Last week, New York Yankees star Aaron Judge won the American League MVP Award for the second time.
It was a great year for Judge, who helped the Yankees advance all the way to the World Series. He hit .322, finishing just 11 points shy of the batting title in the American League. He also popped 58 homers and drove in 144 runs. He paired with Juan Soto to make up the best lineup duo in the American League and accomplished something not seen in the last 100 years of baseball history.
Per Sarah Langs of MLB.com:
highest wRC+ in a season, RHB, min 500 PA:
2024 Aaron Judge: 218
1924 Rogers Hornsby: 214
2022 Aaron Judge: 206
1998 Mark McGwire: 205
1994 Frank Thomas: 205
WRC+ is an analytics term that is defined by MLB.com as this:
wRC+ takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors — like ballpark or era. It’s adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average.
For example, a player who plays his home games at hitter-friendly Coors Field will have a lower wRC+ than a player who posts identical stats at pitcher-friendly Oakland Coliseum.
The bottom line is this: If 100 is average, Judge put up a number that was more than twice as powerful. Furthermore, if it hasn’t been done in 100 years, it’s also pretty impressive.
Lifetime, Judge is a .288 hitter with 315 homers. He’s a six-time All-Star and a four-time Silver Slugger.
As for Hornsby, he spent 23 years in the big leagues and was a lifetime .358 hitter with 301 homers.
