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Aaron Judge is off to his best start ever. What happens now? 'Buckle up'
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- Aaron Judge is off to his best start ever. What happens now? 'Buckle up'
BALTIMORE – Aaron Judge already possessed several otherworldly attributes within the baseball universe: Two-time American League MVP, author of an AL-record 62-homer season , and the sort of Ruthian feats that can only come from a man who stands 6-foot-7, weighs 280 pounds yet still moves with grace and athleticism.
So, what happens when the AL's most formidable weapon gets off to the greatest start of his career?
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We're about to find out.
Judge is known for plenty of things, but scalding starts aren't necessarily one of them. Until now: Judge just completed the most productive and dominant March and April of his career, a notion that becomes even scarier when seasoned observers believe he hasn't totally rounded into his MVP form just yet.
"I say this and I'm not being cute or funny – but I don't think he's been that hot yet, honestly," says Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who has managed Judge since the slugger's second season in 2018. "He's getting his hits and I think it's a credit to how great he is.
"When he gets really going and starts hitting balls in the seats, buckle up."
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Opposing pitchers might already want to get off this ride.
After hitting a two-run home run, a pair of singles and reaching base four times Wednesday night against the Baltimore Orioles , Judge finished April batting .427, with an even more absurd .521 on-base percentage, 10 home runs and a 1.282 OPS, all of which lead the major leagues. While those video game numbers might be shrugged off as an early-season sample, consider this: Judge's adjusted OPS is 270, meaning he's 170% more productive than 2025's league-average hitter.
"I guess he's kind of like a great three-point shooter at the plate right now. They shoot around 43% for an extended period," says Boone. "It's remarkable, obviously.
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"I always say we're running out of superlatives or things to say about it, but what he's doing – he's playing a different game."
And it's by far the hottest he's come out of the gate.
April shower of home runs
Consider this: Judge won his second MVP last season, finishing with a .322 average, 1.159 OPS and 58 home runs, equaling the 10.8 WAR he produced in his 62-homer 2022 MVP campaign.
At the end of April 2024? He was batting just .207, with a pedestrian 116 adjusted OPS.
Judge referenced that rough stretch after the game, simply as a tool to quell any buzz surrounding his current hot streak. He was batting .174 through 23 games last year, and faced different sort of inquiries.
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"I try not to look at that stuff until the season's over," says Judge after the Yankees, now 18-13, dropped the series finale 5-4 at Camden Yards. "You just gotta go up there with confidence. And I felt the same when I was hitting .170 and you guys were asking all the questions about when you were gonna turn things around.
"I can't focus on results; you gotta focus on the process and getting the job done. If you do that for 500 at-bats, good things are going to happen."
Yet it's never been this good for Judge this early. You have to go all the way back to 2017, Judge's Rookie of the Year campaign, to find a March-April sequence that comes close. That year, he put up a .303/.411/.750 line, with 10 homers and a 1.161 OPS.
And 2017, along with 2019, famously was a juiced-ball season producing an overheated hitting environment. Judge's adjusted OPS at the end of April was "merely" 214, still fantastic but well off this year's 270 mark.
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Judge finished that year with an AL-best 52 home runs, a .422 OBP and 1.049 OPS, finishing second to Jose Altuve in MVP voting, a result that stung two years later when that Houston Astros team was found to have engaged in an elaborate sign-stealing scandal.
Twisting the knife, the Astros eliminated the Yankees in a seven-game ALCS that autumn. Judge is still searching for his first championship, a drive that may play some small role in this spring's white-hot start.
Aaron Judge hit .427 with 10 home runs in his first 31 games of 2025.
'History right in front of us'
When we last saw Judge afield, he was muffing a fly ball in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series, the key breakdown in a disaster inning that saw the Yankees blow a 4-0 lead and get eliminated that evening.
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Judge, who batted .184 (9 for 49) in the Yankees' 14 playoff games, said that gaffe "will stay with me until I die." At the least, it seems to have further locked him in in 2025.
"I wanted to come out, especially after how we ended the year last year not winning the World Series, and a lot of work (still) to be done," Judge said Wednesday. "All you can do is look in the mirror and try to figure out ways to get better and improve."
For two-time MVPs, those improvements can be granular. But they are significant.
Judge, who turned 33 earlier this week, isn't hitting the ball quite as hard – an elite 95.5 mph – as past seasons, such as the 2023 campaign when he averaged 97.6 mph. But his swing decisions are improving.
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Judge's 20% strikeout rate would be the lowest of his career, and his 68.1% mark on swings in the strike zone would be the highest. His chase rate of 19% aligns with the 18.7 and 19.5% marks the past two years but is down significantly from 22.9% in his 62-homer 2022 season.
"That's what makes him great: He never settles," says James Rowson, the Yankees' hitting coach and their minor league hitting coordinator as Judge worked his way through their system a decade ago. "It's tough because he's so good, and how do you improve?
"He does it with his brain. He does it by studying the game. He watches how guys attack him. He knows what he wants to do the next time. In baseball and hitting, it's a neverending process of learning. Every time you go out there, the guy may do something different.
"He does a great job preparing himself for anything that can happen."
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Yet if baseball is an endless game of cat-and-mouse, it's starting to look like Judge is the feline with his quarry cornered.
He's working on his fourth consecutive season with an OPS north of 1.000 and an OBP of at least .406; this would mark the third time in four years he's led the majors in those categories as well as slugging.
And if this season concludes with Judge claiming another MVP? He'd join a very inner ring of Yankees as three-time MVPs: Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle.
Certainly, there's a long way – and 131 more games, specifically – to go. Judge might be working on a fourth consecutive MVP had he not suffered a grim toe injury making a catch at Dodger Stadium in a June 2023 game; the unforeseen is always lurking.
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Yet there's already a lot of hay in Judge's barn. May, historically his most productive month, with 59 career homers and a 1.130 OPS, has arrived.
And every plate appearance only seems to add crucial data points in the mind of a slugger both prodigious and painstaking in his preparation.
"It's hard to match what he's doing up to anybody, ever, because he's doing historical things," says Rowson. "Every time he steps up to the plate, we're watching history right in front of us."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Aaron Judge stats are ridiculous. 'Buckle up' for best of Yankees' MVP
