Could Aaron Judge or Cal Raleigh challenge the single-season American League home run record?

This week at Yankee Stadium, baseball’s top two power hitters will meet for three games that are pretty important in the postseason race when Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees host Cal Raleigh and the Seattle Mariners. The Yankees and Mariners both occupy wild-card spots and are separated by one game in the standings (with plenty of season to play, obviously).

Here is the MLB home run leaderboard entering Tuesday:

1. Cal Raleigh: 35
2. Aaron Judge: 33
3. Shohei Ohtani: 30
4. Eugenio Suárez: 28
5. Kyle Schwarber: 27

No other American League player has more than Riley Greene’s 22 homers, so Raleigh and Judge are far ahead of the pack. It would takes injuries (something no one wants) or a sudden and unexpected decline in performance for this year’s AL home run leader to be anyone other than Raleigh or Judge.

At this point we can drop the “for a catcher” qualifier. Raleigh’s having an all-time great power season, period. Add in his position and it really is remarkable. Only 19 times in history has a catcher hit 35 homers in a season. Raleigh is already there in early July. He could fail to hit a single home run the rest of the year and this would still be one of the greatest offensive seasons by a catcher ever. 

Raleigh’s 35 homers are six more than any other catcher before the All-Star break and five more than any other switch-hitter before the break. The all-time record is 39 homers before the All-Star break by Barry Bonds in 2001. With six games to play before the pause, Raleigh has an outside chance to match or even break Bonds’ record. So does Judge, for that matter.

While on the subject of records, Raleigh and Judge are both ahead of Judge’s 2022 home run pace, when he set the AL’s single-season record with 62 home runs. The Mariners and Yankees have both played 90 games this season. Their respective paces:

Judge’s pursuit of the AL record — Roger Maris’ 61 in 1961 — did not go from fantasy to real possibility until right after the Yankees played their 90th game in 2022. Judge hit two home runs in Game 91 and 11 home runs in his next 12 games. Another burst in late August/early September saw him go deep nine times in 14 games. At that point, the chase was on.

Common sense says Raleigh will slow down and fall short of the 63 homers he’s on pace to hit. First and foremost, T-Mobile Park is a below-average home run ballpark per Statcast’s park factors and anyone who’s ever watched a game there. It is not a good place to hit at all. It’s not a coincidence Raleigh has more homers on the road (18 to 17) in fewer games (43 to 45).

Also, Raleigh plays the sport’s most demanding position. The wear and tear of catching figures to catch up to him at some point, and his home run pace will slow down. Raleigh has started 87 of Seattle’s 90 games (66 at catcher and 21 at DH), and his 599 innings behind the plate are third most in baseball. He’s already accumulated a huge catching workload.

That said, Raleigh is doing remarkable things this year. Do the normal rules apply to him? He’s on pace for 1,078 innings behind the plate, which would put him under last year’s 1,122 innings and not too far above his 1,038 innings caught in 2023. Raleigh is used to this workload and, at age 28, he’s in his prime and at the age when lots of players have career years.

Common sense says Raleigh will eventually slow down and fall short of Judge’s AL home run record. He plays in an unfavorable home run park and catcher is a brutal position, plus teams might start intentionally walking him more. The reality of his season says Raleigh is hitting homers at a pace never before seen by a catcher. Sometimes guys do amazing things.

As for Judge, he could challenge his own record simply because we’ve seen him do it before, and it should shock no one if he goes on a tear and hits 30 homers in New York’s final 72 games. He had a stretch of 30-plus homers in 72 games in both 2022 and 2024, and he had a 29-homers-in-72-games stretch in 2023. Playing in homer-happy Yankee Stadium certainly helps his case.

The question with Judge is whether he’ll see enough pitches to hit. He’s already been intentionally walked 23 times this season (Raleigh is second with 11), the most by any player since Mike Trout was intentionally walked 25 times in 2018. Judge has been intentionally walked nine times in the last 20 games too. The pace is picking up. Teams simply aren’t pitching to him all that often.

Raleigh is on pace to set a new AL single-season home run record. To do it, he’ll have to overcome his home ballpark and the rigors of catching. Judge is within striking distance of his record. The question is whether he’ll get enough pitches to hit to make a run at it. These things are always a long shot. The fact we’re talking about two players, including a catcher, having a shot at the record is pretty incredible. What a season these two are having.