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. (This was originally published in March 2024.)
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Aaron Judge has an excellent and unusual career thus far. It is not easy to predict where he goes from here.
Aaron Judge is not only one of the best players in the game today, he is also one of the most unusual. His physical size, athleticism, late start to his career and extraordinary power make it very difficult to compare him to any other player past or present.
Judge was drafted by the Yankees out of Fresno State University and spent two and a half years in the minor leagues before making his big league debut late in the 2016 season when he was already 24-years-old. It is relatively common for players to make it to the big leagues at 24 or even older, but it is very rare for a truly great position player.
There are only seventeen non-pitchers in the Hall of Fame who played their first big league game at age 24 or older. However, six played in the Negro Leagues for which the statistical record is sometimes vague, meaning they probably started at a younger age. A seventh, Jackie Robinson, was kept out of the National League until he was 27 due to institutionalized racism in baseball. Most of the others, players like Earle Combs and Dave Bancroft were borderline Hall of Famers. Only Edgar Martinez and Wade Boggs were truly great players who started their career at the relatively advanced age of 24 or older.
Using another criterion, only seven position players who played their first big league game at 24 or older have accumulated 60 or more WAR. Among those players are Robinson and Ichiro Suzuki, who was a star in Japan before coming to the US in 2001. The other five are Martinez, Boggs, Kenny Lofton, Chase Utley and Ken Boyer. Those were all fine players, but no player in either group is the same type of player, a slugging outfielder who strikes out and walks a lot, as Judge. As the 2024 season is about to start Judge has 41.5 WAR, so he will most likely join this group sometime during the 2027 season.
The same qualities that make it difficult to compare Judge to other players, mean projecting his future is vexing as well. Since 2016 Judge has wrestled with injuries that have limited his playing time substantially. He has played more than 140 games in only three seasons and lost significant parts of four seasons to injury. Judge is currently questionable for Opening Day. On the other hand, when healthy Judge has never struggled at the plate for more than a few weeks.
Judge’s “worst seasons” were 2019 and the Covid 2020 season when his OPS+ in both years was 143. In other words, after playing eight full or partial seasons in the big leagues, in Judge’s bad years his OPS+ was the same as Bryce Harper or Harmon Killebrew’s over their entire careers.
If Judge has a normal decline phase and stays relatively healthy over the remaining eight years of his current Yankees contract, he will end his career with around 70-80 WAR , 475-525 home runs , be a certain Hall of Famer but fall well short of being an inner circle all-time great. However, if Judge’s struggles with injuries get worse, he might play only four full seasons and four injury shortened ones, and finish his career with more like 60 WAR and 425-450 home runs. Judge would still have a viable Hall of Fame candidacy, but even that might depend on the whether the Yankees win a World Series or two with Judge.
There is another scenario here that cannot be discounted either. Judge is a unique player with regards to body type and career path, so he may also have a unique career path. He might just have two more great seasons before he begins decline. That trajectory would put him at 80 or so career WAR and closer to 550 home runs, making him probably the greatest right-fielder since Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson retired.
Judge is now the face of the New York Yankees, the only big league team for which he has every played, and where he very well may finish his career given the size of his current contract with the Bronx Bombers. Therefore, Judge should also be looked at in the context of that franchise.
Judge has no chance of becoming the greatest player, or even greatest outfielder, in his team’s long history. A couple of guys named Ruth and Mantle are in his way. He may accumulate better career numbers than another legendary Yankees outfielder, Joe DiMaggio, but the Yankee Clipper’s role in Yankees lore and American culture, as well as his different skill set make him a tough player to compare to Judge-one relevant data point is that Judge struck out more time in his first three seasons in the big leagues than DiMaggio did in his entire career.
Ruth and Mantle are out of reach, but if Judge stays reasonably healthy and has a few more good years, he will secure his place as the fourth greatest outfielder in Yankees history. If he does a little better than that, he will probably, to the chagrin of some, eclipse the DiMaggio and earn a spot in the all-time Yankees starting outfield. By the time he is done playing, Judge will very likely be the greatest Yankee since Derek Jeter and one of the ten best players in team history.
Obviously, Judge has a lot more baseball to play. It is possible that he might never play a full season again or that last year’s toe injury could be worse than we think. However, it is also possible that he has a run of good health and hits something like two hundred home runs over the next five years before a more modest 20-30 for each the remaining years of his contract.
Judge may or may not be the best of the slugging outfielders roughly his age in the game today, a group that includes Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, who is now a shortstop and Bryce Harper, who is now a first baseman, but he should be included in that group and in the larger context of baseball history is a sui generis player.
