Scores of Yankees fans believed that Derek Jeter would always be the best contact hitter to don pinstripes in recent memory. Aaron Judge's blistering hot start to his 2025 season is starting to put Jeter's place in the team's history at risk.
The obvious difference separating Judge from Jeter is his power tool. He's undeniably a significantly better home run hitter than Jeter ever was. Up until now, proponents of the Hall of Fame shortstop could counter that argument by pointing out Jeter's career batting average stood above Judge's historic marks.
This season, that argument is starting to crumble at a rapid rate. Even if you turned all of Judge's home runs to outs this season, he would still be sporting a .370 batting average. As it stands, the towering outfielder heads into Monday night's game with an astounding average of .423 in his first 130 at-bats of the year.
Admittedly, it will be nearly impossible for Judge to keep this up over a full 162-game regular season. He's a great hitter, but there's a reason why none of his peers have flirted with hitting .400 for decades. Opposing pitchers will inevitably find new strategies to throw at him over the course of the year.
But 130 at-bats is still a large enough sample size to merit serious notice. Judge is noticeably evolving as a hitter. Specifically, he's starting to figure out how to lay off the breaking pitches that plagued him earlier in his career. He's managed to ignore the temptation to chase offspeed pitches off the corner of the plate time and time again. Thats forced opposing hurlers to come back into the strike zone if they want to retire Judge.
What he's done with those strikes in advantageous counts is not markedly different from what he's done during previous seasons. It's the quantity of strikes he's getting to hit via his newfound patience that is boosting his improved production. It's a simple formula that is being executed with ruthless efficiency by the current Yankee captain.
Aaron Judge could have one of the best contact-hitting seasons in Yankees history
In fairness, Jeter still has a significant advantage over Judge when it comes to postseason success. If Judge really wants to close the gap on arguably the greatest Yankee of the modern era, he will need to continue this hot-hitting into the postseason. A certain subset of Yankees fans will never mention Judge in the same breadth as Jeter until he's able to pilot the team to a World Series title. No number of regular season home runs will help Judge create the memories that Jeter provide the team's fan base over his storied career.
The postseason disparity between the two stars should not diminish what Judge is doing at the moment. He's on pace to have one of the best single seasons in franchise history. That is a rare and noteworthy accomplishment for Judge, no matter how far his team does or does no advance into the postseason.
The key for Judge will be to prove that all of this is a result of lasting change. Baseball history is littered with players who enjoyed electric stretches for a month or two during some regular season or another. Neither Shane Spencer nor Kevin Maas is headed to Cooperstown, despite having such high-profile stretches in New York.
The difference for Judge is that he's already proven his ability to produce at an MVP level. His scorching hot play this year represents a big step-up, but not necessarily a statistical outlier for the Yankees' most popular current player. That's why it's more reasonable to assume he can continue this level of play for a longer period of time.
That should be a frightening prospect for other AL teams to consider. Judge may only be one batter in the middle of manager Aaron Boone's lineup, but he has the singular ability to carry New York through a game or series. If this step up in progression proves to be real, it might force competitors to pitch around Judge at a rate that's never been witnessed before at the major league level.
The Jeter vs. Judge debate will rage on for years to come but it should just be a talk radio/social media exercise for Yankees fans around the globe. They have been given an opportunity to witness a truly historic season from a future Hall of Famer. The question Judge needs to answer is whether or not he can carry this flawed roster to a World Series title with his singular brilliance.