Judge question
- Thread starter Halldan1
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Offense to me includes strikeouts and steals. Some people only care about the triple crown categories. I think Bonds had a number of seasons better than him pre steroids. 1993 and 1996 would be 2 of the best. I think 1994 would've been better if it weren't for the strike. 40-40 type year with on pace for something like 70 strikeouts the entire season.
A vastly different era but Mr. Hack Wilson would like a word.
In 1930 he hit .356 with 56 HR and 191 RBI. He slashed .356/.454/.723/1.117 and his OPS+ was 177 -- that means his OPS was 77% better than average. He had 208 hits (in 585 ABs) and also led the NL in walks with 105.
True he also led baseball with 84 strikeouts but that's nitpicking. Lol.
Granted, the NL batting average for 1930 was .303. Nor did Wilson win the triple crown -- he finished eighth in batting.
For that matter I'm sure you can find a Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig season that easily outstripped what Judge is doing this year.
In 1930 he hit .356 with 56 HR and 191 RBI. He slashed .356/.454/.723/1.117 and his OPS+ was 177 -- that means his OPS was 77% better than average. He had 208 hits (in 585 ABs) and also led the NL in walks with 105.
True he also led baseball with 84 strikeouts but that's nitpicking. Lol.
Granted, the NL batting average for 1930 was .303. Nor did Wilson win the triple crown -- he finished eighth in batting.
For that matter I'm sure you can find a Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig season that easily outstripped what Judge is doing this year.
Yes I think so. Have to remember Judge is playing in the era of defensive over shifts, infielders in the outfield, and the biggest impact, specialized pitchers. Starters pitch 5 innings today…if that. After that it’s about matchups. Closers didn’t exist Pre 1960 for the most part.
He leads the league in just about every offensive category.
Just an incredible season. Everyone should just enjoy it.
Have to say yes when you consider the mean categories in MLB this season. Judges leads in most all offensive rankings and by a wide margin in some.
One instance
Judge currently has a 20-homer lead over Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead.
That would be the fifth-largest difference between Nos. 1 and 2 in home runs for a season, behind only:
1921 Babe Ruth: +35
1920 Babe Ruth: +35
1926 Babe Ruth: +26
1928 Babe Ruth: +23
When you compare different eras you must incorporate stats from all players and by that measure my vote goes to Judge.
One instance
Judge currently has a 20-homer lead over Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead.
That would be the fifth-largest difference between Nos. 1 and 2 in home runs for a season, behind only:
1921 Babe Ruth: +35
1920 Babe Ruth: +35
1926 Babe Ruth: +26
1928 Babe Ruth: +23
When you compare different eras you must incorporate stats from all players and by that measure my vote goes to Judge.
No. A big factor that goes against Judge is that he plays in a bandbox. Incredible season and absolutely one of the best we’ve seen, but let’s also not forget there’s a guy in the National League (Goldschmidt) that’s also fighting for a triple crown. It’s a very weird offensive year
Bandbox? Have you seen his exit velocity and distance on most of his homeruns. I'm trying to find the average distance of his 60 homers to date.
Until then see below
Until then see below
Why Aaron Judge's home run-filled 2022 season is even more impressive than it seems
Viewed in historical context, Judge is having one of the best offensive seasons of all time
By Dayn Perry
New York Yankees cloutsman Aaron Judge recently became the author of the ninth 60-home run season in the history of Major League Baseball. Here's the company he now keeps -- i.e., the all-time single-season home run leaderboard:
- Barry Bonds, 2001: 73
- Mark McGwire, 1998: 70
- Sammy Sosa, 1998: 66
- Mark McGwire, 1999: 65
- Sammy Sosa, 2001: 64
- Sammy Sosa, 1999: 63
- Roger Maris, 1961: 61
- Babe Ruth, 1927; Aaron Judge, 2022: 60
Different eras across baseball history yield different conditions, and this affects everything -- home runs included. Hitting a homer in 1911 was wildly different from hitting one in 1930, just as hitting one in 1968 was nothing comparable to hitting one in 2000. Heck, even hitting one in 2017, when Judge's current teammate Giancarlo Stanton cracked 59 of them, was an easier feat than hitting one this year.
So with that in mind let's undertake a brief walking tour of Judge's season in comparison to those of his 60-homer peer group.
