Wednesday, September 21, 2022

Rare Air

Hitting 50 home runs in a season is hitting rare air. Hitting 60 or more in a season is even more rare. Nine times total in a season it has happened. The 9th coming last night in the Bronx. Aaron Judge joined the club, hitting his 60th against the Pirates. And he's got two weeks left in the regular season to add to that total.

He's joining some rare company. Judge in 2022 (60 and counting), Babe Ruth in 1927 (60), Roger Marris in 1961 (61), Sammy Sosa in 1998 (66), 1999 (63) and 2001 (64), Mark McGuire in 1998 (70) and 1999 (65) and Barry Bonds in 2001 (73). Judge is only the 3rd American League hitter to club sixty or more dingers in a season.

What's even more amazing about this is how Judge handled it in the post game press conference. He mentioned the milestone home run just once. He talked about the comeback team win at least ten times. That's saying something. It speaks to Judge character and him being a team first guy. And it makes it even more amazing considering this is a contract year. Judge is set to hit the free agent market this winter. We will cross that bridge when we come to it. That's for later on. Now its about Judge having a magical season and the Yankees making a push for a 28th World Title.

Judge, after last night, is now leading the AL in all three triple crown categories. At the time of this writing his hitting .316 (one point above Xander Bogarts of Boston), 60 Home Runs (23 more then Yordan Alverez of Houston) and 128 RBI (13 more then Jose Ramriez of Cleveland). Its really an eye popping number and something that hasn't been done in baseball since Miguel Cabrera did it in Detroit in 2013.

All of this is powering a Yankees team to, at the time of this writing, 89 wins and a five and a half game lead in the AL East. The only American League team that has more wins is the 98 win Astros. The Bombers had looked like they were going to run away with the best record in baseball, but they came back down to earth during August. Now they getting back on the right track with two weeks left in the season. A lot of that has to do with the outstanding hitting of Aaron Judge!

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