Yankees’ Aaron Judge should be mentioned among all-time greats

Aaron Judge has been so fantastic, so vital and so ridiculously overlooked while we obsess over multiple minor Yankees imperfections (rotation, bullpen back-end, hustle) that I intended to wait to write about him on a Yankees off day, when he wouldn’t be competing for space with our game stories. But I’ll do it today since White Sox games should be the closest thing to a day off. 

Oh, you say, Judge already receives significant praise? 

I say not enough. Not even close to enough. 

Consider that Judge is posting a 219 OPS-plus, which is the best approximation of hitting value and means he’s more than twice as good as league average. Not counting the bigger, late-career version of Barry Bonds, that’s the best mark since Mickey Mantle posted a 221 figure in his MVP year of 1957. 

“[Judge] has put himself in the realm of Ruth and Gehrig,” Yankees great Reggie Jackson told The Post. 

Assuming Judge stays above 200, that’ll be only the third time anyone’s accomplished that in a full 162-game season in 50 years, and without extra, illegal help. The others were George Brett (203 in his MVP season of 1980) and Judge himself (210 in 2022). Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas did it in the strike-shortened 1994 season and Juan Soto in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. (Bonds*, Mark McGwire* and Sammy Sosa* all did it with medicinal aid.) 

What’s more, Judge gave everyone a month’s head start, as his April was comparable to Alex Verdugo’s (Verdugo actually led in OPS, .804 to .754). Early this season, Judge ran into Jackson, who’s now an Astros executive (that’s the Yankees’ loss, but that’s a story for another day), and Jackson says Judge told him, “I’m not right, Reggie. But I’ll get right.” 

He wasn’t joking. It took Judge awhile to get going. But in his last 84 games, he’s unspeakably unstoppable — hitting .382 with 36 homers, 88 RBIs, a .513 on-base percentage, .826 slugging percentage and 1.339 OPS. He now leads MLB in all those categories but batting average, plus he also leads in walks, intentional walks, total bases and a slew of analytical categories. 

And he’s doing it with sporadic protection behind him in the cleanup spot. The Yankees are better there since Austin Wells moved there and Giancarlo Stanton returned. But for half a season, The Bronx Bombers shockingly posted the league’s worst stats out of cleanup. 

Judge is up to 299 homers for his career, and if he doesn’t become the fastest by games ever to hit No. 300 on Chicago’s South Side, it’ll be a surprise (or because they walk him). Ralph Kiner holds that record, getting to 300 in his 1,087th game. Judge is on the precipice after only 952. 

Jackson predicts he’ll get to 600 home runs. 

“And I hope he does it,” Jackson said. “He’s a good guy.” 

Don’t bet against him. 

“He’s never satisfied,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, the former Yankees bench coach. “He wants to be better than the competition. But for him it doesn’t matter how good he is, it’s all about winning.” 

Which is presumably a big part of why he stayed here. 

Judge is so good his then-record free agent contract of $360 million looks like a rare megadeal that’s a serious bargain. But credit Judge for passing on the opportunity for more money with his hometown Giants (whose $360M initial offer the Yankees eventually matched) and Padres (who were talking $400M plus but never got to an official offer because Judge didn’t want them wasting their time). And credit Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, who made the correct call to raise their bid from $320M for eight after some serious internal debating from his baseball higher-ups. (Ultimately, it was Steinbrenner and Judge who worked it out.) 

The first Judge-related decision Jackson recalls Steinbrenner making came in the spring of 2017, when Yankees people were discussing whether to start Judge with the big club after he whiffed 44 percent of the time in a brief 2016 cameo. Steinbrenner gave the go-ahead. 

Jackson said Steinbrenner polled his people then about whether Judge was ready, and Jackson said he told him, “Well, if you can deal with 200 strikeouts, and he can deal with 200 strikeouts, he’s going to hit 15 home runs and 15 more fly balls that are going to land on the other side of the fence.” 

Jackson recalled that he badly shortchanged him. 

“He hit 26 and 26,” Jackson said, noting the 52 home runs that could have earned him his first of two MVP awards. (It went to the great Jose Altuve a year before Yankees fans started hating on Altuve in earnest.) 

As for this year’s award, Royals shortstop Bobby Witt in any other season would be not only a viable candidate but an excellent one. And so would Soto. But let’s get real. Judge’s 1.160 OPS is 14 percent better than second-best Soto’s 1.018 mark. 

Witt is the best defensive shortstop, but Judge still leads in WAR (both WARs, in fact, with 8 and 8.3 marks). Witt is a prodigy, but Judge is an all-time great. And we need to stop taking that for granted.