The best half seasons of power in the history of MLB

In a season in which the offensive has often difficult to find -when 20 qualified pitchers have an effectiveness below 3.00 and 27 relieved with at least 20 entries released have an effectiveness below 2.00 -, the toleter of the New York Yankees, Aaron Judge, and the receiver of the Seattle Mariners, Cal Raleigh, have produced historical numbers that would high 2025.

Judge’s season is not unexpected. He connected 62 homers in 2022 and 58 in 2024, when he became the first player with a .700 slugging from Barry Bonds, but is achieving numbers that exceed the total high ones of those seasons. It is hitting .364/.464/.724 with 28 homers and is on its way to a BWAR of 11.9, a figure that only five position players have reached or surpassed. And he has achieved all this despite a bad streak of six games in mid-June, when he left 22-2.

Raleight’s season, on the other hand, is one of the most unexpected MVP campaigns of recent times. The 28 -year -old batting .275/.380/.651 and leads the entire MLB with 69 ranked races and 32 homers, just the twentieth fourth time that a player gets at least 30 homers in 81 team games. And although he has already connected 30 homers (it is just the fourth receiver with at least three seasons of 30 homers), he is already two of his best personal brand … and we are still in June. Of course, it seems impossible for him to maintain his current rhythm of 65 homers, but is in a position to end one of the best offensive seasons of a receiver. His 4.3 bwar places him on the way to 8.9, which would exceed the 8.7 of Mike Piazza in 1997 as the best average for a receiver.

With the Yankees and the Mariners arriving at 81 games on Friday -the middle of the season -, let’s analyze some of the best first half of power of power to put in perspective what Judge and Raleigh are doing.

Note: All statistics will be based on 81 games of the team, instead of the most traditional totals of the first half that appear in Baseball-Reference, which vary according to the date of the game of stars.

The best half seasons in history

Greater number of home runs in 81 games

Here are the six best batters on the list and the number of home runs with which they ended:

Barry Bonds, 2001 Giants: 39 (73)
Mark McGwire, 1998 Cardinals: 37 (70)
Babe Ruth, 1921 Yankees: 35 (59)
Reggie Jackson, 1969 to’s: 34 (47)
Babe Ruth, 1928 Yankees: 33 (54)
Jimmie Foxx, 1932 to’s: 33 (58)

Ruth and Foxx played when the calendar was 154 games, so they did not have those eight additional games that the others had. Jackson, 23 years old and in just his second full season in the big leagues, was on his way to break the 61 record of Roger Maris, but got tired in the final stretch, connecting only five homers in August and two in September.

Raleight is part of a group that includes another five with 32 homers: Ruth (1930), Maris (1961), Ken Griffey Jr. (1994), Sammy Sosa (1998 and 1999) and Luis Gonzalez (2001). Ruth lowered her rhythm and ended with 49 home runs, and the strike interrupted the Giffey season in August, leaving it with 40 homers at 50 games from the end (a 58 -day homer rhythm).

The last player with at least 30 homers in 81 games: Shohei Ohtani … but in 2021, not in 2024. That was the season in which he had that incredible streak of 16 home runs in 21 games before the recess of the stars game, but declined in the second half and ended with 46.

Can Raleight avoid the destiny that so many others have run with total home runs at the beginning? As expected, that group of players who connected at least 30 homers in the first half was decaying, averaging 32 homers in their first 81 games and 19 the rest of the journey, for an average season of 51. However, four of those 23 seasons were in the era of the 154 games, three others in the 1994 season shortened by the strike (Griffey, Frank Thomas and Matt Williams) And two were from players who suffered injuries that limited their game time in the second half (José Canseco in 1999 and McGwire in 2000).

However, none of them was a receiver.

Better power/total average in 81 games

Let’s start with a list of higher PAHO figures in 81 games:

Barry Bonds, 2004 Giants: 1,414
Babe Ruth, 1921 Yankees: 1,374
Barry Bonds, 2001 Giants: 1,357
Barry Bonds, 2002 Giants: 1,342
Babe Ruth, 1930 Yankees: 1,338

Well, they get an idea. In pure OPS, Ruth also dominates three of the next five positions. He and Bonds dominate all these classification tables, either in the middle season or in a full season. Judge occupies the 25th position with his PAHO of 1,202.

However, Judge is doing this in an era of less annotation; That is why their tight statistics, such as WRC+ U OPS+, are among the best in history. His 221 WRC+ would place it in the seventh place of all time, behind three seasons of Bonds, two of Ruth and one of Ted Williams, and just ahead of Judge’s 2024 season. His PAHO+ of 226 places it in the tenth place, behind the seasons of those same three players, considered widely the best hitters.

