The Aaron Judge Home Run Tracker: Game 158

Oct 3, 2022 - 11:00 AM

Welcome back to the Aaron Judge Home Run Record Tracker! We’re taking a daily look at where Aaron Judge’s monster season tracks compared to some of the other historic single-season home run leaders in anticipation of Judge potentially joining their ranks. We’ll be going by Team Game because not every player’s seasons were in sync with the calendar days and everyone didn’t play all of the team’s games, which makes this our universal standard. Let’s run through Game 158:

Aaron Judge through Game 158 of 2022: 61 HR

Team Game 158: 10/2 — 0-for-3, 1 BB, 3 K

After a couple days of being pitched around again, Kyle Bradish went after Judge and had a good amount of success. Judge got plenty of pitches to hit, including a couple of cookies that he probably should have done damage with, but he wasn’t on top of it and ended up with a hat trick on the day. He did walk once to keep his on-base streak alive, but his batting average has taken a bit of a hit in his other chase for the Triple Crown.

Roger Maris through Game 158 of 1961: 59 HR

Team Game 158: 9/24 — 1-for-3, 1 BB

A quiet day for Maris, who had a single and a walk but otherwise did no damage to the Red Sox in this game. The Yankees as a whole didn’t manage to generate much offense, scoring just a single run in a game that didn’t hold much weight at all for any of the non-Maris players.

Babe Ruth in 1927: 60 HR

Ruth’s remarkable 1927 ended after Yankees’ 155th game of the regular season.

Barry Bonds through Game 158 of 2001: 69 HR

Team Game 158: 10/3 — 1-2, 1 RBI, 3 R, 3 BB, 1 K

Yeah, not a lot of chances to hit bombs when you get walked three times in a game. Bonds was sitting a homer away from the all-time record at this point and pitchers were very hesitant to be the one to go down in history as the guy who gave it up, but Bonds was about to open the home run floodgates anyway.

Mark McGwire through Game 158 of 1998: 65 HR

Team Game 158: 9/22 — 0-for-4, 2 K

McGwire couldn’t follow up his 65th homer from the previous game with much of anything, going 0-for with a pair of strikeouts. The Cardinals were done for at this point in the year, so the whole show centered around McGwire, but there wasn’t a show to see this time around. You can’t win ‘em all.

Sammy Sosa through Game 158 of 1998: 63 HR

Team Game 158: 9/22 — 0-for-4, 1 R, 1 BB, 2 K

Sosa didn’t fare much better than his rival, only getting a walk and later scoring to differentiate between the two. Sosa’s run helped contribute to a win that the Cubs needed to stay alive in the Wild Card hunt, however, so it’s not like it was a meaningless day for him even though he didn’t go deep.