The case for Aaron Judge, Juan Soto as MLB’s greatest offensive duo since Ruth-Gehrig
Sometimes it takes a while before it hits us what we’re watching.
One minute, we’re just doing what we do, tuning into baseball in 2024. The next, it begins to dawn on us. We’re witnessing something special.
Then we ask: Just how special? Next thing we know, we’ve taken a trip back in time, to that place where legends dwell. And that’s where Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have taken us.
It never feels comfortable to do what we’re about to do. But we’re about to do it anyway. As they near the finish line of an astonishing season in the modern-day incarnation of Yankee Stadium, Judge and Soto are connecting the dots to a very different incarnation of Yankee Stadium.
Is it OK to argue this? That we’re watching the 21st-century version of the two most prodigious and productive teammates who ever played baseball? Can we really connect those dots, from Judge and Soto to Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? I think we can.
They’re not the same — in many ways. I get that. Ruth and Gehrig were all-time behemoths, cranking out seasons we’ll never see again. I get that, too. But am I crazy to make this comp? I don’t think I am. I’m not alone.
“I think you’re on firm ground,” said STATS Perform’s Steve Hirdt, one of baseball’s most prominent and all-knowing historical minds.
“Just the fact that you’re contemplating it might answer your question,” said Buck Showalter, former manager of two New York baseball teams, the Yankees and Mets. “And the fact that it’s so interesting to contemplate is the beauty of baseball. You’ve just described the beauty of baseball — that we can ask those questions and compare guys from different eras.”
We’re about to make that comparison in all sorts of ways. You’ll have fun thinking about it. I promise. But you should also know that not everyone who got dragged into this project agrees with its premise. Of course they don’t.
“Here’s where it’s crazy,” said Bob Costas, whose perspective, as baseball’s foremost broadcaster/historian/poet laureate, was invaluable, even if we didn’t find ourselves in the same lane. “Obviously, Ruth and Gehrig did it together for a sustained period of time. And for Judge and Soto, this is just the first year. It could be the only year. So right there, the whole comparison would break down.”
OK then! But I never went into this under the illusion that one year of historic 2024 domination equals the incomparable nine-season run of Ruth and Gehrig.
I just think we should recognize that what we’ve watched, over these last six months, is the two best offensive seasons, side by side, by any two teammates, in most of our lifetimes. Here’s why.
The thing that separates Judge and Soto
Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have had plenty to celebrate this season. (Wendell Cruz / USA Today / Imagn Images)
I can hear you off in the distance. You have some names for me. You have some thoughts for me. I can guess the names of other famous duos that are swirling in your head.
Roger Maris/Mickey Mantle … Henry Aaron/Eddie Mathews … Willie Mays/Willie McCovey/Orlando Cepeda … Gehrig/Joe DiMaggio … David Ortiz/Manny Ramirez … Johnny Bench/Joe Morgan … Ken Griffey Jr./A-Rod.
There are more. Shout ’em out. Drop them in the comments section. I hear you. I’m open to any and all of them. I can just assure you I checked out every one of these — and lots more.
How Judge and Soto are different from all those great duos? It’s the combination of power and on-base skills that makes them unlike any other set of teammates you can name.
I went way, way back in time. There is no other teammate tag team that has hit this many balls over the fence, done this much extra-base damage, created this many runs, walked this many times, reached base this many times or seen this many pitches … at the same time, in the same season. Other than one pair:
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Now let’s document that for you. Facts are always good!
The homers/walks daily double
Judge and Soto rank 1-2 in all of baseball in walks. They rank first and third in the American League in homers, with Soto (40) close behind Baltimore’s Anthony Santander (43) for the No. 2 slot after Judge. Home runs and walks often go together in modern baseball. But to have two teammates overpowering the sport in both — together — is probably more rare than you think.
I asked my friends from STATS Perform to dig into this, and lots more, for this piece.
