We've got just over one month left in the 2025 regular season, and the only thing tighter than the race for playoff positioning might be the race for the AL MVP Award. In one corner: two-time winner Aaron Judge, who's in the midst of what could wind up being the best offensive season of his career (not to mention one of the best we've seen since Barry Bonds was still around). In the other: Seattle Mariners star Cal Raleigh, who's in the midst of what could wind up being the best offensive season by a catcher ever.
For weeks now (if not months), these fan bases and onlookers around the country have gone back and forth as to which players is more deserving of the hardware. But there's just one problem: A quick glance at the stat sheet reveals a race that looks too close to call. Raleigh leads the league in homers and RBI, while Judge has the edge in OPS. Who your winner is all depends on what you value most highly.
But what if there were a way to cut through all that noise and get to the heart of things? Luckily, we can do just that ... by taking a look under the hood at some advanced stats that do a better job of encapsulating a player's true on-field value. Of course, most of those stats feel like you're back in high school calculus, but don't worry — we're here to help, with a handy explainer of several metrics that could wind up defining this race when all is said and done. What do all of these acronyms mean? And who should be the rightful winner? Let's dive in.
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Explaining five advanced stats that tip AL MVP race in favor of Aaron Judge
Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA)
If you've been following this debate on the internet in recent days, you've probably seen a lot of comparisons between Judge's and Raleigh's slash lines — their batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, respectively. But baseball statistics have come a long way, and we now have better metrics to determine offensive value.
Let's start with wOBA, Statcast's catch-all offensive metric of choice. Essentially, it assigns a value to each method of reaching base (walk, single, double, etc.) based on how that method contributes to scoring runs. For example: A home run is worth 2.101 times on base, while a walk is worth 0.69 times on base. From there, you just calculate it as you would OBP, with each time on base weighted appropriately and then divided by total plate appearances.
Seen this way, the gap between Judge and Raleigh in terms of offensive value becomes pretty stark. Judge's wOBA of .460 leads the league by a country mile; the next-closest hitter is Shohei Ohtani at .419, while Raleigh sits a distant sixth at .394. For context, the gap between Judge and Raleigh is the same as the gap between Raleigh and Brendan Donovan — and that's not the only stat that points to a significant gap between the two.
Edge: Judge
Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+)
Think of wRC+ like Wins Above Replacement but just for offense. Like wOBA, it weights each offensive action appropriately. Then it takes those values and adjusts them for park and league context, creating a level playing field to make comparisons across teams easier (e.g., we no longer have to worry about what Judge's and Raleigh's respective numbers would look like if they switched parks and Raleigh got to take aim at Yankee Stadium's short porch).
Again, the difference is stark. Judge's 201 wRC+ again leads the league comfortably, with Raleigh in third place among qualified hitters at 162. For context, that gap is the same as the gap between Raleigh and a different St. Louis Cardinal, Willson Contreras. Judge has a nearly 90-point edge in OPS, but with these two stats, we can say with some certainty that he's been the more valuable hitter regardless of context.
Edge: Judge
Fielding Run Value
Of course, offense isn't everything. Raleigh plays catcher, after all, a far more valuable defensive position than Judge's right field. So what do advanced defensive metrics have to say about each player's value? Luckily, Statcast has a catch-all for this, too. It's called Fielding Run Value, and it essentially takes Statcast's component fielding metrics and converts them to the same scale for easy comparison.
The first of those component metrics, Outs Above Average, calculates the fielding performance of an outfielder by judging the catch probability of each ball hit in his direction and grading how many of those balls he does and doesn't catch. Judge rates decently well there, with a +2 OAA that has him eighth among 39 qualified right fielders. That comes out to a Fielding Run Value score of +4, 63rd in baseball out of 302 defenders.
Raleigh certainly plays the more difficult position, but that degree of difficulty is largely canceled out by how uneven he's been behind the plate this season. He's a strong framer, in the 85th percentile in Statcast's framing score (which essentially calculates how many borderline strikes a catcher gets the call on), but his blocking score is in just the 10th percentile. Add in the fact that he sometimes moonlights at DH, and you get a Fielding Run Value of +5 — better than Judge, but only by a hair.
Edge: Raleigh
Baserunning run value
Which brings us to the final component of player value: the base paths. Statcast's Baserunning Run Value is broken down into stolen bases and extra bases taken, with a probability of success weighed against whether or not the runner was actually successful.
Neither Judge nor Raleigh grades out particularly well here — perhaps unsurprising, considering that both players rank well below league average when it comes to sprint speed. Raleigh ranks 231st out of 243 qualified players, while Judge ranks 234th, while both come in at roughly -3 runs. (For what it's worth, FanGraphs' baserunning metric — which combines weighted stolen-base value, a catch-all Ultimate Baserunning metric for non-stolen base plays and a weighted double play value — agrees, with Raleigh at -1.7 and Judge at -3.8.)
Edge: Raleigh
Wins Above Replacement
So we've established that Judge has a clear edge at the plate, while Raleigh has less significant advantages with the glove and on the bases. Which brings us to the big one: Wins Above Replacement, the catch-all metric to end all catch-all metrics.
The two most prominent versions are calculated by FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference; they share a lot of similarities, differing mainly in how they each measure defensive value. (Fangraphs uses a statistic called Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), while Baseball-Reference uses a statistics called Defensive Runs Saved.)
Each formula is surprisingly simple, converting hitting, running and fielding plays into runs earned/lost (like we've seen above) and then adjusting for league and defensive position and dividing by roughly 10 — which baseball history shows us is the number of runs a player adds or subtracts that results in one win.
bWAR formula: (Batting runs + Baserunning runs + Fielding runs + Positional Adjustment + League Adjustment + Replacement Runs) / (Runs per win)
fWAR formula: (Batting Runs + Baserunning runs +/- Runs from GIDP + Fielding Runs + Positional Adjustment Runs + Replacement Level Runs) / (Runs per win)
Both metrics look favorably on Judge, though by different amounts. FanGraphs has it as 7.5 vs. 7.1, while Baseball-Reference has it at 6.9 vs 5.7. (Again, the difference largely comes down to defense: ZR, which FanGraphs uses, takes into account three years of player data, while Baseball-Reference's DRS uses one year. Still, the conclusion seems pretty clear, and is born out by the numbers above: While Raleigh is having a historic season for a catcher, Judge's edge as a hitter is sizable enough to dwarf his deficiencies elsewhere. Of course, there are still several weeks left, and that could change if Judge goes cold (or lands back on the IL) while Raleigh keeps swatting dingers.
Edge: Judge