Aaron Judge on a record pace

Aaron Judge is doing the thing again — not just hitting a lot of home runs, but making the season feel tilted around him. On Thursday, May 7, he hit his 15th homer in the Yankees’ 9-2 win over Texas, and that blast put him in a very short slice of franchise history. The bigger story isn’t one swing, though. It’s that Judge is once again running at a pace that forces the usual question: are we watching another absurd Aaron Judge season, or something even bigger? ### What happened against Texas? Judge went deep in the Yankees’ win over the Rangers, his 15th home run in New York’s first 37 games. The Yankees took the game 9-2 and moved to 26-12, so the homer landed inside a game that also mattered in the standings, not just on the highlight reel. ### Why was that homer historic? Because 15 homers through 37 team games is rare even by Yankees standards. Judge became the first Yankee to reach that mark that quickly since Alex Rodriguez in 2007. Before that, the names on the list were Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle — which is basically the fastest way to signal that this is not normal production. ### Is this just a power streak? No — that’s the important part. Judge isn’t only leading with home runs. He has also been carrying elite rate stats, with a 1.066 OPS and a.659 slugging percentage through 37 games. FanGraphs has him at a 188 wRC+, which means he has created offense at a level 88% better than league average after adjusting for context. That’s not a lucky week. That’s domination. ### What does “record pace” actually mean? It means the raw math gets silly fast. Fifteen homers in 37 games works out to roughly 66 over a 162-game season. That would top the 62 homers Judge hit in 2022 when he broke the American League record. Pace stats always come with a warning label — nobody plays the whole year at the exact same clip — but this is why people keep reaching for historic comparisons. ### So should we expect 66? Probably not. That’s the catch with early-May pace talk. Hot starts cool off, pitchers adjust, bodies get tired, and even great hitters drift back toward something more human. But with Judge, “cooling off” can still mean finishing with one of the best seasons in baseball. His projected 44 homers from FanGraphs is way below the current pace and still enormous. ### Why does this matter for the Yankees? Because Judge’s production changes the shape of the whole lineup. The Yankees have started 26-12, and when their best hitter is this dangerous, everyone behind him gets better pitches and more RBI chances. New York doesn’t need Judge to do everything alone, but when he is this locked in, the offense looks much closer to overwhelming than merely good. ### Is this already an MVP race story? Yes — early, but yes. Judge has already built the kind of statistical base that turns “hot start” into “award front-runner” territory. If he keeps leading the league in the loud categories while the Yankees keep winning, the conversation stops being whether he belongs in the race and becomes who can realistically catch him. ### Bottom line The cleanest way to read this is simple: Judge’s latest homer mattered because it confirmed the scale of the start. A Yankees star hitting 15 by game 37 is rare. A Yankees star doing it while still crushing every underlying measure is rarer. That’s why “record pace” doesn’t feel like hype right now — it feels like the most honest description available.