FOR THE NEXT three days, baseball's two finest players this year will share the field at Yankee Stadium. It's a cause for celebration and mutual appreciation -- because as much as Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr. are spurring a debate over who deserves the American League MVP award, they're on the verge of reaching the hallowed sort of level that will tie them together in history, not pit them against one another.
In the hundreds of thousands of individual baseball seasons played since MLB's modern era began in 1920, only 46 times has a player finished a year with at least 10 wins above replacement, as calculated by FanGraphs. This list constitutes a collection of the greatest seasons ever. And sooner than later, the 2024 versions of Judge and Witt should join the fraternity.
They really have been that good. In a bereft offensive environment, with pitchers as advantaged as they've been in decades, Judge and Witt have spent five months toying with opponents. Judge, the New York Yankees' 6-foot-7 leviathan captain, is putting up a generational offensive season, hitting for the sort of power rarely seen in the game's history. Witt, the Kansas City Royals' franchise player, a 6-foot-1 bundle of fast-twitch speed, is translating his immense physical tools into something positively symphonic -- a hit/run/field combination that has long foretold superstardom.
It's no surprise, then, that the two best players in the game this season admire one another.
"He's just so consistent," Witt told ESPN this week of Judge. "That's the name of the game: Stay healthy, stay on the field and help the team. He does that in a good way, and he does it the right way. He's not out there showboating. He's a big dude. He can do whatever he wants. He's the king of New York."
"He's the complete player," Judge said this weekend of Witt. "Can hit, run, field, do everything. He was already a great player last year, but he continues to improve every single game I watch him."
Over the last century, Judge and Witt would comprise only the third duo in the same league to reach double-digit wins. The last time a pair of players in the same league put up 10-win seasons was 1961, when Mickey Mantle and Norm Cash reached the threshold (and both, incidentally, finished behind Roger Maris in AL MVP voting). Before that, it was Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig with the Yankees in 1927. And Witt and Judge are doing it with a staggering gap between them and their closest contemporaries: The next-best WARs belong to Juan Soto (7.6) and Francisco Lindor (7.3).
Both Judge and Witt ended the weekend at 9.6 WAR (perhaps a surprise for those who treat Judge's MVP coronation as a foregone conclusion). But this week, at least, it's less about the MVP argument -- is Judge's gap in OPS and power profound enough to exceed the value delivered by Witt's glove and legs? -- and more about appreciating the rarity of what two players meeting in a late-season series with playoff implications are doing.
With seeding at stake, these games genuinely matter, which only adds resonance to this series. It's like the late 1970s all over again, with a superstar on each side (Reggie Jackson and George Brett as the decades-ago proxies) and postseason implications in play when they meet.
There will be time to adjudicate the MVP portion of the Judge-Witt conversation, when the season ends and the numbers are frozen. In the meantime, let's not get caught in that trap. These seasons are works of art best consumed individually for a truly deep appreciation. And one of them already knows exactly what it's like to blow by the 10-win mark.
THE LIST OF players with multiple 10-win seasons reads as follows: Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Mike Trout, Rogers Hornsby, Ted Williams and Willie Mays. If you were to put together a list of the greatest position players in history, those eight would be a good place to start.
Well, Judge is about to join the group. During the 2022 season, in which he broke the AL record with 62 home runs, he posted 11.1 WAR. And that's what makes his 2024 season so wild: Judge is better in literally every way as a hitter -- even as he's currently mired in his worst home run-hitting slump this season and among the worst in his career.
He is better in the basic ways: higher batting average (.321 vs. .311), on-base percentage (.455 vs. .425) and slugging percentage (.697 vs. .686). He is striking out less and walking more. The only reason his WAR isn't at 10 yet comes down to his defense in center, which is not going to win him a Gold Glove anytime soon. Until Judge, the most games played in center field over a single season by someone 6-foot-6 or taller was Dave Winfield in 1978, when he started 77 games in center, played in 82 but spent just 36 for the entire game. Already Judge has started 93 -- and finished 78 of them.
Judge is also better in less obvious ways. Take his two-strike approach. He has homered 20 times on two-strike counts this season -- he did it 21 times in the full 2022 season -- and his OPS with two strikes is .797 compared to .700 two years back. Only Cleveland's Jose Ramirez, at .831, has a better two-strike OPS than Judge's.
The ability to thrive down in the count speaks to a newfound balance in Judge's game that also manifests itself with pitcher handedness. In 2022, Judge did far more of his damage against left-handed pitchers, against whom he hit nearly 50 points better. Flash forward to this season, and while Judge still does hit for more power against left-handed pitchers, his .329 average against them is not too dissimilar from his .322 average against right-handers. No one is safe.
What best explains his dominance are context-dependent numbers. How does Judge compare to the environment in which he's playing? Consider this list, from ESPN Stats & Information, of single-season right-handed hitters' OPS+, adjusted for league and ballpark, with 100 being average and 200 twice as good as an average player that season.
Before a recent mini-swoon -- Judge has gone 54 plate appearances without homering, his longest streak since May 2023 and the seventh longest of his career -- he was at the top of this list, and he's still ahead of Mark McGwire in his record-breaking, steroid-peak campaign, Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas in their sadly strike-shortened '94 seasons and himself in his first double-digit-win effort.
Another adjusted number, wRC+, uses runs created to approximate offensive value in a similar way to OPS+. And in the live ball era, from 1920 on, here are the 10 best wRC+ single seasons, according to FanGraphs:
In other words, a veritable hitting Mount Rushmore -- Bonds, Ruth, Williams, Mantle -- and Aaron Judge.
