Who is the Best Baseball Player 2022?

Aaron Judge will be remembered as one of the greatest baseball players in history, and that much has been evident for years.

This season, there aren’t enough positive words to characterize Aaron Judge’s play for the New York Yankees.

It could be described as otherworldly. Another word that certainly matches is majestic. Although it’s not particularly brilliant, “historic” is perhaps the most appropriate choice.

Because Judge is essentially posting steroid-era numbers at least 15 or 20 years after that era ended, he is having a historic season. It’s significant because he’s on the verge of breaking the Yankees’ single-season home run record.

New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge is now the American League’s all-time leader in single-season home runs, with 62 to his credit. According to some, he may also be known as the “genuine” or “true” single-season champion of all Major League Baseball.

That’s a no from us, but we’re going to make the case that Judge’s 2022 season will be the most outstanding of MLB’s six 60-home run club members.

On Tuesday, Judge officially surpassed Babe Ruth’s previous record of 60 from 1927, which he had already matched on September 20, and Roger Maris’ subsequent record of 61 from 1961 on Wednesday. His 62nd home run came off Texas Rangers righty Jesus Tinoco and traveled 391 feet.

Roger Maris Jr. is undoubtedly not the only one who refuses to recognize Barry Bonds’ record, even though Judge is still 11 home runs away from breaking Bonds’ MLB milestone of 73 in 2001. After all, the period included not just Bonds’ 2001 season but also Mark McGwire’s 60-plus home run campaigns in 1998 and 1999, and Sammy Sosa’s from 1998, 1999, and 2001 were uncommon.

The Other 60-HR Players Had Advantages.

Who, however, does not wish to hear it? Evaluate oneself.

The native of Linden, California, and formerly self-described supporter of the San Francisco Giants has stated on numerous occasions that he still regards Barry Bonds’ 73 home runs from 2001 as the true mark for MLB. He most recently noted this in September during an interview with a source.

“The record is seventy-three throughout the book. Whatever else people want to say about that baseball period, the record was set when they went out and hit 73 and 70 home runs, respectively. I can beat the AL record, which stands at 61. If it occurs, it occurs. If not, the year has been enjoyable thus far.

Giancarlo Stanton had a different perspective in 2017 when attempting to hit 60 home runs with the Miami Marlins before he was Judge’s teammate with the New York Yankees. According to him, 61 is the record, as stated by a source.

The gaps in Stanton’s assertion were and remain simple to fill. Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, during baseball’s steroid era, Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa enjoyed their home run-hitting heydays. Therefore, although MLB still needs to remove their accomplishments from the record books, there is still controversy around their veracity.

Given that all three players had a history of using performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps even more so, McGwire’s use of androstenedione is a reality. On the other hand, Sosa allegedly tested positive for PEDs in 2003. Bonds admitted to using in 2011 through his lawyer, but ostensibly unknowingly.

During baseball’s drug era, there may have been more factors that promoted home runs. The league’s pitching should have been thinner after expansion in 1993 and 1998, and a juiced ball may have been involved.

Ruth competed when there was no interleague play and only eight teams in each American and National Leagues. Thus, he was constantly up against the same seven opponents. Additionally, this was 20 years before the MLB’s integration in 1947, and the Bambino was well aware of the caliber of talent the league was excluding.

Maris overtook Ruth in 1961, 14 years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, but it was an expansion year for the American League in more ways than one. It expanded its calendar from 154 to 162 games and included two new teams.

Judge Has None of These Advantages

Major League Baseball has only gotten more multicultural in the 75 years since Robinson first donned a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, thanks to the infusion of talent from all over the world. The league is also relatively well-established because it has not grown since 1998.

Suffice it to say that there are good reasons why no one genuinely believes Judge could be juicing.

He hasn’t tested positive for anything, and he’s the last athlete on the globe who would need to consider using PEDs to improve his performance. He is the tallest batter in MLB history, standing 6’7″ and weighing 282 pounds; as a result, he has the most vigorous swing in the league.

Although the right field foul pole in Yankee Stadium is renowned for being only 314 feet away, has Judge benefited from playing his home games there?

Yes, but not to the extent you might anticipate. Only two “unicorn” home runs—that is, home runs that would be out at one stadium and nowhere else—have been marked for Judge at Yankee Stadium all season by the beneficial Twitter account “Would it dong?” His anticipated home runs, according to Statcast, are 61, so his count is precisely where it should be.

There would unavoidably be the talk of juiced balls if Judge carried out all of this in the fantastic home run settings of 2017, 2019, or 2020. However, because new balls aren’t moving as far, home runs are down in 2022.

Furthermore, there is strong circumstantial evidence that the ball is not juiced.

If it was, one might have anticipated Judge to have been assisted in his quest to break the home run record. Kyle Schwarber of the Philadelphia Phillies, who have a meager 46 home runs, is his closest friend. Only Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx had experienced such a significant home run advantage.

What else is favorable for home run batters besides diluted talent pools, PEDs, and juiced balls?

Familiarity.

In theory, a batter’s ability to adapt to a pitcher increases with the number of times they see that pitcher. As batters perform better against beginning pitchers, they face them more often; this is demonstrably true throughout games.

Nobody should be shocked to learn that Judge doesn’t benefit from this advantage nearly as much as the other 60 Home Run Club members. He is the first to be forced to divide his games versus starters and relievers 60-40.

The distinction is how frequently Judge meets a starter for the third or fourth time in a game as opposed to a reliever for the first time. In 2022, those circumstances are the exact opposite of favorable for power hitting, with the average batter slugging only.376 in a first matchup against a reliever and.446 in the third matchup versus a starter.

This, in turn, contributes to the explanation of why Judge faced many more pitchers individually than any other 60-homer hitters who came before him:

• Babe Ruth, 1927: 64 pitchers

• Roger Maris, 1961: 101 pitchers

• Sammy Sosa, 1998: 211 pitchers

• Mark McGwire, 1998: 201 pitchers

• Sammy Sosa, 1999: 215 pitchers

• Mark McGwire, 1999: 198 pitchers

• Sammy Sosa, 2001: 213 pitchers

• Barry Bonds, 2001: 205 pitchers

• Aaron Judge, 2022: 254 pitchers

What about these 254 pitchers? They haven’t been gentle with Judge.

Even though he has seen fewer fastballs on a rate basis (49.9 percent) than the typical hitter, he has faced a higher rate of fastballs that are 95 mph or faster (34.5%) than all but nine other hitters (55.7 percent). The pitch against which he whiffs the most (34.1 percent) within the family of breaking balls is the slider, which is why pitchers want to feed it to him.

Did Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa, or Bonds regularly deal with similar unpleasantness? Nobody can say, but it’s reasonable to assume “no.”

Think back to 2008, the first year that Statcast published pitch-tracking data. That year, only 20.7 percent of fastballs over 95 mph were delivered to hitters, and the average slider’s whiff rate was 3.7 percentage points lower than it is today.

It’s difficult to imagine that batters faced unpleasant or even worse pitching in 2001 if that’s how things were back in 2004. Or 1999. Or 1998. Or 1961. or unquestionably 1927.

This does not imply that it cannot be done for a historical figure to have hit more than 60 home runs in 2022. Consider the neutralized hitting tool provided by Baseball Reference, which suggests that players like 2001 Bonds (69 HR) and 1998 McGwire (64 HR) may have been able to achieve this.

But since that’s the end of the list, there is nothing left to detract from the truth that, given this year’s conditions, only one player has surpassed 60 home runs.

Judge can, should, and actually must bend in remembrance of this.