{"id":581454,"date":"2026-02-19T18:18:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/581454\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T18:18:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:18:37","slug":"yankees-aaron-judge-breaks-projection-models-for-2026-mlb-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/581454\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees&#8217; Aaron Judge breaks projection models for 2026 MLB season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron Judge is too good for the projection models.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/new-york-yankees\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Yankees<\/a>&#8216; superstar is as good as it gets in baseball, coming off an MVP season, and likely to be one of the best players in MLB again.<\/p>\n<p>Before each season, statistical models predict what&#8217;s going to come in the new campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/top-projected-players-every-mlb-team-2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MLB.com shared<\/a> projected top players for each team this season, and Judge is projected in that for 7.3 Wins Above Replacement.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s despite Judge coming off two seasons in a row with 10-plus WAR.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, the systems can&#8217;t handle Judge.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Judge is hitting .326 with a 1.152 OPS since the beginning of the 2024 season,&#8221; MLB.com writes. &#8220;He hit 58 home runs in 2024 and followed with 53 in &#8217;25. He&#8217;s coming off back-to-back 10+ WAR seasons, and now he&#8217;s a batting champ, too. Projection models aren&#8217;t built for this, so although he does have the highest projected position-player fWAR in baseball, it&#8217;s just as likely an MVP-worthy 43-homer, 7.8-WAR season is underestimating him, even in his age-34 campaign.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/mlb\/pittsburgh-pirates\/news\/theres-one-question-pirates-phenom-konnor-griffin-needs-answer\/e52ced688826dcf440f9eae9\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">There&#8217;s one question Pirates phenom Konnor Griffin needs to answer<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Projections take into account all the possible positive and negative outcomes. They&#8217;re meant to hit a middle outcome, not the upside necessarily.<\/p>\n<p>Judge has too much upside for the models. He&#8217;s too good.<\/p>\n<p>He might be the greatest right-handed hitter of all time. So that makes him an unprecedented projection in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s safe to expect Judge to be special yet again. That&#8217;s simply what he does at this point.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, time and age may catch up with Judge. Doesn&#8217;t seem that way yet, though.<\/p>\n<p>More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Judge is too good for the projection models. The New York Yankees&#8216; superstar is as good as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,4,1690,62,2548,2547,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-581454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkyankees","14":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116098676750601420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}