Teammates in top 3 in BB and HR in their league, AL/NL history
| YEAR | TEAMMATES |
|---|---|
|
2024 |
Judge/Soto |
|
1931 |
Ruth/Gehrig |
|
1930 |
Ruth/Gehrig |
|
1927 |
Ruth/Gehrig |
(Source: STATS Perform)
They’re 1-2 in everything!
Aaron Judge leads the majors in home runs, RBIs, walks, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS. (Wendell Cruz / USA Today / Imagn Images)
OK, Bobby Witt Jr. and Shohei Ohtani also play baseball. So it’s not quite true that Judge and Soto rank first/second in MLB in every category. But it’s close.
Heading into Thursday, the day of The Ohtani Game and also the day Soto banged up his knee, Soto and Judge owned the leaderboard in a set of categories that measure greatness across a wide spectrum of skills.
1st/2nd in MLB in OBP — Ruth and Gehrig did that only once, in 1930.
1st/2nd in MLB in OPS* — Ruth and Gehrig did that three times, in 1927-30-31.
(*Update: Ohtani’s three-homer, five-extra-base-hit, 6-for-6 eruption Thursday blew up the MLB leader lists in many ways. One of those ways was, he moved past Soto to second in MLB in OPS. But Judge and Soto still rank 1-2 in the AL. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)
1st/2nd in MLB in times reaching base — Ruth and Gehrig did that four times, in 1927-28-30-31.
1st/2nd in MLB in walks — Ruth and Gehrig did that only once, in 1927.
1st/2nd in MLB in Win Probability Added — Ruth and Gehrig finished 1-2 in that “clutchiness” metric four times, in 1926-27-28-31. No AL teammates have done it since.
I acknowledge that other sets of teammates have finished 1-2 in some of these categories in the years since Ruth and Gehrig. Not many, but it’s happened. STATS did that math for us.
In OBP, there was Mickey Cochrane/Jimmie Foxx for the 1933 A’s, Ken Singleton/Ron Fairly for the 1973 Expos, Wade Boggs/Mike Greenwell for the 1988 Red Sox.
In walks, there was Joey Votto/Shin-Soo Choo for the 2013 Reds, Boggs/Dwight Evans for the 1986 Red Sox and Eddie Stanky/Augie Galan for the 1945 Dodgers.
There’s a slightly longer list, six duos long, in most times reaching base, with Joe Morgan/Pete Rose doing that twice.
But here’s why Judge and Soto belong in an orbit all their own: Because all those other guys showed up only on that list. Whereas Judge and Soto dominate every list. It’s just one more reason they keep pointing us back to Ruth and Gehrig. And guess what? We’re not done!
Production and patience
Have you checked out the bases on balls leaders lately? It’s unreal.
Judge — 129
Soto — 125
After them comes Kyle Schwarber … at 102! And no other player in the majors has more than 78 walks … meaning Judge and Soto both have about a 50-walk lead over the next-most-patient walk-grinders. Really?
Then there’s the RBI leaderboard, which shows Judge leading the league with 138. That’s 26 more than anyone else in the AL. Crazy. You’ll find Soto in the next group, as one of just six other AL hitters over 100, with 104. Now here’s why we mention that.
Teammates in history with 120+ BB and 100+ RBI
Judge/Soto
End of list
But what if we lower the bar to 115 walks for players in the 154-game era? That seems fair. So let’s do that — and only one other duo shows up from that era. Guess who?
Ruth/Gehrig, 1931
The OPS+ standard
Next up, it’s OPS+, Baseball Reference’s definitive metric for evaluating hitters’ seasons across all eras. If we don’t count the 60-game pandemic year, only two sets of teammates have ever had an OPS+ of 177 or better, side by side, over any full season. Yup! Those two:
Judge/Soto, 2024
Ruth/Gehrig, five times
(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)
The 600 Times On Base Club
With seven days left in this season, Judge and Soto have reached base a ridiculous 603 times combined — 314 by Judge, 289 by Soto. So welcome to the 600 Times on Base Club. Not surprisingly, that club has slightly fewer members than, say, your high school’s TikTok Club.
