Two years ago, Aaron Judge was chasing Roger Maris for the American League home run record of 61 — what many consider to be the true MLB home run record — set in 1961.
This season, Judge is on a similar pace, but instead of Maris’ milestone, he’s going after his own mark of 62 home runs.
Judge has 32 homers through 89 games — one ahead of his 2022 pace — after an 0-for-4 Thursday in the Yankees’ 8-4 loss to the Reds.
He’s on track to hit 59 on the season, but that includes the first month of the year when Judge slumped and had just four homers in the Yankees’ first 27 games.
“It’s a big deal chasing that [number] because of the history of all the guys before me that had it,’’ Judge said prior to the game in The Bronx. “But I’m not too concerned about it. I’ve got a lot of other things I want to check off my list before I think about breaking another record. If it happens, it happens, great.”
And as Judge made clear when he was on his historic pace in ’22, he is among those that considers Barry Bonds’ MLB record of 73 home runs in 2001 to be legitimate, despite the PED controversy surrounding it, saying at the time, “That’s what I go by. I watched [Bonds] as a kid flip the ball into the bay with ease. That hasn’t changed.”
With 26 homers in his last 52 games, Judge continues to draw comparisons to Bonds, with manager Aaron Boone saying Wednesday he wouldn’t be surprised to see Judge get a version of the “Bonds treatment,” with opposing teams frequently pitching around him.
Asked Thursday about the possibility of trying to catch Bonds, Judge said: “I don’t think anybody’s gonna break that. That’s a tough one. Any time you get up into the 50s and 60s [in homers], people start pitching you differently. They don’t give you as many opportunities to hit. Like with Bonds that year, he would get like one pitch to hit in a series, and he’d hit it out. I don’t think we’ll ever see that again.”
Judge got a small dose of that treatment in the latter part of ’22, when he was walked intentionally eight times in his first 121 games, a number that increased to 11 times over his final 36 games.
That’s still well below the 35 free passes Bonds got in ’03 — and just a fraction of the record-setting 120 intentional walks Bonds received in 2007.
“I haven’t seen teams pitch me like they did to him,’’ Judge said of Bonds. “I hope it doesn’t happen.”
Judge’s surge at the plate hasn’t coincided with team success, as the Yankees fell for the 13th time in their last 17 games, falling from first place in the majors and AL East in the process.
The contrast wasn’t lost on Judge’s personal hitting coach, Richard Schenck, after the loss to Cincinnati.
“They’ve lost 13 out of [17] while he’s hitting like an MVP,” read a post on Schenck’s account on X, which ostensibly referred to Judge. “The Yankees offensive player development is terrible.”
