tick better than the 22.1% league average. With teammate Giancarlo Stanton injured, Judge is baseball’s exit velocity king. No one hits the ball harder more consistently, and now he’s striking out less too. More contact + unmatched hard-hit ability = historic production.
At some point, Judge will slow down, maybe even within the next year or two now that he’s entering his mid-30s, but there are no signs of decline in his game right now. His is not just as productive as ever. He’s been more productive than he’s ever been over the last calendar year. More productive than any hitter has been since Bonds, really, and as productive as any right-handed hitter ever.
“He’s amazing. He is just so good at not leaving the strike zone,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said about Judge recently (via MLB.com). “So if you keep making pitches against him, you have a chance. But he is so strong. People have to be aware how dangerous he is. You have to be perfect. When you are not, obviously, he can hurt you. He is really doing a good job using the entire field, kind of spraying the ball around right now.”