Aaron Judge Emerges as the Ultimate Dodgers Slasher in History

Let me be very clear: This doesn’t matter. What I’m about to show you is small sample size theater. It’s not statistically significant. It has no bearing on what’s actually going to happen in the World Series. We are here for a fun fact rather than a learning opportunity. Are we all in agreement? Okay, then let me show you something wild. Here are Aaron Judge’s career numbers against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

So, uh, yeah. A .389 batting average is good. A slugging percentage in the thousands is good. A wRC+ over 300 is also good. Just in case you were wondering how good those numbers are, here’s a table that shows the best career numbers against the Dodgers, minimum 40 plate appearances, courtesy of our splits leaderboard.

As you might have noticed, the leaderboard only goes back to 2002, so all we can say for sure is that Judge’s numbers are the best of the past 22 years. Let’s venture over to Stathead, where we can look at OPS going all the way back to 1900. This time, we’ll use a minimum of 30 PAs.

So yeah, we can honestly say that Judge is the greatest hitter of all time against the Dodgers, and it’s not remotely close. We should still give a couple major caveats, though. First of all, the numbers above are just for the regular season, because that’s how Stathead’s split searches work. Second, there’s a reason eight of the 10 names on this list belong to players from this century: Back when there were fewer teams, players faced each team a lot more often, and numbers like these are impossible to sustain over a large number of plate appearances (unless you’re Gary Sheffield, who somehow had a 1.093 OPS against the Dodgers over 318 PAs). Judge has only played 10 games against the Dodgers.

That said, it’s not like Judge is hanging on by the skin of his teeth here. He’s got more than 230 points of OPS on the Hall of Famer in second place! If he were to strike out six times in a row the next time he faces the Dodgers in the regular season, his OPS would still top the list. I know that 30 PAs is a small sample size, but Judge would still be in first place if we dropped the minimum to 25. Or to 20. Even if you drop the minimum to just 15 plate appearances, Judge still has the highest OPS of all time by a margin of nearly 100 points. It’s not like he’s wildly overperforming his peripherals either; in the Statcast era, his .582 xwOBA is the highest of any batter, as is his 65.2% hard-hit rate (minimum 25 PAs).

Once again, none of this matters. It’s a statistical fluke. The numbers are tiny, and unless there’s a sweep, Judge will nearly double the sample size during the World Series. If he comes anywhere close to replicating these numbers, it will constitute the greatest World Series performance of all time. The Dodgers pitchers Judge has faced most often are Tyler Glasnow and Joe Kelly, neither of whom will be playing in the World Series. He’s never faced Jack Flaherty at all. Besides, the Dodgers aren’t even the team that Judge has hit the best. With a 381 wRC+, he’s also the greatest hitter ever against the Giants. No wonder they tried so hard to sign him and his brother Arson.

Over the course of his career, Judge has a 173 career wRC+. That’s the third-highest mark in AL/NL history, behind Babe Ruth (194) and Ted Williams (187) and just ahead of Bonds. Of course one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game is going to be the greatest against a couple of teams. Just to hammer that point home, Judge came into the ALDS with a 159 career wRC+ against the Guardians, and he ended up going 3-for-18 in the series. This is no guarantee of anything. But it’s pretty fun, right?