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Aaron Judge is at it again. A season after running away with AL MVP honors, the New York Yankees superstar is off to the best start of his career, batting .412 and already producing 4.0 WAR a quarter of the way into the 2025 season.

Can Judge keep this up? Will he top his own AL record for home runs? And can anyone keep him from winning a Triple Crown or repeating as unanimous MVP?

We set over/unders based on Judge’s ridiculous pace and asked our MLB experts to predict where his otherworldly season will go from here.


Aaron Judge’s expected batting average is .362. Will his actual BA for the season be over/under that?

Jorge Castillo: Under. One player has batted at least .350 over a full season since 2010: Luis Arraez, whose contact-first approach is so extreme that he has drawn comparisons to Tony Gwynn. Not one player has finished a season .360 or better since Joe Mauer in 2009. In short, it’s just super difficult to sustain such a high average nowadays when hitting is harder than ever.

Judge’s .481 BABIP is significantly higher than his career mark of .344 entering the season, which strongly suggests a regression in this department is coming. Simply winning the batting title would be an extraordinary accomplishment for the 6-foot-7 slugger.

Bradford Doolittle: Under. All told, Judge’s xBA is .340 since he changed his batting stance last season. Month by month, he has topped .362 twice — the current month and last May — post-tweak. He has mostly been over .300 each month but has been as low as .277. So .362 is too high, but .340, a realistic target, is pretty amazing itself.

Jeff Passan: Under. He is currently batting .410 — with a .481 average on balls in play. Judge’s lifetime BABIP is .351. Even if he winds up hitting .400 on balls in play, the sheer volume of strikeouts — he’s punching out in 20.9% of his plate appearances — severely limits anyone’s ability to post an average as high as .360. The highest K rate ever for a hitter over .360 was Andres Galarraga at 14.4% (when he hit .370 for the 1993 Rockies). It’s foolish to doubt that Judge can do anything, but the numbers simply don’t support this being a reality.

David Schoenfield: Under. For all the reasons Jeff outlined. The best chance for Judge to hit .360 would be to draw a lot of walks and thus make each hit count more, but he’s walking less often than last season. Then there’s just the sheer difficulty of hitting that high in this era. Not counting the short season of 2020, the last right-handed batter to hit .360 was Magglio Ordonez at .363 with the Tigers in 2007 — a year in which the AL average was .271, almost 30 points above this year’s average of .242.


Judge’s current OPS+ is 257. Will he finish the year over or under his career high of 225 set last year.

Castillo: Over. Around this time a year ago Judge was just beginning his historic five-month onslaught after a sluggish April, and he still finished with the highest OPS+ since Barry Bonds’ ridiculous 2004 season (263). Offensive production across the majors is down (slightly) from last season so far, making Judge’s sustained excellence even more mind-blowing. And that context is necessary when evaluating his OPS+ prospects. Judge would have to experience a significant dropoff to not eclipse last season’s number.

Doolittle: Over. It’ll be close, but I’ll take the over. His expected stats supported an even higher OPS+ than he finished with in 2024 and those numbers are on target to at least repeat that level. I don’t see the league levels spiking, which matters a lot in the OPS+ calculation. The higher the league level, the more air has to come out of raw OPS figures. I think he’ll land at around 230.

Passan: Over. This is the best version of Judge yet in his illustrious 10-year career. He’s striking out less than ever and continues to hit the ball with his typical velocity and ferocity. And with offense around the sport as weak as it is, a number like OPS+ — which is measured by a player’s numbers compared to league averages — is ripe to be exploited.

Schoenfield: Over. Last year, he had a slow start when he had a .754 OPS in April and still finished with that 225 OPS+. This version of Judge appears slump-proof. Even when he had a stretch in April when he homered just once in 20 games, he managed to hit .425/.528/.546 to keep that OPS high.

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Passan: ‘This is the best version of Aaron Judge that we have ever seen’

Jeff Passan joins the “The Pat McAfee Show” to talk about Aaron Judge’s hot start to the season for the Yankees.


Judge is on pace for 56.5 home runs. Will he go over/under that total?

Castillo: Over. Between cold temperatures and consistent rain, the Yankees have dealt with some miserable weather — home and away — in the early going. It’s only a matter of time until the weather warms up. Judge will take advantage when it does.

Doolittle: Over. He has actually been hitting the ball on the ground much more than usual with his flyballs being reduced. That may be an evolved approach, but I still expect that distribution to level out closer to his career norms — which means more fly balls. Judge’s fly balls tend to leave the ballpark, so I think he’ll get to 60 again.

