Historically Hot Aaron Judge Is Making Sure the Yankees Don't Miss Juan Soto
With all respect to New York's resident pair of $1 billion sluggers, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have this all wrong.
With Soto now with the Mets on a 15-year, $765 million contract, it was supposed to be Judge—a $360 million man in his own right—who would be revealed to not be the same without his partner in crime from 2024.
After all, Soto's presence ahead of Judge in the Yankees' lineup did create more opportunities for the latter to bat with a man on base. He saw more pitches to hit accordingly, so of course he went off for a 58-homer, 144-RBI season that netted him his second American League MVP.
By now, though, you've probably heard that it's actually Soto who misses Judge. This is from-the-horse's-mouth stuff, as the first-year Met caused a minor firestorm when he lamented to Mike Puma of the New York Post that things were better for him when he had "the best hitter in baseball" looming in the on-deck circle.
Ever the statesman, Judge had the predictable response of (rightfully) praising Pete Alonso and stating Soto is "going to be just fine."
Notably, what Judge did not do was suggest that longing for the Soto-Judge duo of 2024 is mutual. Which isn't surprising, given how he's swinging the bat early in 2025.
Judge Was Already Great, But This Is Something Else
The only unremarkable number on Judge's line for the season so far is 25, which is how many games he's played in. Nope, nothing extraordinary there.
What is extraordinary is how many statistical categories in which he leads at least the American League:
- Runs: 23
- Hits: 39
- RBI: 26
- AVG: .415
- OBP: .513
- SLG: .734
- OPS: 1.247
- WAR: 2.1
Judge, who will turn 33 years old on Saturday, does not share the major league lead with nine home runs alongside Jared Soderstrom and Cal Raleigh. However, that's basically a fluke.
He had a "foul ball" at Steinbrenner Field that should have been a homer, and his 424-foot triple in Cleveland on Wednesday would have been a homer at 28 out of the league's 30 stadiums.
There have been better 25-game starts than Judge's throughout MLB history, but to focus just on these games is to miss the point. It's not just that he's hot now, but how hot he's been for how long.
Though it was technically on May 4, 2024 that he went into slump-busting mode after beginning last season on a cool stretch, we can get a 162-game sample if we stretch the timeline back to April 24 of last year.
In this sample, he's tallied 205 hits, 62 home runs and 133 walks. The only other hitter to touch those marks in any 162-game sample is Babe Ruth.
Further, Judge has a 241 wRC+ for his last 162 games. If this was a contained 162-game season, that would sandwich in between Barry Bonds in 2002 (244) and Barry Bonds in 2001 (235) as the second-best hitting season of all time.
When a guy is actively rubbing shoulders with Ruth and Bonds, said guy is pretty much hitting as well as anyone ever has. And that is the case with Judge right now.
Why Soto Misses Judge, But Not Vice Versa
As for what's going on with Soto, it's instructive to consider the entirety of his remarks to Puma.
"I had the best hitter in baseball batting behind me," he said. "I was getting attacked and more pitches in the strike zone, less intentional walks and things like that. I was pitched differently last year."
Should Soto have let this out in public? Probably not. And yet, he's not wrong.
Technically, he is being intentionally walked more, as he already has two IBB in 25 games after drawing two in 157 games in 2024. His rate of pitches in the zone is likewise down, from 46.4 to 44.8 percent.
Yet even if this helps explain why the 26-year-old Soto has a .753 OPS with only three homers, it does not excuse it. The reality is that the Mets are paying him to be more like the guy who had a .989 OPS and 41 homers in 2024. And if another reality is that he's going to be pitched differently, well, it's on him to adjust.
As for Judge, you would expect him to also be seeing fewer pitches in the zone now Soto is gone. Yet the opposite is true. His in-zone percentage is up from 47.9 to 49.3, even as he's seeing pitches with men on base five percent less often.
This is reflective of how Judge is the one in better command of the strike zone in the early goings. He's actually expanding the zone less often than Soto, effectively forcing pitchers to get their strikes by challenging him.
The less nerdy way of putting it is that Judge is the more locked-in hitter of the two. You can certainly intuit as much from their results, but it is nonetheless noteworthy that not even MLB's modern-day Ted Williams has a sharper eye than Judge right now.
There Is the Question of How Long This Can Last
For the Mets, the bright side of Soto's season-opening slumber is a very bright side: It isn't costing them in the win column.
It is indeed impressive that they find themselves atop all of MLB with a 18-7 record even without their prized hitter behaving like, well, a prized hitter. Throw in how Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas have yet to throw a pitch on the other side of the ball, and it's even more remarkable.
It is likely inevitable Soto will get hot, if for no other reason than he usually does after April. Whereas he has a .852 OPS in April for his career, he has at least a .930 OPS in the other five months of the season.
For the Yankees, Judge's scorching bat has been the defining feature of the club's 15-10 start. Yet if not with him, specifically, there is a question of sustainability that hangs over the whole team.
Sans Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil, do the Yankees have the talent to lower the rotation's ERA from 4.43? Can they fix Devin Williams, who has a walk-fueled 7.88 ERA as their closer? And if Paul Goldschmidt (.922 OPS) and Ben Rice (1.005 OPS) cool off, do they have anyone else to help Judge carry the lineup?
And this is just the short term, of course. Frankly, there doesn't figure to be much of a long term for Judge vs. Soto discourse. When two players are seven seasonal ages apart, they're all but guaranteed to exit their primes at wildly different times.
Yet with all apologies to Mel Brooks, we're in now now. And the story of the moment is that the Mets are thriving in spite of their superstar hitter, while the Yankees are thriving very much because of their superstar hitter.
When it comes down to it, the only explanation anyone needs is also the simplest: Judge is just that good.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
