Why Aaron Judge's 62nd Homer Gives Him MLB's All-Time Best Home Run Season

The American League's all-time single-season home run champion is now the New York Yankees' outfielder, who hit 62 homers. He is the "real" or "true" single-season champ for all of MLB.

It's a no from us, but we're going to argue that Judge's 2022 season is the best entry in the 60 Home Run Club.

It's first things first. 61st things 61st.

Judge had already matched Babe Ruth's old record of 60 from 1927 and Roger Maris' previous record of 61 from 1961. He hit his 62nd home run off Texas Rangers righty Jesus Tinoco.

Roger Maris Jr. isn't the only one who doesn't believe in the validity of Barry Bonds' record. The era that contained Bonds' 2001 season but also Mark McGwire's 60-plus home runs from 1998 and 1999 and Sammy Sosa's from '98, '99 and '01) can be described as unusual.

The 60HR players had advantages.

Do you know who won't listen to it? It's his job to judge himself.

In an interview with Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated in September, the former self-proclaimed San Francisco Giants fan said that he still holds Bonds' 73 homers from '01.

The previous record is 73. I wrote in my book. I don't care what people say about that era of baseball, they went out there and hit 73 homers and 70 homers. The American record is 61, so that is something I can try to get after. It will happen if it does. It has been a great year so far.

When he was making a run at 60 homers with the Miami Marlins, before he was a teammate of Judge's on the Yankees, he had a different take on things. He told Dave Hyde that he believes 61 is the record.

The blanks are easy to fill. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bonds, McGwire and Sosa had home runs at a rapid rate. Even if MLB has not removed their achievements from the record books, there is still a question about their legitimacy.

All three players had ties to performance enhancing drugs. It is known that McGwire used androstenedione. Sosa is said to have tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. Bonds admitted to being a user in 2011.

Home run friendly factors may have been a part of the steroid era. Expansion in 1993 and 1998 may have made the league's pitching less effective.

If you're going to ding Bonds, McGwire and Sosa for having played during the steroid era, then it's only fair to also ding Ruth and Mari.

The American League and the National League only had eight teams each. He was playing against the same opponents many times. It was 20 years before MLB integrated, and the Bambino knew what kind of talent the league was keeping out of the game.

It was an expansion year for the American League because it was 14 years after the break of the color barrier that Maris surpassed Ruth. The schedule was increased from 154 to 161 games.

Judge doesn't have any of these advantages.

Major League Baseball has become more diverse over the last 75 years as it has been infused with talent from all over the world. The league is well settled since it hasn't expanded since 1998.

There are good reasons that Judge could not be juicing.

He's the last player on the planet who would need to think about taking performance enhancing drugs to get better at his job. He is the biggest hitter in baseball history. He hits the ball harder than everyone else.

Katie Sharp @ktsharp

Aaron Judge is first player in the Statcast era (since 2015) to have 5 batted balls of 110+ mph in a single game

The right field foul pole is very close to Judge's home games at Yankee Stadium.

It's not as much as you might think. Home runs that would be out of one stadium and nowhere else for Judge all year have been flagged by the account. According to Statcast, his home runs should be 61.

There would be talk of juiced balls if Judge was doing all this in the crazy home run environments of the next three years. There are new balls that aren't travelling as far, which is why home runs are down.

There is evidence that the ball is not juiced.

It would be expected that Judge would have had company in his pursuit of home run history. Kyle Schwarber has 46 home runs, which is more than any other player. The home run lead was only known to two people.

The judge is disadvantaged if anything.

Home run hitters benefit from watered down talent pools,PEDs and juiced balls.

Batters are more likely to adjust to a pitcher if they see him more than once. Batters fare better against starting pitchers when they face them more often.

Judge doesn't have the same advantage as other members of the 60 Home Run Club. He is the first one to be stuck with a 60-40 split against starter and relief pitchers.

The difference is in the number of times Judge faces a pitcher for the first time in a game. In those situations, the average batter is only.376 against a starter and.450 against a relief pitcher.

This helps explain why Judge has seen more individual pitchers than any of the 60 home run hitters who have come before him.

There are 257 pitchers. They did not take it easy on Judge.

He's seen a higher rate of 95-plus mph fastballs than all but nine other hitters, and that's even as he's seen less of them on a rate basis. The pitch against which he has the highest whiff rate is the one that pitchers prefer to give him.

Is it true that Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa and Bonds face such nasty things on a daily basis? "no" is a safe guess but nobody can say for certain.

The first year of Statcast shows pitch- tracking data. The highest rate of 95-plus mph fastballs that any hitter saw that year was a mere 20.7 percent, while the whiff rate on the average sliders was 3.7 percentage points lower.

It's hard to believe hitters faced as much nasty stuff as they did in 2001. Or the year 1999? Or the following year. Either way, 1961, or 1961. It's probably 1927.

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There isn't enough to distract from the fact that only one person has hit 60 home runs in the current environment.

Judge should take a bow for this.

Baseball reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant provide the statistics.