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Despite picking up his second career AL MVP Award with a dominant 2024 season, Aaron Judge continues to find ways to improve. This year the New York Yankees captain is chasing the triple crown while leading the league in walks, with an MLB-high 18 intentional bases on balls.
Judge’s prodigious power combined with his plate discipline has drawn comparisons to Barry Bonds, who set the power/discipline standard. Bonds had an absurd 11 percent home run rate and 26.7 percent walk rate in his record-shattering 73-home run 2001 campaign. Judge isn’t quite at that level with 8.1 and 15.2 percent rates respectively. But his approach reminds Yankees bench coach Brad Ausmus of the San Francisco Giants great.
“Barry knew exactly when it was on the plate, when it was too high, when it was too in. Judge is very, very similar to that… I didn’t realize how much he controlled the strike zone. He really, really controls it. And as good as he was last year, he’s better at it this year,” Ausmus said, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.
Aaron Judge is producing another historic season for the Yankees
It’s not the first time that Judge has been compared to Bonds. After a scorching-hot start to the season, Judge was on pace to top Bonds’ all-time record of 244 weighted runs created plus (wRC+), set in 2002. In mid May, the Yankees’ slugger had a mind-blowing 254 wRC+. He’s dropped off since then but still is at an incredible 221 wRC+, which would be the best of his career.
While Judge has drawn comparisons to Bonds during yet another dominant season, the two players are quite different in one aspect. Judge is swinging away this season. He’s produced the highest swing rate of his career, hacking away at 46.4 percent overall and producing a very un-Bondsian 24.5 percent chase rate.
Judge and the Yankees have struggled in June. New York had dominated the division all season but the team entered Sunday’s matchup against the Athletics with a just a 12-13 record this month.
And Judge saw his batting average drop more than 40 points over the first 25 games in June. But the 10th-year veteran busted out of his slump in a big way during the series finale against the Athletics. Judge snapped his skid with a two-homer day, adding 4 RBI and 3 runs scored. He’s now slashing .356/.458/.722 on the season and trails only Cal Raleigh for the league lead in home runs and RBI.
