Translated by Fernando Battaglini
For at least one summer, the Yankees are looking like the Yankees again. They are not the most dominant team in the league, nor the club mathematically most likely to prevail in the postseason tournament/dice game, if you take PECOTA classification unadjusted for the government-in-exile that is the Dodgers’ current rotation. They haven’t scored the most runs or hit the most home runs. But they’ve still been dominant, with the offseason trade that brought in Juan Sotocombining with future two-time MVP, Aaron Judgeto form a fearsome one-two punch worthy of Ruth and Gehrig. Unless the Yankees are willing to commit $500 million or more to Soto in free agency this winter, this pairing might only last one year. If that’s the case, we’re at least looking at Judge/Soto at the peak of their combined powers: By BP’s accounting, this is the best teammate performance of the modern era (dating back to 1988).
Despite all the rancor that came with Judge’s pursuit of the iconic 61-homer mark, Roger Maris In 2022, his performance at the plate this season is shaping up to be superior in many ways. He’d need a bombastic finish to reach 60 homers again, even after homer No. 1. 45 on Tuesday, Judge is on pace to reach 58. That said, from Aug. 21, 2022, through the rest of the season, the big man hit 16 homers. So it’s far from out of the realm of possibility. Regardless of the sheer number of homers he ends up hitting, though, Judge’s improvement over that season is largely based on a superior walk rate. He also has a .391 BABIP, because the world isn’t a fair place and some people can have it all. Though the league-wide OPS this year actually surpassed the low mark from 2022 (.713 vs. .706), Judge’s mark has grown by 61 points. It’s the closest thing to Barry Bonds that we could (un)reasonably expect from any player.
Such an incredible performance could threaten to overshadow what Soto is doing in his season before becoming a free agent, if the three-team superstar ever allowed himself to be overshadowed. But he’s eliminated even that possibility by posting career-bests basically across the board (except 2020), and he might be leading the American League in many of the essential batting marks if not for his teammate. Soto also homered in Tuesday’s loss, matching his career-best with 35. Forty homers appear within reach for the first time in his career. Once again, the 25-year-old is drawing more walks than he strikes out, and while his BABIP is a comparatively poor .302, he’s produced the kind of dominance that’s been expected since Soto’s MVP runner-up season. in 2020. The same fate seems likely to await him this offseason, unless something changes dramatically in the next month or so of the season. But this is still the best season that could be mustered to prepare for what will likely be a long road to free agency as Soto’s representation (Boras Corporation) does everything in its power to break the record. Shohei Ohtaniat least in current value (Make no mistake, you will read an article saying that Soto plans to surpass him and that’s it).
It’s probably not surprising to note that this ranks favorably among the best hitting performances by teammates of all time; the respective DRC+s of 214 and 195, which nicely mirror Judge and Soto’s OPS+ marks of 221 and 186, might make that clear. But the sheer number of memorable performances by members of the same lineup makes its rating, at the top of the past 36 seasons, all the more impressive.
It’s worth noting that three seasons of teams on this list (marked with *) actually included three players who were eligible for the thresholds (minimum 450 AP, 140 DRC+) used in this query; not included in the list above. Shawn Green with 144 DRC+ for the 2001 Dodgers, Scott Rolen with a 141 DRC+ for the 2004 Cardinals, and Jose Bautista with a 148 DRC+ for the 2015 Blue Jays. That’s impressive in itself, but I picked the two best eligible performances from any team here, so neither would better the performances of their lineups here.
A cold month for Judge or Soto could change things to some extent, and as with any advanced metric, DRC+ could be adjusted slightly regardless of down-the-stretch performances, but Judge/Soto’s position atop the list of best modern teammate performances seems relatively secure. It’s not as if the smaller samples of an incomplete season are skewing the selection wildly, anyway: Even with 36 games left to play (and Tuesday’s game not included in the query), Judge and Soto don’t even have the lowest appearance total of the 24 pairings — Bonds and Elias Burke on the 2000 Giants; Judge and Soto should surpass the Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani ’22 Seraphim next week, and could crack the top half of the appearances pack by early September.
Soto and Judge are hot right now (each currently has a higher August OPS than their season-long mark), and the pair’s streaky tendencies give them a chance to soar even higher in the next month. Unless Judge appears to be pushing to break his 2022 mark of 62 homers, neither player will see as much usage over the next month as they have to this point in the season. Still, both players are well-positioned to surpass their career-highs in WARP: Judge is 1.2 WARP away from his 10-win MVP campaign, and Judge is 0.7 wins away from his 2021 career-high of 8.4 WARP. Twenty WARP between the pair appears easily within reach, and there’s an outside shot that Soto could join Judge in the double-digit WARP club. We don’t really treat WARP as a round-number milestone, but that’s partly because it’s a threshold that’s rarely reached. In any case, Judge and Soto are in the same league as The most revered batting duoseven though all that comparison between cohorts almost 100 years ago is pointless. It’s a historic season and there’s just over a month left to enjoy it, unless the Yankees are willing to write a check for something new. Still, there couldn’t be better publicity for something like this.
Thanks to Robert Au for his research assistance.
