60+ homers and a Triple Crown? Aaron Judge's epic season defies his MLB era

Aaron Judge is about to hit an American League-record 62 home runs. And that might not be the most impressive part of his season.

Judge’s run past Ruth, his march beyond Maris took on an even greater mythical quality Tuesday night when he clubbed his 60th home run that not only chipped away at a four-run deficit, but also sparked a five-run rally that produced a 9-8 Yankees win on Giancarlo Stanton’s grand slam.

The delirious ninth inning against a dazed Pirates club only added to the mythical element of Judge’s run to Ruth, his march past Maris. And it’s only a matter of days – hours? – until Judge hits home run No. 62 to pass Roger Maris atop the Yankees’ and American League’s all-time list.

Yet Tuesday’s sequence only amplified why he’s now a slam-dunk AL MVP candidate – and also illustrated why Judge’s season, in total, will go down as one of the greatest of all time.

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It’s not just getting one pitch to hit and depositing it over the fence. Nor the tangible and intangible lift he’s provided a Yankees club initially sparked by Judge’s hot start and then kept afloat by him after every other part of the machine broke down.

No, it is the singularly brilliant exhibition of all-around hitting that sets Judge apart from any season, ever, and one that is slated to end with a stunning, unprecedented double:

All-time AL home run leader and Triple Crown winner.

Leading your league in home runs, batting average and runs batted in remains arguably the most singularly fantastic individual feat in the game. Nobody’s done it in the National League since Joe “Ducky” Medwick pulled it off for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1937. It hadn’t been done for 45 years in the AL when Miguel Cabrera’s .330, 44-homer, 139-RBI season won him the AL MVP in 2012, the first Triple Crown winner since Frank Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski did it back to back in 1966-67.

Yet Cabrera’s feat also kicked up – kicked off, in a sense – an at times contentious debate over modern vs. traditional statistics and how they might relate to “value” and, by extension, MVP awards. Cabrera’s win, after all, came at the expense of rookie Mike Trout, who’d go on to win three MVPs of his own but whose superior defense and on-base ability gave him an advanced-metrics case to outpoint Cabrera. Instead, Trout earned the first of three frustrating runner-up finishes.

The modern stats crowd bemoaned that the older-school voting bloc was blinded by the sheen of the Triple Crown, an anachronistic honor in their eyes. After all, runs batted in are largely a function of opportunity, right? And batting average? Pfft. It’s an antiquated stat, an inferior measure to value than on-base percentage along with a half-dozen other manners in which to measure a hitter’s production.

Fine. We’ll concede the RBI point while noting that discounting the stat is absurd, simply because somebody does have to physically drive in the runs. And the best hitters get to hit in the best RBI spots in the order. That’s how it works.

But to dismiss batting average is a canard that’s only grown more absurd over time – because many players simply aren't good enough to hit in this era.

Judge’s .316 batting average – currently good for a one-point lead over Boston shortstop Xander Bogaerts entering Wednesday – would be the lowest by an AL batting champ since Rod Carew’s .318 mark in 1972. It’s just a tick behind the 2021 champion, Houston’s Yuli Gurriel, who batted .319.

It comes at a time when the major league batting average has dropped to .243, its lowest point since 1967. That’s an unsurprising development given the well-chronicled offensive environment blunted by hyper-specialized pitching featuring a bottomless trough of arms that approach 100 mph. The landscape has forced hitters into an aesthetically displeasing place: To hit only for power, knowing the occasional home run might make up for the flailing at-bats in between longballs.

So fine, we’ll toss out RBIs. Perhaps we should have been calling it the Double Crown all along – since fewer things in sports are more challenging than consistently hitting for average and power. It’s why the Triple Crown is such an exclusive club, almost entirely populated by generational hitters like Cabrera, Yastrzemski and Robinson, Ted Williams.

Yet the current state of offensive mediocrity goes further.

There’s no simple way to quantify greatness, but for the purpose of hitting, hitting for power and providing offensive value for your club, let’s arbitrarily establish a plateau: The .300/.800 man. That’d be batting .300 with an .800 OPS (on base plus slugging), two benchmarks impossible to reach concurrently if you can’t hit, have marginal plate discipline or display little power.

This year, among batters with at least 400 plate appearances, that group is an exclusive one: Just eight players, led by Judge at .316/1.123, with Paul Goldschmidt (.322/1.022) seeing his NL Triple Crown bid foiled by the great Freddie Freeman (.330/.927).

How much has the game changed in a decade?

In 2012, Cabrera’s Triple Crown year, there were 26 .300/.800 hitters, the top six all past or future MVPs (Joey Votto, Cabrera, Ryan Braun, Trout, Buster Posey and Andrew McCutchen). Yet the Aaron Hills and Jeff Keppingers and David Murphys of the world also made it, a group that might suffocate in the modern environment.

And how about 1999, a gluttonous offensive season deep in the heart of the so-called steroid era?

Fifty-nine players posted .300/.800 seasons, from Larry Walker to Roger Cedeno.

Barely two decades later, that group has been slashed by 86%, down to the greatest of the great.

It is led by Judge, who has paired his rate stats with a staggering 60 homers and 128 RBIs. His Triple Crown bid proves he’s a slugger for any era, a supernatural in this one.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Aaron Judge's home run record and Triple Crown run defy MLB in 2022