⚾ Baseball Bytes: Aaron Judge Is an All-Timer in Our Midst

Let's not take the Yankees' big bopper for granted. Plus, Ken Griffey Jr.'s Reds era gets underway 25 years ago, and the divisions set to claim the most playoff teams.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ Judgement Day

Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees heads in from the outfield during the game against the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium on April 25, 2025. (Elsa/Getty Images)

Aaron Judge is a tough guy to overlook. That goes both literally — at 6-foot-7 and 282 pounds, only Orioles pitcher Félix Bautista can match him on both height and weight among current MLB players — and in terms of performance. Over the past five seasons, no player has hit more home runs than Judge’s 204 dingers; Shohei Ohtani is a relatively distant second at 184.

So why does it still feel like Judge is not quite given his due as an all-time legend currently in our midst?

I ask this because Judge’s start to the 2025 season has been as good as any in his already stellar career: He went into Tuesday’s game at Baltimore with a slash line of .405/.496/.703, good for an 1.199 OPS and the most Wins Above Replacement (WAR) per 162 team games of any player in baseball, tracking for an astronomical 14.5 WAR over a full season’s worth of games.