Major League Baseball has a new home-run leader, and it is the Right Honorable outfielder from the New York Yankees, Aaron Judge.
During Tuesday night's game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Judge hit Nos. 11 and 12 for the season, and now averages 0.5 of a home run per game played on the season and barely less than one home run every eight plate appearances - a pace that bests Barry Bonds' 2001 season.
Of course, it's over a small sample size, and we almost certainly aren't seeing the second-coming of Bonds. However, what the 25-year-old has been able to accomplish in his 99 plate appearances so far this season is immensely impressive.
In fact, Judge is the only player in baseball with more than 10 home runs in fewer than 100 plate appearances. Even further, he's one of just four players in the top 25 for home runs who've had fewer than 100 plate appearances - the other three being Scott Schebler (99 PA, 9 HR), Ryan Schimpf (97 PA, 7 HR), and Mike Moustakas (93 PA, 7 HR).
Consider the fact that Judge also ranks second in the American League in FanGraphs' WAR and first by wRC+ and we may have the makings of an MVP season on our hands. Let's look at some legitimate expectations.
Steamer's rest-of-season projections for Judge have him slashing .254/.336/.481 with a 119 wRC+ over his next 355 plate appearances which comes out to 1.8 WAR. Judge is already worth 2.0 WAR for the season, though.
To put that into context, that's 2016 Asdrubal Cabrera for the rest of the year. Or 2015 Nolan Arenado. Very good, but not what we're expecting and certainly not the amount of work we expect him to get.
Somewhat inexplicably, despite his blazing-hot start, Yankees skipper Joe Girardi is still batting Judge in the bottom half of the lineup. With the team winning, perhaps it doesn't make sense to tinker, though we can likely expect Judge to move up in the lineup and to get many more plate appearances for the remainder of the year.
Switching to Baseball Prospectus, Judge's weighted-mean rest-of-season PECOTA projections have him slashing .237/.325/.437 with a .265 TAv over 409 plate appearances, coming out at 2.0 WARP. This is slightly more optimistic, but still suggests that Judge has already hit roughly half of his value for the year since he is already worth 1.7 WARP.
One fun part about PECOTA is that it separates into percentile projections. The projection closest to the one we see - the most likely one to happen - is usually very close to the 50th percentile. If everything went wrong, there's the 10th percentile; if everything goes right, there's the 90th percentile. Everything going right for the rest of the season looks like this:
| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | TAv | HR | WARP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 460 | .271 | .366 | .501 | .298 | 23 | 3.9 |
That gives Judge a full season mark of 5.6 WARP. Excellent, to be sure, but that's still three wins shy of Mike Trout's 2016 campaign - which was his worst since 2012.
Even less believable is the fact that the 90th percentile - the best-case scenario to PECOTA - has Judge finishing the year with just 35 home runs (the projected 23 plus the 12 he's already collected). Taking the over on the 90th percentile is crazy at face value, but seems totally feasible in this case.
Judge is leading the league in maximum exit velocity, is fifth in average exit velocity, and is tied for the league-lead in Barrels - Statcast's new cumulative stat that measures quality of contact.
Tempering expectations might be wise. After all, if he stays on this current pace, Judge will hit his 60th home run of the season before his 500th plate appearance. And that's not possible. Is it?
