For just one day, New York Yankees third baseman Oswaldo Cabrera wishes he could switch bodies with Aaron Judge.
“Obviously, I want to be Aaron Judge,” Cabrera said. “Everyone wants to be Aaron Judge. But I’m not the prototype of Aaron Judge. I can’t do anything he does. He’s so big. He’s so athletic. He’s everything I’m not. Judge is Judge.”
Cabrera is listed at 6 feet, 200 pounds, while Judge stands at 6-foot-7 and weighs 282 pounds. Cabrera has not recorded any barrels this season and possesses one of the slowest bat speeds in the sport. In contrast, Judge ranks in the 99th percentile for barrel percentage and the 96th percentile for bat speed.
However, Cabrera can take some comfort in knowing that Judge has no equals in MLB. In the past calendar year, Judge has recorded a 245 wRC+, meaning he’s been 145 percent better than the average MLB hitter. A 245 wRC+ would be the greatest offensive season ever recorded in MLB history, surpassing Barry Bonds’ 244 wRC+ in 2002. But if we broke down the greatest 162-game stretch of all time, Bonds had a 251 wRC+ and 80 home runs from April 2001 to April 2002.
Bonds’ numbers during that time have been clouded by his ties to performance-enhancing drugs. The stats are what they are, and Bonds is considered by many to be the greatest hitter of all time. Yet, Judge has a higher career wRC+ (175) than Bonds (173). Judge’s only rival in greatness at the plate should be Bonds, and the Yankees’ right fielder has outproduced him even with several of the San Francisco Giants slugger’s best seasons under suspicion.
What Judge is doing is especially impressive, given how hard it is to be a hitter in MLB these days. In 2001, the league-average OPS was .759. In 2024, it was .711. Pitchers continue to get faster, their movement nastier. Look across the sport and many teams have a parade of relievers who can touch 100 mph. That’s why Yankees bench coach Brad Ausmus, who played in the league when Bonds destroyed opposing pitchers, thinks what Judge is doing is greater than any other player in recent history.
“When you throw in the specialization of pitching and all the information pitchers now have at their fingertips in terms to game plan and attack hitters — it’s light years advanced from not only what I dealt with 15, 20 years ago, but imagine compared to 30, 40, 50 years ago,” Ausmus said. “I always thought this guy was a really good hitter with really big power. I didn’t realize until last year just how good of an actual hitter he actually is — he’s controlling the strike zone, getting his walks, getting his non-home run hits, making the pitcher work. It was just a pleasure to watch what he did last year. It’s the best I’ve ever witnessed.”
Aaron Judge TRIPLE!
He’s got hits in five straight at-bats 🤯 pic.twitter.com/VtQs51aFVZ
— MLB (@MLB) April 23, 2025
Ausmus had a close-up look at the greatest season by a right-handed hitter in MLB history last season, when Judge posted a 218 wRC despite starting off with a .754 OPS in April (he had at least a 1.000 OPS every other month).
Cabrera called Judge’s 2024 campaign “the best comeback I’ve ever seen.” He’s already been thinking about what his numbers could have been if he started last April as well as he has this year. Through 25 games, Judge is on a better batting average pace than Ted Williams in 1941, when he finished hitting .406. His 258 wRC+ would smash Bonds’ record.
It’s unlikely Judge will finish hitting over .400, but it’s not out of the question that he could finish with the best season ever.
“We know we’re watching history, which is weird because we’re watching it in real time,” Yankees hitting coach James Rowson said. “This is something that, if it stopped today, would be historical, but it’s not going to. He’s continuing to do it on a day in and day out basis against the toughest competition that we’ve seen. We know how far pitching has come. We know what it looks like and what it’s done to hitting over the last 10 years as a whole, and yet this guy still beats the odds. It’s really hard to fathom.”
Over his last 162 games, Judge has posted mystifying numbers:
- He has 39 zero-hit games, but that’s OK because he has 63 multi-hit games during this span.
- There have only been 13 games where he hasn’t reached base once, but he has 11 games where he’s reached base in every single plate appearance.
- Judge has 23 games where he’s reached base at least four times and 107 games of reaching base at least twice.
Since 1961, the first year of the Expansion Era, only Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Frank Thomas, Todd Helton and Judge have a 162-game stretch where they posted at least a 1.200 OPS. In his last 162 games, Judge has 62 home runs, 139 runs scored, 159 RBIs, a .357 AVG, .485 OBP, .753 SLG and a 1.238 OPS.
The only hitter that Yankees manager Aaron Boone compares Judge to is Bonds. Boone already calls Judge an “all-time player” who “never ceases to amaze.”
There’s not much for a hitter as great as Judge to improve upon, yet he has made noticeable strides through the first 25 games of his ninth full year in the majors. He’s striking out less than ever and getting on base at a rate not seen since Bonds. His .513 on-base percentage leads the league.
“I also think the one thing he’s really good at and understands is how difficult a game it is, too, even for him — I guess he’s not making more outs than not,” Boone said while realizing in the moment that Judge’s on-base percentage was over .500.
Rowson believes Judge has to be valued differently than some of the other greatest hitters in MLB history, too, because he’s putting up video game numbers in New York, a place that comes with great scrutiny. The pressure doesn’t weigh on Judge; he thrives in it. Rowson also believes Judge deserves credit for finding his way despite not having a playbook to follow on guys his size being successful in the big leagues. Only three other players listed at 6-foot-7 or taller have hit at least 50 career home runs: Frank Howard, Richie Sexson and Tony Clark. Those three are also the only hitters at that size to have played at least 500 career games.
“He’s kind of learning from trial and error,” Rowson said. “He’s learning from going up there and getting a feel for how things work, and then being able to remember how he did certain things against certain guys and repeat it. I mean, he’s a pioneer when it comes to that, because there’s not many examples to look at. So many guys could look at guys before them and say that guy’s like me. How does he do it? He doesn’t have that playbook. So he’s honestly inventing the playbook.”
With the help of his personal hitting coach, Richard Schenck, Judge began modeling his swing after Bonds’ in 2017. Schenck believes Bonds has the greatest swing in MLB history. Judge has mastered Bonds’ swing from the right side so well that years from now, the next generation of hitters will be trying to copy everything the Yankees’ captain does in the box.
(Top photo of Aaron Judge: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)