New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is doing something that hasn't been seen in MLB in nearly two decades. With his 60th home run, Judge put himself in the same company as Barry Bonds, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Babe Ruth.
FILE - New York Yankees' Aaron Judge hits a solo home run, his 50th home run of the season, as Los Angeles Angels catcher Matt Thaiss looks on, obscured at left, during the eighth inning of a baseball game Monday, Aug. 29, 2022, in Anaheim, Calif. If Aaron Judge passes Roger Maris, some lucky fan might become this generation's Sal Durante. As a 19-year-old in 1961, Durante caught Maris' record-breaking 61st home run.
The stat is also incredibly easy to understand. A player with a 100 wRC+ performed exactly league average on offense during that season. A player with a 150 wRC+ performed 50 percent better on offense than a league-average player. When Maris broke Ruth’s record in 1961, Maris had a 162 wRC+. Why is Maris’ figure significantly lower? It could partially be due to Maris’ .269 batting average being just a few points above the league average, which was .258 in 1961. By comparison, Judge has a .316 batting average in a season where the league average is just .243. Judge’s numbers are a much bigger outlier when you take his era into account.
Those figures show the flaws in relying too much on single-season defensive metrics. Is Judge truly a strong fielder like he showed in 2019? Is he a below-average fielder like he showed in 2021? Or is he roughly average, like the metrics say in 2022? Is Judge’s 2019 skewed because he only played right field? Is Judge’s defensive value being penalized too much in 2021 and 2022 because he’s playing more in center?. It's supposed to be used as an estimate of a player's value.
The bigger issue is Ohtani's pitching fWAR. FanGraphs calculates pitching WAR using FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching. FIP attempts to strip out anything that affects a pitcher once a ball is put in play. It believes pitchers have little to no control once a batter puts a ball in play.how well a player should have pitched, and not necessarily how they pitched. It's a controversial concept, and one of the main reasons Baseball-Reference has its own version of WAR — bWAR.