Even so, Judge’s power combination with an average batting is unique in any era. It is one of the nine players who bat. 360 or more with at least 28 homers in 81 team games (assuming to stay above .360 after the Yankees game on Friday night):

Babe Ruth, 1921 Yankees: .372, 35 hrs
Jimmie Foxx, 1932 to’s: .383, 33 hrs
Babe Ruth, 1930 Yankees: .374, 32 hrs
Mickey Mantle, 1956 Yankees: .371, 30 hrs
Frank Thomas, 1994 White Sox: .373, 30 hrs
Babe Ruth, 1927 Yankees: .366, 29 hrs
Lou Gehrig, 1927 Yankees: .397, 28 hrs
Tony Pérez, 1970 Reds: .363, 28 hrs
Aaron Judge, 2025 Yankees: .364, 28 hrs

These are some of the best batting seasons of all time. Ruth established the total base record in 1921. Foxx hit .364 with 58 homers and 169 races promoted in 1932. Mantle won the triple crown in 1956 when hitting .353 with 52 homers and 130 ranges. Yes, they are Ruth and Gehrig of the same season, when Ruth connected 60 homers and Gehrig 47, with Ruth’s total surpassing all other teams of the American League …

Judge’s average is remarkable considering that the general average of the American League is only .243. When Ruth and Gehrig sweep the American League in 1927, for example, the league average was .286. The lowest average of this list was Mantle’s season in 1956, when the average of non -pitkers was still .264. Analyzing Judge season from this perspective makes its combination of power/average one of the first halves of 81 most impressive games we have seen, even leaving aside the analysis adjusted by Era.

What does this mean for Judge and Raleight

Is this the best season of a receiver we have seen?

Raleight has connected 29 of its 32 homers as a receiver (it has an OPS of 1,116 as a receiver, compared to .659 in 17 games as designated batter). There are a couple of ways to analyze the records of home runs in a single season. The list of main receptors (at least 50% of their games behind the plate) is as follows:

Salvador Pérez, 2021 Royals: 48
Johnny Bench, 1970 Reds: 45
Javy López, 2003 Braves: 43
Roy Campanella, 1953 Dodgers: 41
Todd Sinkley, 1996 Mets: 41

Bench added another 40 home run season in 1972, while Piazza had two seasons of 40 homers. Pérez connected only 33 as a receiver in 2021, and his other 15 were as designated batter. López is the leader in connected homers playing as a receiver with 42.

Raleigh has been a power batter with a low average in his first three seasons in the major (hit .220 with 34 homers last year), but now he beats with more power and a higher average. When analyzing their Statcast metrics, there are no obvious changes in their approach or their swing patterns. Like Bryce Harper, he has always combined a base rate of balls higher than the average with a persecution rate lower than the average, although it has not been so extreme in his persecution rate as Harper (although he has had higher strikeouts than Harper’s).

There have been some small improvements in all areas since 2024: its persecution rate has improved 3 percentage points; Its strikeout rate has dropped 3 percentage points; Its high rate has increased around 4 percentage points; But its highly found rate, however, has increased more than 11 percentage points.

That last is the key number. This of fleeing the ball has helped Raleight get some more home runs. It is tied with Michael Busch and Paul Goldschmidt with 12 “Doubtful Homelands”: homers that would be achieved in only one to seven parks, depending on the distance.

But there is another reason for the improvement of Raleigh: as an ambid -squeeze batter, it has always been much better batting on the left side, but this season is sweeping the right, hitting .319 with 11 homers against left -handed pitchers, after hitting .183 with 13 home runs against them last season. Its rapid swing percentage (swings of more than 120 km/h) from the right has increased considerably, from 39.3% to 48.5%.

Raleigh is not missing the mistakes of the pitchers. See their results in the medium-medium launches (those thrown above the center of the dish, both horizontally and vertically) that puts into play:

2024: .315 Average, .795 slugging, 11 HR in 73 VB
2025: .515 average, 1,576 slugging, 11 hr in 33 VB

Can you keep the pace? The big question could be how it will endure in the long term. Raleight has started in 78 of the first 80 Seattle games and hit emerging on another occasion (he connected a two -run single to tie the game in the ninth entrance). He played 153 games last season and is luxurious to play some as a designated batter, but this is still a huge workload for a receiver. Last Saturday, he caught the nine tickets of a three -hour game under a heat of 34 degrees Celsius at the Wrigley Field. He was in the alignment on Sunday as a designated batter and was back the next two nights.

Obviously, it is vital for the Mariners, although it often criticized Seattle alignment is second in the Major in PAHO as a visitor (but 25th at home). For now, with the sailors fighting for a wildcard after being surpassed by the Houston Astros at the top of the west division of the American League, the manager Dan Wilson has to take advantage of his good streak. Given the unexpected rotation problems of sailors, they need to get all possible races.

Can Judge maintain this domain?

In a sense, we already know the answer: No. When Judge hit. 432 On May 3, his Babip was .512. Since then, it remains in an elevated .383, but is closer to the .367 brand it had last season, when it ended with an average .322. It has also avoided prolonged droughts; Even when he only connected a home run on a streak of 20 games in April, he hit .425. In fact, it seems that it is time for Judge to launch another of his classic home run races. The Yankees manager, Aaron Boone, as well as Wilson with Raleight, is taking advantage of the impulse of his star player: Judge has not lost any game, although Boone has put it as designated batter 18 times.

As for the contest by the JMV between these two toleters of the American League, we will leave it for later in the season. Both players have a taller War in Fangraphs-where the contest seems more at close: 6.1 for Judge, 5.6 for Raleigh-than in Baseball-Reference. (AGRAPHS incorporates the frame (Framming) of the receiver in its evaluation, an advantage for Raleight, who won the Platinum glove of the American League last season as the best defender). It would be an intense debate: a great season of all time for a batter against perhaps the best season of power for a receiver (and a good defensive, in addition).

For now, relax and enjoy the power of both.