For Yankees' Aaron Judge, his Triple Crown watch is as impressive as his home run total

Aaron Judge, after a career-long 16 games without a home run – a “drought” that received outsized attention – is on one of his home run binges yet again.

After his two-run shot in the seventh inning on Thursday night against the Orioles, the outfielder has homered in five straight games and seven of his last 12 games, giving him an MLB-leading 58. 

The chance of the Yankees captain reaching the 60-homer plateau twice in three seasons again is very much in play.

But just as impressive, and in some ways more impressive, is the fact Judge, also for the second time in three seasons, is a candidate to win the American League Triple Crown.

Besides leading the league in homers and RBIs (144), Judge is hitting .325, tied for the second-highest batting average in the AL with Toronto’s Vlad Guerrero Jr. (.325) behind Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. (.332).

When Judge won his first MVP in 2022, in addition to the AL-record 62 homers and MLB-leading 131 RBIs, he hit .311, finishing second in batting average to the Twins' Luis Arraez (.316).

“I mean, he’s Aaron Judge,” Aaron Boone said before Thursday’s game of Judge being one of the rare sluggers able to hit for power and average. “It’s watching a historically great player, what we’re seeing. He takes a lot of pride in it. Obviously, his power speaks for itself. But he takes a lot of pride in being a well-rounded hitter. And I think, like a lot of great players, in whatever sport it may be, he is intent and obsessed with trying to get a little bit better at baseball year in and year out.”

Batting average has been slowly deemphasized in the sport the last two decades as pretty much all teams are to a degree run by baseball people steeped in analytics.

It is not unusual when batting average is discussed with that crowd to hear words like “meaningless” and “irrelevant,” among others.

A degree of recalibration in that regard has taken place in recent years with some teams – the Royals would be one example – where batting average is, while maybe not emphasized the way it once was, it isn’t outwardly dismissed as at least somewhat relevant when evaluating a hitter.

But regardless of who is running teams, one constituency to whom batting average still matters is the players.

And Judge, who throughout his career has described himself as being “old school” when it comes to the game, is high on the list of players to whom it matters.

A lot.

“For me, grading the hitter has always been about average,” Judge said late in his 2022 MVP season. “I might be a little old-school, but can you hit or can you hit? It’s always been a goal of mine to try and get to that point and do that.”

While in college at Fresno State, Judge often pulled up clips of at-bats by the hit-to-all-fields Miguel Cabrera, MLB’s last Triple Crown winner (2012 with the Tigers).

Judge grew up not far from the Bay Area rooting for the Giants and their best player, Barry Bonds, another slugger who could hit for average. He also kept close tabs on Albert Pujols, yet another hitter fitting in that category.

“Those guys were complete hitters,” Judge said.

It has been a steady climb for the 32-year-old to .325. Judge, after all, had a miserable first month and was hitting .197 after play on May 2.

But he soon took off and his batting average hasn’t dipped below .300 since it was at .299 on June 16.

“It’s the hard way. He’s not getting infield singles, all of his doubles . . . he doesn’t have speed to hustle out a double at the wall, they’re just all true slug,” Anthony Rizzo, among Judge’s closest friends on the team, said earlier this season, marveling at Judge’s ability to both hit the ball 450-plus feet but also hold a .300-plus batting average. “Guys that have speed have slightly different ways (to get to a high average), sneaking in infield hits and whatnot. It’s just true slug, at-bat after at-bat. It’s the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen in my career.”

Count Boone in that group as well.

“I don’t want to get hyperbolic and say he’s gone to another level from when he hit 62 homers and won the MVP. I don’t know if it’s another level,” Boone said. “But is he incrementally a better hitter today than he was then? I think the answer’s yes.”