TEAMMATES FINISHING 1-2 AND COMBINING FOR 600 TIMES ON BASE*
Ruth/Gehrig, four times
Ted Williams/Johnny Pesky, 1947
Pete Rose/Joe Morgan, 1975
Wade Boggs/Mike Greenwell, 1988
(Source: STATS Perform; *modern era, 1901-2024)
But if Soto reaches base only one more time, he and Judge will do more than merely join this club. They’ll also be the first set of AL teammates to reach base at least 290 times apiece since … (how’d you guess?) Ruth and Gehrig.
Hold on, though. There’s more. Remember that all those visits to the basepaths have been accompanied by many, many baseballs soaring toward the bleacher creatures. So how about this!
TEAMMATES WITH 40+ HR AND 285+ TIMES ON BASE APIECE
Judge/Soto, 2024
Ruth/Gehrig, three times
The long walks home
Juan Soto has racked up 125 walks, second only to Aaron Judge’s 129, even though he hits in front of the most dangerous hitter in baseball. (Michael Chow / The Arizona Republic / Imagn Images)
OK, just one more. Did you know Ruth and Gehrig never had a season in which they walked 120 times apiece? (Gehrig’s biggest walk years all came — here’s a shocker — when Ruth was gone or hurt.)
But here’s the Ruth/Gehrig walks tidbit that’s even more unfortunate: Because the intentional walk didn’t become an official stat until 1955, we can’t truly know how often Ruth was pitched around with Gehrig lurking behind him.
We know this, though: Nobody is pitching around Soto to get to Judge. Yet, amazingly, Soto still has piled up 125 walks — only one of them intentional. And that puts him in rare territory.
120+ walks, no more than 1 INT BB*
| YEAR | HITTER | BB | INT BB |
|---|---|---|---|
|
2024 |
Juan Soto |
125 |
1 |
|
1976 |
Jim Wynn |
127 |
1 |
|
1960 |
Eddie Yost |
125 |
1 |
|
1959 |
Eddie Yost |
135 |
1 |
(*Since 1955, when INT BB became an official stat)
(Source: Lee Sinins’ Complete Baseball Encyclopedia)
But Wynn and Yost weren’t hitting in front of anyone remotely similar to Aaron Judge. So that’s what made the one intentional walk Soto was issued — by the White Sox, on Aug. 15 — such massive news. Well, that and the fact that it led to Judge’s 300th career homer about four seconds later.
How often, I wondered, had any other hitter been intentionally walked to get to a man who would lead MLB in homers, RBIs and OPS that season? Baseball Reference’s Katie Sharp took a look.
Before Soto, only one man — in the 70 seasons where intentional walks were an official stat — ever had that happen. That was Will Clark, hitting in front of Kevin Mitchell, for the 1989 Giants. Except Mitchell was so un-Judge-like, it happened 11 times that season.
But what about the years before intentional walks were officially recorded? Baseball Reference and Retrosheet have tried to track them. So when was the last time it happened in that era? Ha. Thanks for asking. It was (who else) …
Babe Ruth … to get to Lou Gehrig … (in the first inning) … on Aug. 12, 1934. (And how’d that work out? The Red Sox got a bases-loaded double play out of it.)
I could do this all day long. But why do I have a feeling you’re catching on to where the numbers take us? So let’s do this another way. Let’s hear from the unlucky American Leaguers who have to face these dudes. Not surprisingly, they have some tales to tell.
What it’s like to manage against them
We begin with the Rays’ Kevin Cash, who got to experience this thrill ride 13 times this season.
“Discipline and damage,” Cash said. “They’re elite at both of them. I mean, Juan Soto is just not going to swing at a pitch that he doesn’t want to swing at. And Judge — anything he swings at has a chance of traveling 400 feet. They’re amazing. What they do is unbelievable.”
What it’s like to game plan against them
For this section, we spoke to an AL executive whose team ran into the Judge and Soto Show recently — and did not enjoy every minute of it.
