Aaron Judge is coming off a historic season and is now a free agent. We can skip the rest of what could be a meaty introduction and just get right to the point here: Let’s make the hypothetical case for the Mets to sign Aaron Judge, just like we did with the Giants and the Dodgers.
To be clear before proceeding, I don’t necessarily, personally, believe everything said below. I’m putting myself in the mindset of “here’s why the Mets should sign Judge” and going all out in making the argument.
The power
Remember that last series against the Braves in Atlanta where the Mets could have put the NL East away and instead were swept? One of the easier observations between the two teams was the Mets needing to string together a bunch of hits to score runs while the Braves just slugged. In this era where the pitchers are so much better than they ever have been, the key to the best offenses moving through the playoffs is being able to put one over the fence. It’s easy to say teams shouldn’t be overly reliant on the home run, and that shouldn’t be the only way they can score, but we’ve been tracking for years that the teams hitting more home runs win a significant majority of playoff games and it’s not a coincidence.
Sure enough, the Mets hit two homers to the Padres‘ one in their lone 2022 playoff win while San Diego outhomered them 4-1 in the two Mets’ losses.
In the regular season, the Mets led the NL in hits and batting average. They were second in on-base percentage, yet they finished third in runs scored, thanks to sitting fifth in slugging percentage and eighth in home runs. Among the 12 MLB playoff teams, the Mets ranked ninth in home runs. They tied for 15th overall. The Yankees were first, Braves second, Astros fourth, Dodgers fifth and Phillies sixth, by the way.
Further, Pete Alonso accounted for more than 23 percent (40 of 171) of the Mets home runs on his own.
Adding Aaron Judge would give the Mets two of the premier power hitters in all of baseball while also depriving any other team of getting Judge. All of a sudden, that’s a huge power leap.
The lineup
With Judge and Alonso, the Mets would have two of the biggest home run threats in baseball and possibly the two biggest. There are only three active players with a 50-HR season and these are two of them (and I’d be willing to bet the other, Giancarlo Stanton, never even hits 40 in a season…
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