Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge ignite MVP debate after trading first-inning homers

It's not often that you get to see two of the very best hitters in baseball go mano y mano. That's just now how the sport is designed, after all: Each one will only get four or five chances to leave their mark on a game, and it's not like they can pitch against each other.

But Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani aren't normal hitters. They're generational talents who just so happen to share a generation, two of the most singular talents the sport has ever seen in some 150 years of existence. So of course, as the baseball world descended on Chavez Ravine for a World Series rematch between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, Judge and Ohtani immediately decided to steal the show.

Judge went first, launching a Tony Gonsolin changeup way into the batter's eye in dead center to give the Yankees an early 1-0 lead.

It felt like the exorcising of last year's World Series demons, a statement of intent that this season would finally be different for a player whose postseason failures have threatened to engulf his regular-season greatness. Well, at least for half an inning or so, until Ohtani hit the first pitch he saw out to left center.

Two at-bats, two homers, game on. Judge and Ohtani wasted no time giving us the sort of individual showdown we don't often get in baseball, at least not between hitters. But, because this is 2025 on the internet, it wasn't enough to just enjoy the show put on by two MVPs. No, we had to settle it once and for all: Who ya got, Ohtani or Judge?

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Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge go toe-to-toe, but who's the real MVP?

For a while, it seemed like this would be a moot question. Judge started off as hot as any hitter we've seen since prime Barry Bonds, and while he's cooled a bit in recent weeks, he still leads the Majors in batting average, OBP and slugging percentage — all while flirting with hitting .400. He's seemed nearly impossible to get out at times this season, and he's done it all while playing a better-than-solid right field. Case closed, right?

Well, not so fast. Slowly but surely, Ohtani has caught fire: He entered Friday slashing .309/.409/.784 since the start of May, numbers that are bound to go up even higher. His first-inning blast made it 21 on the year, tops in baseball, and he's added 11 steals to boot.

Overall, Judge has the slight statistical edge, with an OPS+ some 50 points higher and a decided advantage by virtue of actually playing defense (at least until Ohtani finally makes his return to the mound). But Ohtani, on the other hand, is a unicorn, a two-way star the likes of which we've literally never seen before, and he's the one who has the World Series ring. You can make the case for either player, and while they play in different leagues and won't compete for any actual hardwear, they're very much competing for MLB's championship belt.