“I think what’s probably most underappreciated in this,” he said, “is that everybody agrees that Soto is an all-time talent. And he’s having one of the better seasons of his career. And Judge has an OPS 150 points higher than him! It’s something like a 1.150 OPS to 1.000. Which means the difference between Judge and Soto is roughly the difference between Soto and Frankie Lindor (who ranks 22nd).
“So the magnitude of the greatness of Judge makes it impossible to just say, ‘We’ll let somebody else beat us beside Soto.’ Because if you don’t get Soto out — and he never chases, he walks all the time, and he just runs an at-bat in a way that’s so unique to the league. It’s like he’s in control of every pitch, even though he’s the hitter. And that is a really unique thing. It feels like he has the ball when the at-bat starts.
“And knowing that Judge is on deck — and he’s just staring at you, like this cartoonish figure in the on-deck circle who is leading the free world in offense — it makes it really hard. In some ways, it’s like they’re in 1997 playing offense, and everybody else is in 2024.”
What it’s like to pitch to them
Rays starter Ryan Pepiot actually used the word, “fun.” I wasn’t expecting that one. But why the heck not tell yourself what Pepiot tells his inner self — that “it’s a fun test. Every time you go out there to face those guys, you’re facing two of the best in the league, and show if your stuff really does play, right?”
Right! Let’s go with that. Now listen to him describe his most memorable battles with both of these guys, starting with his duel with Judge in a July 9 game in Tampa Bay.
“Judge hammers any fastball you can throw,” Pepiot said. “I think I threw him one fastball in three at-bats, and he absolutely crushed it, 113 miles an hour. It was just a single to right. But as I threw it, I was like, I didn’t get that up enough. … But you don’t realize how tall he is over the box. So that pitch would be up for anybody else. Just with him, it’s hard to get it all the way up there. So I was like: That ball flew past me. By the time I could get my head around, it was already in right field.”
Soto, meanwhile, took Pepiot deep last September, when Pepiot was still a Dodger and Soto was still a Padre. But in July, Pepiot struck out Soto. And just as you’d expect, Pepiot remembered everything about that sequence.
“I got Soto this year, and he ‘shuffled’ me (with the famed Soto Shuffle) on the pitch before,” Pepiot said with a laugh. “But I got him on the next pitch. I threw him a changeup, and he swung through it. But I threw him a heater the pitch before, and he ‘shuffled’ me. Normally, most of the time, you don’t see it. You’re getting the ball back, and you don’t see it. But I saw that one, and I was like: ‘You can’t really do that.’ But he’s done it to me plenty of times.”
What it’s like to manage them
Aaron Boone didn’t quite want to go there. He knows he’s managing two guys who are unlike just about anyone who has ever played baseball together. But the best since Ruth and Gehrig? If that meant Boone was Miller Huggins, the Yankees manager made the clear decision it was time to hedge this bet — but just barely.
“Yeah, I think when you try and put into context their season … it’s a short list of historic great duos,” Boone told The Athletic’s Brandon Kuty last week. “That’s Ruth-Gehrig. That’s Mantle-Maris. That’s (Big) Papi-(Manny) Ramirez. I’m sure there’s others. But I think they’re absolutely right in that conversation. Especially in the hitting environment today — to have two guys that are just, wow.”
So what do you say? I’ve furnished you with all the numbers that got us into this discussion. I’ve delivered direct quotes from the combatants. I even punctuated them with a “wow.” I feel like I proved this case. But have I?
The jury speaks
Case closed? (Wendell Cruz / USA Today / Imagn Images)
I turned to our jury members. They were mostly with me.
Steve Hirdt had only one reservation: “Obviously, I’d have to put Gehrig and Ruth in 1927 above what Judge and Soto have done,” he said … with good reason! But I’m not arguing that this Judge/Soto Show is superior to any Ruth/Gehrig season — only that it’s fair to use the expression: best since … So he’s in.
Cash and the AL executive I spoke with had zero problem with this premise. They didn’t particularly want to compare themselves with Connie Mack, trying to outfox those Yankees behemoths. But they get where I’m going with this.