INSTEAD OF RELYING on the power of power like Judge, Witt has piecemealed together his 10 wins. Value here (his 19 three-hit games lead MLB), value there (about a win and a half from his glove at short), value really anywhere (he's two stolen bases shy of his second straight 30/30 season -- and would be the first shortstop ever to do it twice).
Another point that's contextually vital: Witt is doing all this at 24 years old. Judge is 32, and if this is his last 10-win season, there would be no shame in that. Witt is in his third major league season. Only two players in MLB history have recorded a 10-win season within their first three years: Trout in 2012 (his first full year) and Williams in 1941 (when he hit .406 as a 22-year-old).
As much as his wheels and glove round out his game, Witt's giftedness with the bat puts him in 10-win territory. His ability to generate power at only 200 pounds is rare. Hitting the ball hard correlates strongly with a player's weight.
Witt's average exit velocity is 93.1 mph. The next closest in the 181 to 200-pound weight band is Seiya Suzuki at 91.5 mph. Remaining at 200 pounds allows Witt to maintain his agility at shortstop and his speed on the basepaths, but it doesn't inhibit him from doing the sorts of things to baseballs that only Judge and a select few others have managed. Already this season Witt has hit 41 balls at least 110 mph -- breezing past Carlos Gonzalez's record of 36 for players 200 pounds or lighter, set nearly a decade ago.
The combination of hitting the ball hard and running fast -- at 30.5 feet per second, Witt covers more ground on the basepaths than anyone -- has led to a gaudy batting average in an era when the league-wide average is .244 and only six of the 134 players qualified for the batting title own an average over .300. Witt is at the top of the list at .339 -- his .393 on-base percentage is fifth and his .611 slugging percentage third -- and he's on pace to be the 12th player this century to bat at least 90 points higher than the league average. Five of the 11 who have done it won MVP.
One could go on forever espousing Witt's virtues via numbers. He doesn't belabor his damage. He loves attacking first pitches, like he did on July 29 against the Chicago White Sox for a grand slam on a John Brebbia slider with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the eighth and the Royals trailing 5-4. In 74 plate appearances that ended on the first pitch, Witt is hitting .417/.432/.764 with five home runs.
And whether it was the go-ahead grand slam against Chicago or a game-tying triple against Seattle or an eighth-inning homer against the A's that broke a tie, Witt has found himself in the middle of win after Royals win. In 2023, Kansas City went 56-106. With a sweep of Minnesota over the weekend, the Royals find themselves at 79-65, three games back of the Baltimore Orioles for the top wild-card spot and 2 1⁄2 games ahead of the Minnesota Twins for the last one.
Kansas City's turnaround jogged Judge's memory to the end of last season. He had noticed Witt's power and speed numbers and told him: "Go do your thing and get that 30/30 ... but hopefully not against us." In the final series of the season, facing the Yankees, Witt hit his 30th home run to secure it. Now, with a pair of stolen bases, he can do it against New York again -- and this time at Yankee Stadium.
WHAT'S MOST INCREDIBLE about the seasons Judge and Witt are having is how much better they are than even the rest of the game's elite.
One could argue that Shohei Ohtani blitzing toward the first 50-home run, 50-stolen base season in MLB history is every bit as impressive as what Judge or Witt have done. Well, Judge's OPS is around 170 points higher than Ohtani's, a staggering chasm. Witt's is higher than Ohtani's, too -- and he plays elite defense at arguably the most important position on the field and runs well enough that the stolen-base gap isn't a significant separator. Yes, Witt's bat lags just behind that of Judge's teammate, Soto, but the rest of Soto's game pales comparatively. And while Lindor's glove is on Witt's level, his OPS is as far behind Witt's as Ohtani's is Judge's.
In terms of pure value, it's Judge and Witt in their own category, a large gap and then everyone else. And that's what makes it so fortuitous that the pair will rekindle their mutual admiration society in person this week. Sometimes baseball's long slog of a season offers a bright little moment at a most unexpected time. Before the year, the Royals visiting the Yankees in mid-September looked like a throwaway series. Now it might prove integral to playoff positioning as well as offer another stage on which the super two can flaunt their MVP credentials.
Baseball is not a game in which position players interact a whole lot. The sport's nature dictates that the two best players in the world can occupy the field at the same time for an entire series and have zero contact with one another. Maybe Witt steals a hit from Judge or Judge throws Witt out trying to advance, but this is not a head-to-head battle.
It is, however, a treat regardless. Because the last time two 10-win players from the same league played in a game together was almost 63 years ago, on Sept. 17, 1961. Mantle went 0-for-4. Cash went 2-for-5. And Maris -- the MVP in a time long before WAR was even a concept -- hit a go-ahead 12th-inning home run, his 58th of the season.
What this week offers, then, is not only a chance for fans to celebrate stars near the peak of their powers showing off, but for Judge and Witt to see in person the tool they wish they could steal from the other.
"The speed," Judge said of Witt. "He can stretch normal singles into doubles. Doubles into triples. And then every single, you're fearful he'll be on third base before you know it. When I'm at the plate, I love having one of those speed guys on in front of me. I'll get more fastballs and chances to drive in runs."
"The power," Witt said of Judge. "Balls I hit in the right-center field gap that are doubles, triples, he's hitting those out -- way out -- for homers."
It will all be on display in the Bronx: two phenomenal players, two historically great seasons and, depending on how the standings shake out, two teams that could be seeing one another in October, too.
Jesse Rogers contributed to this story.