Judge is dominating his peer group like no one else
At this writing, Judge's 60-homer mark doesn't just lead the league, it lords over it. In second place is Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies with 40 home runs. If that margin holds up over the remainder of the regular season, then Judge will become the first slugger to lead the majors in home runs by a margin of 20 or more since Babe Ruth in 1928 paced the entire league by 23 homers. No player has led the majors by even 14 homers since Jimmie Foxx in 1933. Judge this season is dominating all comers at a level not glimpsed in almost a century.Judge's 2022 season doesn't owe much to his home ballpark
Yankee Stadium is rightly known as an accommodating environment for sluggers. However, the tendencies of Judge's home ballpark in the Bronx haven't aided his home run tally all that much in 2022. First, he's a right-handed batter, and Yankee Stadium benefits left-handed home run hitters more than it does right-handed batters, thanks in large measure to that short porch in right field. There's also this:- Judge's 2022 home runs at home: 30
- Judge's 2022 home runs on the road: 30
According to Statcast estimates, Judge this season if he'd played all his games at Yankee Stadium would've hit … 61 home runs instead of the 60 he actually had as of Wednesday morning. That's the same figure that, again per those Statcast estimates, he'd have if he played all his games in Dodger Stadium. He'd have more than 61 if he'd played his games in five non-Yankee ballparks.
All of that speaks to Judge's elite quality of contact. Frankly, no one today -- and probably ever -- hits the ball with such an ideal combination of force and angle. Judge at the moment leads the majors in average exit velocity off the bat, hard-hit percentage, and the rate of barrels (i.e., those balls that leave the bat with the perfect blend of exit velo and launch angle). More broadly, Statcast estimates his "expected" home run total for 2022 to be 0.8 homers shy of his actual total. Yes, that's 0.8 with a decimal.
Judge is facing velocity no other 60-homer hitter experienced
Higher pitch velocities make things tougher on hitters, which is why moundsmen work so assiduously to maximize their ability to throw the ball hard. Speaking of which, what batters like Judge are facing in 2022 is unexampled throughout baseball history. This season, the average major-league fastball checks in at 93.6 mph, which is the highest figure on record. The average slider this year comes in at 84.5 mph, which lags only 2021 and 2019 (84.6 in both cases). Back in 2002 -- the first year of standardized and publicly available velocity data -- MLB fastballs averaged 89.0 mph, and sliders were at 80.4 mph. Given that sharp trendline and given that the other 60-homer seasons happened before 2002, it's safe to assume his peers faced nothing like the heat Judge faces on a daily basis. That goes double for Maris and Ruth.As well, the percentage of sliders faced by today's hitters is at a record level -- 21.8 percent versus 12.1 percent in 2002. In Judge's case, he's seeing sliders -- sliders that are often thrown harder than many of the fastballs faced by prior generations -- more than a quarter of the time. The others on the list above can't come close to that.
Judge is also facing more pitchers
It's long been known that increasing familiarity between batter and pitcher accrues to the benefit of the batter. The more times a batter sees a given pitcher, the better he's likely to fare. On this front, Judge stands alone in his lack of familiarity. Regard the players on our list ranked by the number of different pitchers seen during the seasons of note:- Judge, 2022: 244 different pitchers faced (and counting)
- Sosa, 1999: 215 different pitchers faced
- Sosa, 2001: 213 different pitchers faced
- Sosa, 1998: 211 different pitchers faced
- McGwire, 1998; Bonds, 2001: 201 different pitchers faced
- McGwire, 1999: 198 different pitchers faced
- Maris, 1961: 101 different pitchers faced
- Ruth, 1927: 64 different pitchers faced
These days, teams use more pitchers per game than they ever have. Starters have their workloads limited so as to avoid, when possible, facing the opposing lineup for the third time in a given game or working on a high pitch count, which is when batters seize a big advantage. Rather than picking meat off the bones of a tiring starter, they face a sequence of hard-throwing relievers who tend to work no more than a frame at a time.
On an in-game level, today's hitters are benefitting from facing a fatigued pitcher far less often than in the past. Joe Sheehan in his very excellent baseball newsletter recently determined the percentage of plate appearances that come against starting pitchers working through the opposing order for a third time (or more) and relievers facing the order for a second time (or more) -- i.e., "tired" pitchers. Note how the percentage of such plate appearances has cratered over time, as has the percentage of hits that have come against tired pitchers:
Here's another trend that's undeniably working against Judge in 2022 and, by extension, working for the other hitters on the Holy Ledger of Sixty. In related matters, teams in 2022 are using an average of 4.29 pitchers per game. In 2001, that figure was 3.63. In 1961 it was 2.44, and in 1927 it was 1.82.
