Did Aaron Judge have the greatest walk year in MLB history?

Aaron Judge will soon sign for significantly more money than the $213.5 million he turned down from the New York Yankees seven months ago. When he does, fresh off a likely AL MVP award, it will be because he just registered perhaps the best walk year this sport has seen in the 48 years since arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled Catfish Hunter the first free agent.

Hunter, himself, made for some stiff competition. In 1974, he finished a 10-season run with the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics with a 41-start, 318⅓-inning campaign in which he won 25 games and logged the second-best ERA (2.49) and WHIP (0.986) of his Hall of Fame career. After he won the Cy Young Award, he next won a five-year, $3.75-million contract from the Yankees — for whom he immediately logged an arguably better season.

Hunter is one of the few players in a near half-century who can rival Judge’s 2022 season to take him to free agency. Others include Alex Rodriguez, in 2000 and 2007, Adrián Beltré’s 2004, Jason Giambi’s 2001 and Barry Bonds’ 1992. In terms of pure WAR, Judge bests those contenders and every other, extending to pitchers like Gerrit Cole (2019), Zack Greinke (2015), Kevin Brown (1998) and Greg Maddux (1992). But while we wait for Judge to sign his sizable contract, let’s examine in greater context where he fits into the pantheon of free agents-to-be.

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Bonds’ 34-homer, 39-steal 1992 season in Pittsburgh, worth 9 WAR by Baseball-Reference’s calculations, earned him an MVP and $43 million from the Giants. But, even more than Judge, he had already established himself as an MVP. He had won the same honor two years earlier, when he logged, by WAR, a superior season. As further evidence, Bonds played that 1992 season on a $4.7-million contract, at the time the priciest single-year deal in MLB history.

In 2022, Judge earned $19 million while smacking an AL-record 62 home runs and producing 10.6 WAR, his salary a far cry from the record $27 million Mookie Betts set for arbitration-eligible players in 2020. Judge’s historic season, then, qualifies as a more unexpected walk year than Bonds’ 1992.

Rodriguez’s 2007 campaign is similarly disqualified from the competition, as are most of the aforementioned pitchers. A-Rod won the MVP, but it was his third. Whereas in 2000, he was a 24-year-old still earning less than what Bonds made in 1992. His 41-homer, 1.026-OPS, 10.4-WAR season might be Judge’s chief rival for the best walk year ever. Also worth consideration is Maddux’s 1992. At 26, he nearly doubled, by WAR, the best year of his career to date, and won his first Cy Young. At that year’s winter meetings, he signed the largest guaranteed contract for a pitcher to that point in the sport’s history with the Braves.

Sneakily in the conversation is Beltré’s 2004. Incorporating his preceding seasons, Beltré’s dominance that year might surpass even Judge’s as a surprising walk year. At 25, he had established himself as an elite defender but thoroughly average hitter. From that platform, he suddenly constructed a 48-homer, 1.017-OPS, 9.6-WAR season that transformed an otherwise-middling Dodgers roster into division winners.

It did not net him the sort of contract that such a year would today, as teams remained wary of his previous production. He signed in Seattle for five years and $64 million, and finished that contract with an awful walk year, in fact the worst season of his career. It was only after that year (2009) that Beltré established himself as a future Hall of Famer.

What Judge lacked in 2022 that a select few other stars have not was postseason production. Rickey Henderson, after being traded midseason by the Yankees to the A’s in 1989, went on an absolute tear with his new (but also former) team. He produced 8.7 WAR for the year, before slashing .441/.568/.941 in the playoffs amid winning ALCS MVP honors and leading Oakland to a World Series win over the Giants. Similarly in 2004, Carlos Beltrán put up an excellent, but not historic, 6.8-WAR regular season across two organizations. But his 15-day run that October vaults him into the realm of the best walk years ever. Beltrán nearly carried his Astros to the World Series himself by homering eight times in 12 postseason games, logging a 1.557 OPS.

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That mark was more than three times better than Judge’s boo-inducing OPS over the Yankees’ nine postseason games in 2022. Three months after the Astros were eliminated, Beltrán signed the biggest contract in Mets’ history, the 10th $100-million plus deal in major league history.

After A-Rod’s 2000, he signed a then-record $252-million, decade-long contract with the Rangers. One thing is for certain: Judge would happily agree to the same contract if it were translated to today’s dollars: It would be worth over $400 million. Something starting with a 3 is more likely.