Any Yankees fans concerned about Aaron Judge should look no further than 2024

This time last year, Aaron Judge was off to such a blistering start that we were legitimately wondering if he could be the first player since Ted Williams to hit .400. Now, to start 2026, the New York Yankees captain is batting just .125 while running a 44% strikeout rate.

That has some wondering if the big man is slowing down as he's just about three weeks shy of his 34th birthday. We all know the day will come when he's no longer the greatest hitter in the game, and given his size, some might think that it will come sooner rather than later.

Those folks would be sorely mistaken. Despite the temptation, overreactions to small sample sizes of performance generally aren't useful. More important is to look for trends. Is an early-season slump a continuation of a prior-year tailspin? Were there warning signs in spring training? It's important to look at history and put these noisy samples into context.

Judge's past history suggests there's nothing to worry about, even if he doesn't look overly comfortable in the box these days.

Those who are ready to write off Aaron Judge are forgetting about Yankees MVP's 2024 campaign

Over his first 100 plate appearances of 2024, Judge hit .183/.320/.354 with three homers and 29 strikeouts. That span covered Opening Day through April 21. After April 21, he started to heat up, but his first month's OPS still finished at just .754.

That May, he'd hit 14 home runs, the highest single-month total of his 2024 season that produced 58 dingers overall. His slash line for that month came in at a scorching .361/.479/.918. From that point forward, he was locked in. With the exception of the first month of the season, he didn't post an OPS below 1.019 the rest of the way, and finished the year with a .322/.458/.701 showing. All told, that was good for a 220 wRC+, the highest mark of his career by a decent margin.

Slumps, they happen. That's baseball, Suzyn! Even the best hitter in the game is not immune. The media will take any chance they can get to pick at Judge, and the longer his bat stays cold, the louder the noise will become.

However, there's simply no evidence to support the fact that Judge has fallen off. Take his spring training numbers, for example. He had 24 plate appearances in Grapefruit League action, compared to the 25 he's recorded so far during the regular season, and hit .316/.458/.789 with three taters. Both are insignificant samples, but given what we know to be true about Judge, which one should hold more weight? The answer is obvious.

The projection systems don't see him slowing down anytime soon. Judge is still expected to be the best hitter in the league by a wide margin in both 2026 and 2027. That's not guesswork, either. It's what the data shows.

So take a deep breath and relax. There's nothing wrong with MLB's most gigantic superstar. He'll get right sooner rather than later, and we'll all forget this cold stretch ever happened.