Insane Statistic: Aaron Judge Is A Staggering 25% More Likely To Hit A HR Than Anyone Else Currently Playing
*Based on gross season totals 2021 to present:
**Currently Playing is important because I think Bonds still has 50 in him with how much guys leave it over the plate these days. Sue me.
The baseball boys were humming earlier this week about Sal Perez knocking 71 big ones over his last two seasons. And to be quite honest it was disappointing because that shouldn't be a rare occurence. If he was in any city on the East coast, we'd talk of him like a slam dunk hall of famer. But he's in Kansas City so you forget he exists until somebody like me goes out of their way to remind you that he slugs .463 for his career behind the plate - higher than Posey, Mauer, Fisk, and a whole bunch of other big names.
Anyways Sal Perez isn't the point of this. It's actually about Aaron Judge and the remarkable gap between him and everyone else. Sure 62 helps the two-year gross. But Even if It's just 48 last year, he's still 10% ahead of the next two guys. Whole solid group of them in the 2nd tier. Then of course two Atlanta Braves locked up for the next 47 years combined.
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Marcus Semien's contract year makes it's way into the graphic too. How about that.
But Aaron Judge. Let's talk about Aaron Judge for a minute.
This isn't rocket science because you're presumably a somewhat-informed person. But it's worth repeating so much that you guys accuse me of juicing word counts. In the sight of the Baseball Gods, I can attest there has never been a more impressive athlete relative to his peer group. Maybe. Slam dunk if we call him a CF. Just stack him next to every other CF in baseball and I don't think you can find another example in the last 30 years. Before him, I'd say Bo Jackson.
And on topic - I would like to make a motion that the sports world puts a timeline in place using Bo Jackson as the reference. ABJ and BBJ. Work backwards and forwards for the sports history books. I know MJ is a better candidate, transformatively speaking. But the beauty of using Bo as a reference is that it's a tighter window. You start talking about MJ then you gotta differentiate. Are we talking about 84-87 MJ? The 2nd phase of consistent heartbreaking loss? Or which 3-peat?
Bo Jackson gives the historians clarity.
In that spirit, Aaron Judge is in the 1st tier of notable physical specimens ABJ. And I'm not about to wax poetic about his skillset and all that bullshit. Great hitter, sure. But he's a monster first. A gorgeous gazelle. The build a player that's actually so unrealistic you get bored after a couple games.
The Pecota projections came in this week and it feels cheap to forecast a .923 OPS. Although respect for saying 600+ plate appearances. That translates to a full season and something tells me Judge prides himself most on something like that. He would totally be that guy.
86 homers is nice but I'm just happy to be hear for Rizzo's shitty jokes
His jokes are fine guys. Relax.
Anyways I almost went 500 words without blowing Shohei Ohtani. I think he's gonna be like Shakespearre. Kind of. Bill was popular in his own time but the greatness grows with time to appreciate. Not of an age, but for all time. That's Shohei Ohtani to me. I will buy the ticket and enjoy the show right now and hope a Barstool Blogger centuries from now can accurately reflect on Ohtani's greatness. Until then let's all agree we're lucky he's putting on a show.
PECOTA? (baseball nerds love capitalizing shit)
They say its like a coin flip that Shohei is a 4 WAR player. I think you gotta pay to believe me but it's in there. And if you trust me then also trust that I say this big sumbitch is scratching double digits OFFENSE only. I smell a 15 WAR season to be honest. Can we get that priced at Penn?
Tune in tomorrow to find out.
For now go listen to Tim Anderson Part 2. It just dropped and my blog on that doesn't go out til later. Consider this a soft launch. Just how your old lady gets it.