By a mile.
He made it in 955 games, breaking the old record by a mere 132 games!
That doesn’t mean he is on pace to break any all-time records. He was the fastest to 300 in “games played,” but is nowhere near the youngest man to do it. He’s 32 years old. Eleven guys reached 300 before they turned 30. When A-Rod was Judge’s age, he had already hit more than 500 homers, and got up to 539 homers before he turned 33!
Most homers before turning 33 (remaining homers in parens)
A-Rod 539 (157)
Foxx 500 (34)
Pujols 475 (228)
Griffey 468 (162)
Mantle 454 (82)
Sosa 450 (159)
Mathews 445 (67)
Aaron 442 (313)
In guessing Judge’s final total based on those models, you can exclude Mathews, Mantle and Foxx from your calculations because they were heavy boozers (and Mantle had injury issues). The other five averaged 204 in their post-32 careers, so take that number and add another 30 or 40 because Judge still has another 2/3 of a year before he turns 33. That makes him a favorite to reach 500, an even bet for 550, and a long shot for 600.
I don’t mean to diminish Judge’s achievement or his abilities. He’s the best hitter in the game now. He’s leading the majors in both slugging (where nobody is even close) and on-base percentage (where the only guy close to him is his own red-hot teammate, Juan Soto).
There was a “how many is he going to hit in his career” story so I guessed 550. Turns out that one of the standard predictor thingies, might have been Bill James’ Favorite Toy, came up with 556. Was feeling tres savant for several seconds there.
Slightly off top, too fucking bad about Yelich.
Is Henry Aaron the most underrated baseball player of all time?
Yes, underrated for two reasons: (1) his consistency and (2) his lack of dominance in his own era.
Point 1:
Sometimes consistent players are underrated in comparison to players with a few big, flashy years. Hank never hit 50 homers in a season, but every year for the decade of his youth he hit .320 with 40 homers and 120 RBI, more or less.
Here are his batting averages for his first ten full years, as measured in two-year increments to smooth out the bumps caused by small samples:
1955-56 .321
1957-58 .324
1959-60 .324
1961-62 .325
1963-64 .323
Here are his RBI totals for one five-year period:
1959 123
1960 126
1961 120
1962 128
1963 130
He hit exactly 44 homers four times (that was also his uniform number).
He scored more than 100 runs in every one of those years, and the next three as well.
His OPS+ was greater than 140 for 19 consecutive years.
He finished among the top three in the MVP balloting seven times, but only won once. There was so much talent in the NL in that era, that it was difficult to break through. One had to beat Mays, Mathews, Snider, Campanella, Frank Robinson, Clemente and Banks – not to mention Gibson and Koufax, who each captured one.
Very few ballplayers, if any, have been so consistent. For those ten seasons, his average per 162 games was .323, 37-122, with little variance from year to year.
Point 2:
We would be talking about Hank as the greatest player of all time if not for the fact that there was a greater, flashier outfielder in the same league at the same time. There was always Willie, with Henry in his shadow. Take away Willie, and our discussion of the GOAT would turn into a Ruth vs Aaron meal, with Cobb spicing up the menu. (With apologies to Oscar Charleston and Josh Gibson, who seem to belong in the discussion as well.)
Aaron won only one MVP, but even that fact demonstrated his consistency, because he won an MVP just by having his usual year. He’s one of the few players in history capable of winning the MVP award in a completely average year. (Average for him, that is.) His OPS+ that year (1957) was 166. For the entire ten-year period mentioned above, his OPS+ was 162. (The Braves won the World Series that year, which placed his usual performance in sharper focus.)
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Baseball-Reference, in ranking players by lifetime WAR, places Henry in the top five of all time, and I suppose that’s really in the top four, given that Mr. Bonds may have pulled a little hanky-panky to get his slot on that roster.
Thanks, I knew you would take the bait and do the work on this, lol.
I would also throw in that his public perception was also hurt by playing almost his entire career on mediocre teams in small media markets.
I’m surprised Willie Mays isn’t on that home run list. Since he retired with 660 homers, he must have hit a ton after he turned 33.
He was just down the list a bit, with 416 at age 32 (9th best) and 244 after (8th best).
There is a good reason why he is not even higher on the “homers before turning 33” list: he missed almost two full years in military service.
If we assume conservatively that he would have hit 60 dingers in that two-year span instead of 4, he would have had 472 at age 32, which would be the 4th-highest total on the list. If he had hit 89 in those two seasons, which is not totally out of the question given that he hit 92 in the following two seasons, he would have edged past Foxx with 501, becoming the first player ever to top 500 before turning 33.
Aaron is still my Home Run King. Honestly, it will be a travesty if they ever vote Bonds into the Hall.
He’ll get in eventually. All of the other players who cheated to win have been forgiven eventually. Sooner or later, some young guys will come along and think, “He’s just too good to ignore. The numbers – all that evidence – just overwhelming.”
Indeed. For a five year period, at an age when most guys are retiring from the game, Bonds broke just about every record worth breaking. He was better at hitting a baseball than anyone has ever been – better than Teddy Ballgame, better than Lou Gehrig or Willie Mays, better even than the great Bambino himself. Some future nerds on some “old timers committee,” looking at those stats, will decide that he has to go in.
I hope I’m not around to see it.
He was great, but I hope you’re not serious about how great he was at an old age. That is 100% steroids. Ken Caminiti suddenly had his greatest season at age 33 when he admitted he started taking steroids. Clemens had been washed up for years when he started taking steroids an amazingly winning cy youngs again. Brady Anderson suddenly hits 50 home runs out of the blue. The stats those guys put up were an absolute joke. Those later Bond years are 100% pure fraud.
You’re right, but the facts are the facts. What I wrote is 100% true.
Bonds 2002, Bonds 2004 and Bonds 2001 are the three greatest offensive seasons in history. In 2001 he hit 73 homers and broke the unbreakable record for the highest slugging average of all time. In 2004 he drew 232 walks and broke (for a second time) the unbreakable record for the highest on-base percentage of all time. And in terms of OPS+, neither of those was his best year!
There’s no question that he did that. The only question is HOW.
In fact, he was even better than his stats appear, because he was facing roided-up pitchers. Imagine the numbers he might have put up if he had been the only one cheating!
Sure he cheated to win, but some future generation will admit him, just as we have forgiven all of the famous names of the past who have cheated to win.