Passan: Over. Judge has yet to go on one of his home run jags — during a 20-game stretch in April, he hit just one — and when that happens, it’s going to put him in position to make a run at the 62 he hit in 2022.

Schoenfield: Not including June and July of 2023, when he hurt his toe and played just five games, Judge has averaged 10 home runs per month — with half of May still to go. Give him five more home runs in May and 40 from June through September and we get 59. Over.


Judge has already posted 4.0 FanGraphs WAR in 2025. Will he surpass his career high of 11.2 from last season?

Castillo: Over. He’s on pace to smash 11.2. If he stays healthy, he’ll threaten to surpass Bonds’ 11.9-WAR season in 2004 and enter the top 10 of all time in the category.

Doolittle: Over. At Baseball-Reference (not the WAR number cited here), his individual winning percentage, based on wins above average, is .568; last year it was .554, so there’s a buffer there against some regression. Playing exclusively in right should boost Judge’s fielding plus/minus metrics and at least offset any hit he might take in positional value. He just needs to stay healthy and he’ll get to 12 wins, at least.

Passan: Over. This is a tough one because of the whims of single-year defensive and baserunning metrics. Judge last season was considered a below-average defender and slightly below-average baserunner. Thus far this year, he is an average defender and poor baserunner.

The offense is always going to be there. The question is the marginal elements that can earn those differentiating tenths of a WAR. It would be his third season with a WAR of 11 or higher in four years, by the way. The only players ever to do that are Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds.

Schoenfield: He’s on pace for nearly 14 WAR. We just said he seems slump-proof. Over 11.2 WAR.


Judge currently leads the league in all three Triple Crown categories. Will he finish atop the AL in over/under 2.5 of them?

Castillo: Over. See above: If Judge stays healthy, he’ll put together one of the greatest seasons ever and it’ll come with a Triple Crown. Batting average is the tallest challenge and RBI totals always depend on teammates being on base. But he already holds a near-50-point lead on the competition in batting average and the Yankees’ offense is good enough around him for consistent RBI opportunities.

Doolittle: As long as teams don’t start doing ill-advised, peak-Bonds stuff like walking Judge whenever someone is on base, I’ll take the over — even though winning a Triple Crown is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I just think this is where Judge is at this point of his career, which is a place few others have been to in the history of the sport.

Passan: Under. He’ll lead in home runs. The batting average element is scary, though — Judge’s career high to this point is .322 — and RBIs are so lineup-dependent. If Judge finds himself in the 3-hole more often, that element becomes less of a concern, but the combination of two categories not being stone-cold locks makes this a cautiously pessimistic bet. If anyone is going to win the Triple Crown, it’s Judge.

Schoenfield: I’ll go with the Triple Crown. He might not drive in 144 like he did last year with Juan Soto hitting in front of him, but these Yankees are scoring at a higher clip than last year’s Yankees, so he should have enough RBI opportunities.


Judge is a runaway favorite for AL MVP. Will over or under 0.5 ballots have someone other than Judge as the AL winner?

Castillo: Under. And that doesn’t mean there won’t be worthy players in the AL. Bobby Witt Jr., Cal Raleigh and Alex Bregman rank in the top 10 in WAR across the majors. Most years, they’d be among several legitimate early MVP contenders. But Judge has just been that good. He’s levels above his peers. It’s his award to lose.

Doolittle: Under. But if I’m picking a team from scratch, I’m still taking Bobby Witt Jr. and you can’t talk me out of it. Still, if Judge doesn’t get hurt, he’ll be a unanimous pick.

Passan: Under. If Judge stays healthy, he will be a unanimous MVP. He’s that much better than everyone else in the AL — which is saying something considering Witt is in the league, too.

Schoenfield: Under. Even when Shohei Ohtani had an amazing two-way season in 2022, Judge still received 28 of 30 first-place votes. And Ohtani is in the NL now.

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After Soto admires single, manager wants to chat

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After Soto admires single, manager wants to chat

BOSTON — New York Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said he’ll talk to Juan Soto about hustling out of the batter’s box after the slugger watched his would-be home run bounce off the Green Monster for a single Monday night against the Boston Red Sox.

Leading off the sixth inning on a chilly night at Fenway Park with a 15 mph wind blowing in from left field, Soto hit a 102 mph line drive to left and stood watching as it sailed toward the 37-foot-high wall. The ball hit about two-thirds of the way up, and Soto was able to manage only a single.

“He thought he had it,” Mendoza told reporters after his team’s 3-1 loss. “But with the wind and all that, and in this ballpark — anywhere, but in particular in this one, with that wall right there — you’ve got to get out of the box. So, yeah, we’ll discuss that.”

