The battle to be “the face of Major League Baseball” has been an open topic of discussion for some time.

But since the start of the three-year battle for the title of Most Valuable Player in the American League, the conversation has not revolved around two players: Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.

While the debate is different in 2024 because Ohtani can only unleash half of his ability and is also no longer competing with Judge for the AL Award, we enter the final month of the regular season with these two once again looking at history.

So here is the historical significance of Judge’s performance this season.

After Judge’s 130th game of the year in Washington, where he recorded his 1,000th hit, the center fielder brought his overall slash line to .333/.465/.732/1.197 with 51 home runs and 122 RBIs.

In just 965 career games, No. 99 became the 55th active player and 42nd Yankee to hit 1,000 hits. He had previously hit 300 home runs, making him the fastest player in MLB history to do so.

With 8 home runs in the 10 games following that historic performance, Judge has now hit a total of 308 home runs in 3,464 at-bats and 4,196 plate appearances. That means the Yankees captain has hit a home run 7.3% of the time he’s stepped into the box in his career. If we were to look at his at-bats instead, Judge leaves the ballpark every 11.3 trips.

Among players with at least 1,000 career batting appearances, Judge trails only Mark McGwire for the best in baseball history.

But Judge’s professional accolades take a back seat to the historic single-season record he’s trying to break: the American League home run record.

In the last two seasons in which Judge hit the most home runs in baseball, the last home run he hit that season is of historical significance. Whether we’re talking about 2017, when Judge set the rookie home run record with 52, or 2022, when Judge surpassed the American League record with 62.

Now, in 2024, Judge has 30 more games to play to surpass his record of 62 and reclaim the AL title.

If Judge maintains his current pace, he would finish the year with 63 home runs, just 10 home runs shy of Barry Bonds’ MLB record of 73 in a single season.

Regardless of how you feel about the “steroid era” of Major League Baseball, there are other factors about today’s game compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s. The first is that batting efficiency in baseball in 2024 has declined significantly.

The league average for the slash line this year is .244/.313/.401/.714. While the number of home runs per game has remained virtually the same (1.12 in 2001 versus 1.13 this season), it is objectively harder to get on base in today’s game, let alone hit powerfully.

In 2022, when Judge surpassed 60 home runs for the first time since Bonds and Sammy Sosa, league averages were even worse.

For comparison, here’s how Judge’s two historic seasons compare to the best offensive season in MLB history.

Judge 2024 (Expected 160 games played): .337/.470/.728/1.198 | 61 HR |

Judge 2022: .318/.435/.702/1.136 | 64 home runs | 137 RBI

Bonds 2001: .309/.496/.824/1.320 | 72 home runs | 129 RBI

While Bonds still has the edge in this comparison, it shows that Judge has been able to compete with Bonds in his last two fully healthy seasons for the first time since he redefined what a bat is capable of.