Aaron Judge

Aaron Judge is the captain, the cleanup hitter, and the guy who made 62 mean something again. The New York Yankees' right fielder stands 6'7", 282 pounds, swings a bat like he's trying to knock down a wall, and has two unanimous MVP awards to show for it. He's also the rightful holder of the single-season home run record -- and I don't want to hear otherwise.

Path to the Bronx

Here's a fun one: the Oakland A's drafted Judge in the 31st round back in 2010. He grew up in Linden, California -- a town of about 1,800 people, 90 minutes from Oakland -- and turned them down because his parents (both school teachers) wanted him to get an education first. Three years at Fresno State later, he's hitting .339 with a 1.014 OPS over his final two seasons, and the Yankees grab him 32nd overall in the 2013 draft. That pick? Compensation for losing in free agency. (Nick Swisher's lasting contribution to the franchise was leaving it.)

Five days after the draft, Judge took BP at the Oakland Coliseum. Joe Girardi watched line drives clear the fence and said the ball "just kept going." liked him so much he called Joe Girardi a few weeks before spring training 2016 and asked to have their lockers next to each other. Veteran mentorship or strategic proximity -- either way, it worked.

Yankees Career

Judge debuted on August 13, 2016, and hit .179 with a 50% strikeout rate in 27 games. It was rough. Then happened, and rough became a distant memory.

He broke Mark McGwire's rookie home run record with 52 bombs, walked 127 times (the first rookie to post 100+ runs, walks, and RBI since Ted Williams in 1939), and won the Home Run Derby -- launching multiple 500-foot shots, including a 513-footer that's still the longest in Derby history. He was the freakin' Rookie of the Year -- unanimously -- and probably should've been MVP too. But Jose Altuve won that (more on this in a second).

The injury years tested everyone's patience -- wrist fracture in 2018 (Jakob Junis fastball), oblique strain in 2019, a stress fracture in his rib that he HID for six months (the Yankees' medical staff caught heat for that one), and a torn toe ligament in 2023 that cost him 106 games. But when Judge is healthy, the numbers aren't just good. They're absurd.

: .311/.425/.686, 62 home runs, 131 RBI, 11.4 WAR. He won the AL Triple Crown and broke 's 61-year-old record in Arlington on October 4th. : .322/.458/.701, 58 home runs, 144 RBI, 11.3 WAR. Two of the greatest individual seasons any Yankee has EVER put together -- and they happened two years apart.

Key Moments

The 2017 MVP Robbery

I'll say it plainly: Judge got robbed. He led Altuve in OPS (1.049 vs. .957), home runs (52 vs. 24), RBI (114 vs. 81), and WAR (8.1 vs. 7.6). Altuve got 27 first-place votes. Judge got two. The batting average crowd won the argument that year -- and then the broke in November 2019 and made the whole thing taste even worse. Cody Bellinger said it out loud during spring training 2020: Altuve stole that MVP. (I know he was talking about his own Dodgers beef, but he wasn't wrong about Judge either.)

The man bet on himself before 2022, turned down $213.5 million, hit 62 home runs, and walked back into the building with $360 million and a captain's "C." That's not a gamble. That's knowing exactly what you're worth.