Jul. 9—Some things I’ve learned about the 2023 baseball season as it heads into the All-Star break this week:
Aaron Judge is the best hitter in baseball.
I don’t think it’s particularly close. And I get it — statistically, there are sluggers who are close. But understand this: In the 49 games Judge played in around two injured list stints this season, there are still only four players in the American League who have hit more than his 19 home runs. Judge has at least 154 fewer plate appearances than any of those four ahead of them. In fact, he’s 180 behind the league’s home run leader, Shohei Ohtani. If his 11.2 plate appearances per homer pace held up over the 393 that Ohtani had entering play Saturday, Judge would be sitting at 35 homers.
We can compare all those statistics that Judge posted. The 1.078 OPS that would lead the league if he had enough at-bats. The 194 OPS+ that means he’s almost twice as good a hitter as the average major leaguer. The fact his hard-hit percentage is more than 63 percent is laughably good, double-digits better than most of the game’s other top power threats.
The real measure of Judge’s greatness is that he accomplished what he did this season before that toe ligament injury sidelined him in the midst of a lineup that can’t function without him. The rest of the Yankees are hitting .226 as a team entering the weekend, which is both awful and hardly the metric baseball uses these days to judge such awfulness.
The Yankees without Judge, though, are clearly the worst offense in baseball. The rest of them get on base at a .292 clip, which would be dead last in the majors. They slug at a .353 clip, and only pitiful Oakland is worse. The Yankees would have some work to do to catch Oakland to get out of the OPS basement, too.
With Judge’s numbers factored in, the Yankees rank in the middle of the pack in slugging and OPS. Amazing how good his numbers are, when pitchers have every reason to be careful with him, and no real penalty for doing so. — — — Ohtani is the best player in baseball.
I know what you’re thinking: “Gee, that’s great insight.”
Now, I’m not saying he has to be the MVP every year because of this. But it’s difficult to argue that he’s not worth $60 million per year on the open market, which he will hit as a free agent in the offseason.
Even conceding Judge as the best hitter, where does Ohtani rank behind him? Second? Even if you throw the Mets’ Pete Alonso into the mix despite a somewhat down season, or the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. with a potential 40-60 season in his sights, you’re talking about Ohtani being a top-five hitter in the game. What do those types of players do when they head into free agency at 29 years old?
You can argue he’s a top-five starting pitcher, too. He’s allowing just six hits per nine innings, the lowest rate in the game, and he’s striking out nearly 12 per nine innings.
Easy to say Ohtani is the closest we’ve ever seen to Babe Ruth, but the inverse may be more accurate. Consider that the most home runs Ruth ever hit when he was one of the American League’s best pitchers from 1915 through 1918 is 11. When he became the best slugger of all-time after that run, the Yankees used him almost exclusively in right field. Even Ruth didn’t have seasons like Ohtani is, and Ohtani will reset the free agency market forever this offseason because of it. Deservedly so. — — — The new rules have made the game better.
It pains me to write that, in a way. Because I think the game was great the way it was. Nothing better than spending a long afternoon at the ballpark in the summer.
But as the games got longer and longer over the last few decades, the style of play got more and more lethargic. The pitch clock has made average game lengths about a half hour quicker, which has also seemed to make for a more crisp defensive game. While I don’t believe they should make a huge difference statistically, the larger bases at least have gotten teams thinking about the possibility of running more. It’s a more exciting game when teams aren’t satisfied going base to base, waiting for the three-run homer.
The “shift ban” has allowed a few more hits to go through while also allowing for teams to still kinda, sorta shift. Which is only fair, considering it has been allowed since the game was invented.
You don’t have to like commissioner Rob Manfred’s attitude on many facets of the game. But these were initiatives that have worked. So rat — — — I don’t like the new playoff system. It rewards teams for getting hot in October, not for being the best over the long haul, from late March through the end of September. Baseball doesn’t give you a true champion anymore, in the name of building excitement in more media markets. (As I said, you don’t have to like Manfred.)
But as we head into the break, 23 teams are in playoff position or within 8 1/2 games of a spot. That’s less than a quarter of the league you’d consider “out of it” at the Midsummer Classic — if you consider 10 games back with 2 1/2 months to play “out of it.”
Is that the best thing? You can argue it’s not. But it sure is going to make for an interesting second half around the game.
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