Aaron Judge's Quest for .400

by Lincoln Mitchell

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NOTE - This article comes from Lincoln Mitchell's Substack page, Kibitzing with Lincoln . Please click HERE to follow Lincoln on Substack.

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At this writing, Aaron Judge is hitting .396. It is unlikely, but definitely possible that he will hit .400 for the entire season. The last time a player hit .400 for a full season was in 1941 when Ted Williams hit .406. A number of Negro League players hit .400 after 1941, but they did it in shorter seasons as none played in even 80 games. Despite all the great players who have worn pinstripes, no Yankee has ever hit .400.

If Judge manages to stay above .400 for a full season he will be the most unusual .400 hitter in baseball history. Unlike most, but not all, .400 hitters Judge is a power hitter. He has already set numerous home run hitting records. Judge has 12 home runs this season and, unless he gets hurt will almost certainly hit at least 30 or 40 more. The only time a .400 hitter ever hit even 40 home runs was Rogers Hornsby who hit 42 round-trippers while batting .401 in 1922. Only two other .400 hitters, Hornsby in 1925 and Williams in 1941 have even hit 30 homeruns in their .400 season.

Judge is not only a great home run hitter, but he has always struck out a lot. He is currently on pace to strike out at least 100 times this year, more than twice the number of whiffs of any .400 hitter. Hornsby, that name is beginning to sound familiar for good reason, is the only .400 hitter with even 50 strikeouts-again in that 1922 season.

No batter like Judge has ever even made a real run at .400. In the more than eighty years since Williams became the last hitter to top the .400 mark the three batters who have come the closest were Rod Carew, who hit. 388 in 1977, George Brett, .390 in a 1980 season in which injuries limited him to only 117 games, and Tony Gwynn, .394 in the strike shortened 1994 season. Brett hit 24 home runs in 1980 but the other two were contact hitters with only modest power. Carew’s 55 strikeouts in 1977 were the most of any of the three in their near .400 seasons.

The season is only about a quarter over, so Judge could easily end up missing .400 by a lot, but if he stays close to .400 it will be an extraordinary accomplishment for a power hitter in this era. To hit .400 a player must not only be good, but also get a few breaks. A hard hit groundball must find its way between two infielders; that bloop must drop two feet in front of the outfielder and a few infield singles must be legged out. However, that luck can only occur when the ball is put in play, and Judge, even when he is at his best strikes out between 20-25% of his times at bat.

Judge has been extremely lucky this year as evidenced by his .464 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play.) That numbers is partially due to Judge consistently hitting the ball hard when he makes contact, but also because he has gotten a few breaks. In 1941, Williams only had a .378 BABIP. Because BABIP excludes home runs from both the numerator and denominator, it is possible to hit .400 with a BABIP lower than that mark. Bill Terry, the last National Leaguer to hit .400, in 1930, had a .400 BABIP that season. Hornsby, in his remarkable 1922 season, had a BABIP of .392.

Since 1900, only 27 batters have maintained a BABIP of over .400 in the AL or NL. One of those, Michael Conforto, did that in the Covid shortened 2020 season. The highest BABIP for a single season was Ty Cobb’s .443 in 1911, a season in which the Georgia Peach hit .419. At the rate he strikes out, Judge will have to maintain a BABIB of at least twenty points higher than Cobb’s in 1911 to have a chance of hitting .400.

It is notable that Rogers Hornsby’s great 1922 season seems to keep popping up in this discussion of Judge. That season came in the midst of a five season stretch from 1921-1925 in which Hornsby averaged 29 homeruns, an OPS+204 and a batting average of .402. Those were also the prime years of Babe Ruth, only 14 months older than Hornsby, who averaged 12 more home runs a year and an OPS+ of 210 while batting .357 during that period. In those first years of the live ball era, Hornsby was the only player who was close to being as good a hitter as Ruth.

Hornsby has not played a game in almost eighty years and has been dead for more than sixy years. However, as Judge is in the midst of another fantastic season and talk of the Yankees slugger being the greatest right-handed hitter ever heats up, Hornsby is relevant again.

The greatest hitters in MLB history were left-handed swingers Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Barry Bonds, but Hornsby was the greatest right-handed hitter ever. Josh Gibson is Hornsby’s only real competition, and may have been a better hitter, but comparisons between the National League and the Negro Leagues of that era are tough. Jimmie Foxx, as a hitter, was not quite as dominant as Hornsby. Willie Mays was, due to his superior defense and baserunning, a better player than Hornsby. So were a handful of other right-handed hitters such as Henry Aaron and Honus Wagner, but nobody has been a better hitter than Hornsby from the right side in AL or NL history.

Comparisons across eras are difficult, but statistics like OPS+ help us overcome some of that. Currently Judge’s OPS+ of 176 is almost identical to Hornsby’s career OPS+ of 175. Judge got a later start, but Hornsby only played 274 games after his age 33 season-the same age Judge is now. Judge is making a strong run at Hornsby’s title and batting .400 in the 21st century offensive context, would make Judge’s claim on being the greatest right-handed hitter ever all but irrefutable.