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Yankees’ Aaron Judge is somehow having a better 2024 season than 2022: 4 takeaways

Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider was so sick of seeing Aaron Judge swing the bat that he did something no other manager had done in 52 years. With two outs and no one on base in the second inning for the New York Yankees on Saturday, Schneider intentionally walked Judge.

“I honestly didn’t feel like seeing him swing. That was kind of it,” Schneider said, chuckling. “He’s in a different category, I think, than anyone else in the league to where he can just flip the script of a game with one swing.”

Not even Barry Bonds, who finished his career with 688 intentional walks, including 120 in 2004, was intentionally walked with two outs and no one on base within the first two innings of a game.

“That’s beyond the Bonds treatment,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Now we’ll call it the Judge treatment.”

It’s hard to believe Judge is compiling a better season in 2024 than his historic 2022 campaign, but he is. Judge has a higher wRC+, OPS, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and walk rate and a lower strikeout rate than in 2022, the year he won the American League MVP after hitting 62 home runs. While Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. has risen to superstardom this season and is Judge’s main competitor for the trophy, the MVP race isn’t particularly close right now because of how absurd the Yankees’ center fielder has been.

Here are some of the wildest numbers from Judge’s season to date:

A 71-home run pace

Judge woke up April 27 with a .674 OPS and just four home runs. He had a .178 batting average and faced constant questions about his slow start and whether something was wrong. The reality was some of it was poor batted-ball luck. We wrote in mid-April that all of Judge’s advanced metrics were encouraging; it was just a matter of time before he’d break out. Judge hit a home run in Milwaukee on April 27, and he hit another one the following day.

Since April 27, Judge has 37 home runs in 84 games. If we extrapolate that over a 162-game season, Judge would be on pace for 71 home runs. Even with his poor April, Judge is still on pace for 59 home runs. With how he’s hit over the past three months, it’s fair to wonder just how many home runs Judge would have at this point.

Judge’s MLB-leading 41 home runs are eight more than Shohei Ohtani’s 33 and nine more than Anthony Santander’s 32; Santander has the second most in the American League.