At any given moment since baseball was first introduced to American and worldwide viewers, someone has qualified as the best player in the sport. Somebody has to be the best, right? Now, for as wild as this statement might seem, most of the top players were not nearly as great at their apex as the current version of Aaron Judge. The reigning AL MVP is performing at an absurdly high level, and with the Yankees set to visit one of, if not the toughest place to hit in all of baseball, it’s no surprise that Judge’s numbers at T-Mobile Park stand out.
T-Mobile Park isn’t exactly an old park, but it’s been around for quite a while, first opened in mid-1999 as Safeco Field during the golden era of Seattle Mariners baseball. With spacious dimensions, Seattle’s home park has always featured among the most pitcher-friendly. These days, with the Mariners having one of the better pitching staffs in baseball (current injuries notwithstanding), that park is an even more inhospitable environment for bats.
A quick search through the leaderboards and you’ll find out that Aaron Judge has the best career numbers in the history of T-Mobile Park, accounting for any hitter with at least 70 PA in Seattle’s home ballpark.
Aaron Judge’s numbers at T-Mobile Park and where they rank all-time:
1.195 OPS (1st)
.436 OBP (3rd)
.759 SLG (1st)
207 wRC+ (1st)
63.5 Hard-Hit % (1st) – second place is at 48.1%
Judge’s first cup of tea in the bigs didn’t go according to plan, including an 0-for-10 three-game set in Seattle on his first road trip as a big leaguer. In his more complete AL Rookie of the Year campaign the following year with 52 homers, two of them came in Seattle — one still rumored to be in the air, by the way.
Oh, and by the way, the Yankees won that game 5-1, and Judge had four RBI. A couple of years later, the Yankees swept the Mariners with a two-homer series from Judge again. That might be 229 homers ago at this point, but it included the 100th bomb of his excellent career.
Yusei Kikuchi in particular must have no pleasant memories of facing Judge in Seattle, allowing homers to the Yankees superstar in both 2019 and 2021. (He is now safely in Anaheim.)
Judge went yard at least once in Seattle on an annual basis from 2017-23, and on May 29, 2023, he put on a real show. The captain recorded his first multi-homer game at T-Mobile Park and he also robbed Teoscar Hernández of a long ball to right, leading the charge as the Yanks beat the M’s 10-4.
Judge didn’t leave the yard in the series at T-Mobile Park last year, but he was still pretty productive. The soon-to-be AL MVP went 3-for-10 with four RBI and reached base safely in every game as the Yankees took two of three from Seattle.
There is some hesitance in arguing that Judge is the best hitter ever at T-Mobile Park because Mike Trout, another noted Seattle killer, has similar numbers. Including every player who has ever played for the M’s, Trout would still rank in the top 15 for home runs at T-Mobile Park. His 33 homers in Seattle are the most by any visiting player in the history of that park.
The obvious difference is that Trout has done it on a much larger sample size, playing in the same division as the M’s for his whole career. Trout and Manny RamÃrez are the only other two hitters with an SLG above .700 at T-Mobile Park. While Judge and RamÃrez did that at 101 and 137 PA, respectively, Trout compiled these numbers with over 400 PA.
No matter what, that’s impressive power company for Judge to keep. What does he have in store for his 2025 showcase in Seattle? Tune in tonight and find out.