Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani making history in 2024

In the American League, Aaron Judge is having, by just about any definition that matters, one of the greatest hitting seasons in the history of the sport. His production is so massive that getting to 60 or more home runs is somehow more a bonus than the main story, which is to say that even if he ends up with “only” 57 or 59, it’s still going to be one of the best years anyone’s ever seen – Ruthian, you might say, given their shared pinstriped power, except that even Babe Ruth only had a single season better than this.

In the National League, Shohei Ohtani is having a different kind of all-time season, this one of the power-speed variety now that he has 42 homers and 42 steals. That a mere 40/40 – and maybe 50/50 – season won’t without question rate as his greatest overall year speaks only to what’s come before, when he was an ace pitcher at the same time as an elite slugger. He, too, has often been compared to the great Babe, given their two-way brotherhood, but Ohtani surpassed that juxtaposition years ago. Ruth didn’t really hit and pitch at the same time for very long; he certainly never stole bases like this.

We have, repeatedly, talked about how Ohtani’s two-way dominance is unlike anything anyone has ever seen, and asked more than once if he’s having the best season ever. That, it seems, ought to have been enough for us, as baseball fans: the pleasure of knowing we’re watching a player in his prime who has already surpassed comparisons to the most legendary figure in the game’s history. But Ohtani doesn’t stand alone, because Judge, who already has one historic year under his belt, has entered the chat with another.

It’s not enough, apparently, to have one all-time player doing something unprecedented. We have two. At the same time. It might be easy to overlook how special that is.

We have more than two of those players right now, to be fair, lest we unfairly overlook Juan Soto having a career season in what already looked like it was going to be an all-time career, or Bobby Witt Jr. having the kind of power-speed-and-defense combination that’s probably going to leave him eternally at or near the lists of “best season to not end with an MVP Award.” Thanks to Witt, we’re going to have multiple 10-WAR position players in a season for just the second time in 75 years. We are not short on legendary talent in baseball in the year 2024.

Yet with all due respect to that pair of stars, Ohtani is in his own universe, on and off the field, and this is hardly a career year; this will be his sixth excellent-to-great season. It’s not just about 2024. Judge is a three-time 50-homer slugger having his seventh excellent-to-great season: It’s also not just about 2024. These are wonderful seasons, yet they’re also not outliers, not really; they’re more like additional notches in the belt.

That’s important, because while the story of this season for Judge is going to be his march to – or past – 60 homers again, which would make him only the third player to ever do it multiple times, or the fact that he’s having what is, at the moment, the fifth-best offensive season anyone has ever had, compared to the league average for that year …

Best hitting seasons (wRC+), min. 400 PA

(wRC+ is Weighted Runs Created Plus, a park- and era-adjusted stat like OPS+ where 100 is average for that season.)

… consider that it’s as or more impressive that his career mark is now tied for third-best in recorded history, at least among those who stepped to the plate at least 4,000 times.

Best hitting careers (wRC+), min. 4,000 PA

It’s not just a great season for Judge. It’s the middle of a peak that is going to end in Cooperstown’s inner circle.

That’s not dissimilar to Ohtani, whose career achievements barely need to be recited – but we will, so remember the pair of MVP wins, the Rookie of the Year, the 2022 where he finished top-four in both Cy Young and MVP balloting, the jersey sales, the massive contract, the nearly-as-famous dog, the repeated questions about if he’s had the best day, month, or year ever – so seeing greatness from him is hardly something new.

What’s different this year is that it’s a different kind of elite play, because the pitcher/slugger threat has been replaced by a slugging/speed one, given his ongoing recovery from last year’s elbow surgery that has kept him off the mound. If Ohtani was imitating Ruth before, then this year he morphed into something more akin to Willie Mays, at least on offense.

Only twice before in history has a player finished in the top two in the Majors in both home runs and steals, and not only was no one alive today around to see it, the league-leading number of home runs it took makes clear how different a sport we’re talking about. In 1909, Ty Cobb led the bigs with a mere nine homers to go with his 76 steals. The year before, Honus Wagner swiped 53 bases, and finished second in the Majors with 10 round-trippers. (Though we can’t verify, it’s likely that more than a few were inside-the-parkers, too.)

Assuming that Ohtani does end up leading the NL in homers – he has five more than Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna as of Aug. 29 – he’ll be the first player in more than 100 years to lead his league in homers and steal at least 40 bases while doing so. None of the previous men to do it (most recently Tris Speaker and Frank Baker, in 1912), hit more than 10 homers.

Now: Much like when Ronald Acuña Jr. established the 40/70 mark last season, it can’t be ignored that the rule changes put into place for 2023 that hoped to encourage base stealing have done exactly that – Ohtani, like Acuña, is stealing in a more favorable environment than anyone before them enjoyed. We need not ignore those changes, because imagine what, say, Mike Trout or Mays might have done under these rules at their peak performance.

But at the same time, while it might be easier for Ohtani to steal bases now, it’s easier for everyone else, too. That means it’s harder than ever to finish in the top two in steals in a season. The baseline has risen. Ohtani has risen even further.

By one particular power/speed metric, created years ago by Bill James, Ohtani is having the sixth-best such combo season in history, and he’ll all but certainly get to number two in the next week – with Acuña’s 2023, at the top of the list, still in view.

Despite how close Francisco Lindor is trying to make the race in the NL, and Witt in the AL — as we said, there are many great players right now — Ohtani is overwhelmingly likely to become the rare player to win a third MVP award. That he hasn’t already done so is entirely due to Judge, who topped him in 2022 thanks to the 62 homers that year.

Judge may or may not get to 60 homers. Ohtani may or may not get to 50/50. At the end of the season, the difference between those marks and Judge getting to 59 or Ohtani managing a 49/47 comes down only to our predilection for round numbers. They matter, but they also don’t. Judge is an all-time slugger having a season that isn’t a “career year” only because he did the same thing two years ago; it will go down as one of the best seasons in the sport’s history. Ohtani is an all-time talent having a record-breaking year that might not even be one of his two best, just because of what he’s done before.

The hype, as they say, has been lived up to. Exceeded, really.

MLB.com’s Sarah Langs contributed research to this article.