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Here's another trend that's undeniably working against Judge in 2022 and, by extension, working for the other hitters on the Holy Ledger of Sixty. In related matters, teams in 2022 are using an average of 4.29 pitchers per game. In 2001, that figure was 3.63. In 1961 it was 2.44, and in 1927 it was 1.82.
Other considerations
But wait: That's not all! Finally, here's a hodgepodge of considerations that help put Judge's outputs this season in further context.- He's the only member of the 60-homer club to play a premium position. This season, Judge has spent the comfortable majority of his 1,042 2/3 defensive innings in center field. That probably exacts a bit of a physical toll relative to what Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Maris, and Ruth endured. Judge won't be in center moving forward, what with the activation of Harrison Bader, but he'll still wind up as a primary center fielder for the season.
- Unlike Ruth, Judge didn't benefit from playing against artificially limited -- i.e., all white -- competition.
- Unlike Maris, Judge didn't benefit from pitching staffs thinned out by expansion. All staffs were affected by the expansion draft, and Maris racked up 13 of his 61 home runs against the expansion Angels and Senators.
- McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds all profited from facing a league pool of pitching that was still compromised by dual rounds of expansion in 1993 and 1998. Some of course will point to the use of PEDs during that era as having boosted home run totals, but that's harder to quantify than the effects of double expansion.
Ohtani is a special baseball player, it doesn't make him the best this year.
He's not even the best hitter on his own team.
Numbers like that will probably never be matched. But the question is what were the stats from his peers that year?
Observations in different eras can only be made by comparing against your contemporaries.
Judge having a helluva year, but he’s not a stone's throw from what Ted Williams did. Pick any of his years 🤣
And he was probably the ONLY player teams shifted regularly on back then. Yes they shifted on him in the infield.
Albert Belle had 103 extra base hits in 1995 before the steroid craze. 103!! Judge has 87 with 14 games to to, so he has time, but unlikely to catch him.
And, of course there’s Mike Trout and his 2 (!!) 10.5 WAR seasons. Before there was a lineup in LA. Judge is at 9.8. He could get there.
But it’s all relative. But those are just three quick examples off the top of my head.
And he was probably the ONLY player teams shifted regularly on back then. Yes they shifted on him in the infield.
Albert Belle had 103 extra base hits in 1995 before the steroid craze. 103!! Judge has 87 with 14 games to to, so he has time, but unlikely to catch him.
And, of course there’s Mike Trout and his 2 (!!) 10.5 WAR seasons. Before there was a lineup in LA. Judge is at 9.8. He could get there.
But it’s all relative. But those are just three quick examples off the top of my head.
I'm assuming that's Kornheiser, which is weird since the show (read: him) gets accused of NY bias all the time. Not to mention he's an old school purist.
I'll keep it very simple. He gets the triple crown, he wins. Case closed.
Decided to humor myself. A-Rod has been the closest to Gehrig's RBI total back in '07 with .314, 54 HRs and 156 RBIs. Next is Ryan Howard who hit .313, 58 HRs & 149 RBIs.
Yearly League Leaders & Records for Runs Batted In | Baseball-Reference.com
Yearly League RBI Leaders:1.Hack Wilson+/191/1930/709, 2.Lou Gehrig+/185/1931/738, 3.Hank Greenberg+/184/1937/701, 4.Jimmie Foxx+/175/1938/685, 5.Lou Gehrig+/173/1927/717, Lou Gehrig+/173/1930/703, 7.Chuck Klein+/170/1930/722, 8.Jimmie Foxx+/169/1932/702, 9.Hank Greenberg+/168/193
www.baseball-reference.com
Pablo Torres. And he's a Yankee fan.
Sometimes I think these sports analyst just throw things up against a wall and if they hit they look like geniuses and if they don't what the hell, who will remember?
For instance, the baseball analyst on ESPN (can't remember who) who predicted at season's beginning that the Yankees wouldn't even make the playoffs coming in 4th in the eastern division only ahead of Baltimore.
Good call
New York Yankees 90-58
Toronto Blue Jays 84-65 6.5 GB
Tampa Bay Rays 82-67 8.5 GB
Baltimore Orioles 77-71 13 GB
Boston Red Sox 72-76 18 GB
Boredom. When you're retired you have to watch something when you're home.
You can only watch so much cable news before you look elsewhere.
You can only watch so much cable news before you look elsewhere.
It's a debate show. Someone had to take up the wrong side of the argument.
The struggle is real. When I'm home during the day I watch a lot of "Friends." Right now, I have Twins-Royals on MLB Network on.
