We’re just about a month into the 2025 season, and arguably the two hottest hitters in baseball reside in New York.
Both Aaron Judge and Pete Alonso have played in 24 games at this point, and it is hard to argue against the two sluggers being the best in the game in the early going.
Judge, after a 4-for-4 night at the plate in Cleveland on Wednesday, upped his batting average to an absurd .411 with a league-leading 254 wRC+, per FanGraphs. Meanwhile, in Queens, Alonso enjoyed a multi-hit night as he upped his season batting average to .349 and his wRC+ to 211. Among players with at least 100 plate appearances, Judge and Alonso are the top two in baseball.
The two are also one and two in the league in slugging percentage, as Judge is slugging an absurd .722 and Alonso not far behind at .698. If you go by WAR, Judge is tops in all of baseball, while Alonso is fourth, behind only Judge, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Corbin Carroll.
What’s more is the duo’s ability to cut back on strikeouts, a trend Judge has continued from the beginning of his career. Once a raw slugger, Judge struck out in 44.2 percent of his at-bats in 2016 before dropping that number to 30.7 in his historic rookie campaign. That number has remained on a steady decline ever since, and so far this season, it sits at a career-best 20.4 percent. As for Alonso, he struck out in 24.7 percent of his at-bats last season, and that number has come all the way down to 14.4 percent in 2025. In fact, his walk rate (13.5) is almost equal to his strikeout percentage so far this season.
The two have hit for average, power, and have been elite in terms of producing runs, as both entered Wednesday’s action with 25 RBI apiece, tied for the league lead with Kyle Tucker and Wilmer Flores (!). As for their astronomical batting averages, there hasn’t been anything lucky about it. Both are in the top 10 in hard hit rate this season (Judge seventh and Alonso eighth), are in the top five in barrel percentage, and their expected batting averages, per Statcast, are .342 and .340, respectively.
As both the Yankees and Mets sit in first place in their respective divisions entering Wednesday’s series finales, it’s hard not to marvel at where both teams sit in terms of their homegrown stars and faces of the franchise. Both are off to torrid starts, are early MVP candidates, and both came into the season with something to prove, albeit in different ways. Judge was coming off another rough postseason showing capped off by the disaster that occurred in game five of the World Series, while Alonso went through a humbling free agency process following the worst season of his career. But now, the two stars are in peak form in ways few could have seen, even for their standards.