“In any era that you put these guys in, they would stand out as generationally talented,” the exec said, “both in what they’re doing today and the track record. So when you talk about comparing them with Ruth and Gehrig, you could roll your eyes if it was somebody who was a flash in the pan, that we didn’t know.
“But these guys already have the credentials. They were on Hall of Fame tracks before. And now they’ve converged — to hit second and third for the New York Yankees.”
Bingo. So I only had to convince one holdout — Bob Costas.
I chipped away. I asked: What about the Yankee Factor? How can you not at least compare them when they’re all Yankees? He was good with that comp (mostly).
“Well, the Yankee factor is inevitable,” he conceded, “because it’s still called Yankee Stadium. And the monuments to Ruth and Gehrig are within sight. Judge is standing right in front of them.”
Except there’s a hole in that Yankee Factor argument. And Costas, naturally, didn’t miss it.
“But even though Judge is well on his way,” he said, “to being a truly historic player … it’s very, very difficult to compare anyone’s aura and impact in legend to Ruth, because he reinvented the game.”
Once again, though, I’m not arguing that! Have I said once that Judge is better — or projects a more sweeping aura — than Babe Ruth? Never!
I’d be happy to suggest that Judge is “Ruthian” — especially by 2024 standards. He has reached 60 homers once. He is chasing it again. He wears pinstripes. He’s larger than life. Sounds pretty Ruthian to me. I thought I could sense Costas beginning to come around.
“The very fact,” he said, “that these comparisons come up — that it occurs to us, and that you’ve got the backdrop of Yankee Stadium, the pinstripes, Yankees history, Judge’s standing already. … He’s the comp to Ruth. It may be a bit of a reach for Soto to be the comp to Gehrig. But for one year, this year? Maybe. And if Soto stays and they sustain it, maybe the comparison becomes valid, difficult as it is to compare across the years.”
The Judge-Soto comp with Ruth and Gehrig? Not everyone was completely convinced. (MPI / Getty Images)
I should have rested my case right there. Oops. Costas kept going — and that didn’t turn out well for my presentation to the jury.
“But what we know for a fact,” he continued, “is that Ruth and Gehrig are firmly set in baseball legend — not because of one year or even two or three years, but because of a sustained run where they defined what it is to have a murderers’ row. …
“So if you look at this as like 1927, (Ruth and Gehrig) are in the midst of a legendary, sustained run — that literally, they are part of baseball lore, to the point where someone who doesn’t follow baseball knows who Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig are. There’s a movie that your grandmother liked about Lou Gehrig and the luckiest-man speech.”
Oh yeah. I know all about it. And with Judge and Soto — all right, I get it. No major motion pictures. Not even a “30 for 30” (yet). They’re not legends. They’re not part of a legendary team. There has been no legendary, sustained run — not by them or a franchise that hasn’t played a World Series game for 15 years. Good points!
However … have I ever tried to argue they were legends? No. Have I ever talked about sustained runs? No! Heck, I conceded many paragraphs ago that I was talking only about what Judge and Soto have done this year. And if we just stick to that one-year stuff, we haven’t seen anything like this since … well, you know.
So ultimately, Costas was willing to nudge himself about half an inch in my direction. I’ll take it.
“I certainly feel comfortable,” he said, “if I were writing the story, with saying they’ve put themselves in the discussion with such legendary duos. And if they sustain this for a few more years, then we’re looking at Ruth/Gehrig territory.”
All right then. Now … I’m resting my case. They’re in the discussion. We’ve had that discussion. And the evidence is overwhelming. I don’t know what the future of Judge and Soto looks like. I just know what 2024 looks like.
I think it looks kind of like two pinstriped mashers from nine decades ago.
Maybe you’re with me. Maybe you’re not. But just think about it — because that, as Buck Showalter said, is the beauty of baseball.
(Top image: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Ruth and Gehrig: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images; Judge and Soto, center: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images; Judge and Soto, right: Rob Tringali / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