Soto stole second on the first pitch to the next batter, but the $765 million star ended up stranded on third. He denied lollygagging on the basepaths.

“I think I’ve been hustling pretty hard,” he said. “If you see it today, you can tell.”

It’s not uncommon for balls that hit off the Green Monster to result in singles. In the first inning, Pete Alonso was thrown out trying for second base on a ball off the left-field wall. But Soto had also failed to run hard out of the box on a groundout Sunday night at Yankee Stadium.

“We’ll talk to him about it,” Mendoza said.

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Skidding Dodgers ‘battling with what we’ve got’

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Skidding Dodgers 'battling with what we've got'

LOS ANGELES — Hyeseong Kim started in center field to take some of the burden off Tommy Edman‘s tender ankle and wound up losing a baseball in the twilight. Jack Dreyer opened for Landon Knack in hopes of maximizing matchups against the opposing Arizona Diamondbacks, and yet the two surrendered seven runs within the first three innings.

Nothing, it seems, goes right for the Los Angeles Dodgers these days.

On Monday night, they were bad enough on defense and ineffective enough on the mound that their mighty offense could not make up the difference. They lost 9-5 at Dodger Stadium, suffering their first four-game home losing streak since May 2018.

“We haven’t given up, but you’re going to go through certain situations like this,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “It’s just tough. We got to find a way to get back healthy, get our guys back out there. But we’re battling with what we’ve got.”

Three critical members of the Dodgers’ rotation are currently on the injured list; Blake Snell, Tony Gonsolin and Roki Sasaki are all nursing shoulder injuries with uncertain timelines. Four high-leverage relievers — Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips and Michael Kopech — have hit the shelf since the start of spring training. And in the wake of that, a Dodgers organization that has been lauded for its ability to absorb injuries, most recently by riding bullpen games to a championship, has been unable to overcome.

Forty-eight games in, the Dodgers (29-19) possess a 4.28 ERA, which ranks 22nd in the major leagues. Their rotation, hailed as one of the sport’s deepest collections of arms when the season began, holds baseball’s sixth-highest ERA at 4.51.

“It’s not the staff we thought we’d have this season,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I feel that what we still do and have done in the past with injuries, we’re not doing. And I say that in the sense of getting ahead of hitters and keeping the ball in the ballpark.”

Dodgers pitchers rank sixth in home run rate and have started behind in the count on 117 batters this season, tied for ninth most in the majors.

Dodgers coaches have spent the past few days preaching the importance of getting ahead and thus commanding counts in hopes of fostering a more aggressive approach from their staff. Dreyer seemed to carry that mindset with him early, getting ahead on three of his first four hitters. But the fourth sent a fly ball to straightaway center field that Kim, a rookie second baseman making his first career Dodger Stadium start at the position, never saw. It landed for an RBI double, igniting a two-run first inning.

The D-backs added another run in the second, on an errant throw from third baseman Max Muncy, a wild pitch from Dreyer and a sacrifice fly from Geraldo Perdomo. Four more came in the third, when Knack, vying for a long-term spot in the rotation, surrendered two-run homers to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno.

By that point, the Dodgers, coming off getting swept by the crosstown-rival Los Angeles Angels, faced a 7-0 deficit they could not overcome. Shohei Ohtani belted his major-league-leading 17th home run, Betts added two of his own, and the rest of the lineup rallied to make things interesting in the bottom of the ninth. But it wasn’t enough.

The Dodgers’ offense, which got Edman and Teoscar Hernandez back from injury in the past two days, is whole at this point. L.A.’s pitching staff is far from it.

The effects of that are being felt.

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Bubic’s no-hit bid cut short by scoring change

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Bubic's no-hit bid cut short by scoring change

SAN FRANCISCO — Kris Bubic‘s no-hit bid for the Kansas City Royals ended with an official scoring change Monday night.

Bubic initially got through six innings against the San Francisco Giants without allowing a hit — only to have an error charged to Royals second baseman Michael Massey changed to a single before the start of the seventh.

With two outs in the sixth, Wilmer Flores hit a grounder toward second base. Massey moved to his left and was in position to make the play but slipped to the ground at the edge of the grass as the ball rolled past him into the outfield.

The play was initially ruled an error by official scorer Michael Duca, and Bubic then struck out Jung Hoo Lee to end the inning and keep the game scoreless.

But moments later, Duca changed his call to a base hit for Flores.

In the seventh, Bubic (5-2) gave up a one-out double to Casey Schmitt for San Francisco’s second hit. His ERA fell to 1.47 as he struck out five and walked three, and the Royals went on to beat the Giants 3-1.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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