The conversations the baseball community is having about Aaron Judge continue to elevate into loftier territory.
There has been no debate about who the best player in the American League has been over the last few seasons. Judge has been so good, somehow constantly improving on his own feats, that the real questions have been about the historical company he deserves to keep.
Judge's first 37 games of the 2025 season have been preposterously good. He's hitting .400 with a 1.241 OPS, with at least a tie of the major league lead in hits, home runs, RBI, WAR, and OPS+. He's doing things to big-league pitching that we haven't seen since Barry Bonds.
It seems like a foregone conclusion to most that Judge will win his third Most Valuable Player award in the last four years. But to one baseball writer, it's not so simple.
In an article of "bold predictions" published on Friday, MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince tabbed Riley Greene of the Detroit Tigers, not Judge, to win the MVP award this season, though he fully acknowledged Judge would win if the season ended right now.
"Judge is completely lapping the field right now, but that was also the case around this time in 2023, before he dealt with a midseason foot injury. I don’t wish injury upon him (not even to help me stumble upon a correct prediction for once), but it is a part of his career profile, unfortunately. So stranger things have happened," Castrovince wrote.
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"Anyway, if nothing else, here’s an opportunity to pump up the 24-year-old Greene, who rebounded from a sluggish start to post Player of the Week production last week."
Greene, 24, has a .773 OPS and 0.5 bWAR for the Tigers so far this season. Judge has been nearly six times as valuable as he has, if we're going strictly by the WAR metric, and there's no stats Greene can point to to say he's been better in any way.
How many games would Judge have to play at his current pace to beat a full 160-ish games from Greene? 115? 100? It's truly not close right now, and Greene is going to have to step it up in a major way to win the award even if Judge gets hurt immediately.
There are bold predictions, and then there are fairytales. One can judge for themself which they believe this one is.
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