It's no exaggeration to suggest that Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani had historically great regular seasons in 2024. These were legendary seasons. Seasons we'll be remembering decades from now.
Judge hit .322 with 58 home runs and 144 RBIs and nearly won the Triple Crown. The New York Yankees captain was the first player to slug .700 since 2004 and his wRC+ -- weighted runs created, which is league- and park-adjusted -- was the seventh highest of all time, only behind seasons from Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Historic? Absolutely.
On the opposite coast, Ohtani hit .310 with 54 home runs and 130 RBIs. Like Judge, the Los Angeles Dodgers star led the National League in home runs and RBIs and nearly won the Triple Crown. He became the first player with 400 total bases since 2001 and, you might have heard, stole 59 bases to go with his 54 homers, shattering the 50-50 barrier. Historic? Absolutely.
And let's not forget Kansas City Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who had his own incredible season, hitting .332/.389/.588 with 32 home runs, 31 stolen bases and 88 extra-base hits. While his overall level of offense wasn't quite what Judge and Ohtani reached, Witt also brings supreme defense at shortstop -- his 9.4 bWAR edged out Ohtani's 9.2 and ranks as the third-highest WAR total this century for a player 24 or younger playing in the postseason.
With the division series under way, it raises the question: How have players who have had amazing, historic-type regular seasons fared in the postseason?
Consider Bonds, who shows how random postseason success can be. In the first five postseasons of his career, he hit .196 with only one home run in 27 games. In 2002, after he hit .370/.582/.799 with 46 home runs during the regular season, Bonds went off, including that famed home run off Troy Percival in the World Series that landed somewhere between Disneyland and the moon. Overall, he hit .356/.581/.978 with eight home runs, 16 RBIs and 27 walks in 17 playoff games.
Should we expect Judge, Ohtani or Witt to do that? Well, no -- although let's not put anything past that crew. Ohtani stepped right into the spotlight to kick off October, blasting a mammoth three-run home run in second at-bat to lead the Dodgers to a Game 1 victory over the San Diego Padres -- but went 0-for-4 the next day. Witt and Judge, on the other hand, are off to slow starts. Witt did drive in two of the Royals' three runs against the Orioles in the wild-card round but is 0-for-10 the first two games against the Yankees. Judge's postseason struggles have continued as he's 1-for-7 with four K's in the ALDS.
To predict how far these players might take their teams -- and what else we could see from them this October -- let's dig into a few categories that they fit into, looking at how the biggest stars in the game have historically done in the postseason.
How did MVP winners perform?
Since Judge and Ohtani will presumably win their respective league MVP awards, let's start there.
Dating to 1995, the start of the expanded playoffs, we have a list of 43 MVPs who made the playoffs, from Mo Vaughn and Barry Larkin in 1995 to Ronald Acuna Jr. in 2023. Now, not all of these players had historic numbers or even monster offensive seasons, but they still played well enough to win MVP, so it's a good list to consider.
First, I simply averaged each player's triple-slash line, regardless of total plate appearances:
Regular-season average: .325/.410/.601
Postseason average: .244/.350/.455
This first method might be a little misleading, since it treats a three-and-out postseason with 12 plate appearances with the same weight as a player who reached the World Series and had as many as 74 plate appearances (as was the case with Bonds in 2002).
Incorporating the total accumulated plate appearances into the playoff stats of the 43 players, we get:
Postseason average: .243/.359/.475
OK, a little better in the power department, but not significantly better. Bottom line: MVP winners have hit nowhere near as well in the postseason as they did in the regular season.
One thing to note is that the collective walk+HBP rate climbed from 12.8% in the regular season to 15.5% in the postseason. That also might not mean anything, since two players are driving that percentage: Bonds walked 36.5% of the time in 2002 (13 of his 27 walks were intentional) and Chipper Jones walked 18 times (and was hit once) in 65 plate appearances in 1999 (29.2%). Jones was issued six intentional walks in 14 playoff games, even though he hit only one home run the entire postseason.
Going player by player, only eight of the 43 posted an OPS over 1.000 in their postseason -- even though 23 did so in the regular season. And only four did it with at least 20 plate appearances: Bonds in 2002 (1.559), Albert Pujols in 2005 (1.072), Ryan Braun in 2011 (1.182) and Jose Altuve in 2017 (1.022).
Narrowing it down a bit more, eight of the MVP winners reached the World Series. Here's how they fared throughout the postseason in which they made it to the Fall Classic:
Chipper Jones, 1999 Atlanta Braves: .244/.462/.356, 1 HR, 4 RBIs (14 G)
Barry Bonds, 2002 San Francisco Giants: .356/.581/.978, 8 HR, 16 RBIs (17 G)
Josh Hamilton, 2010 Texas Rangers: .190/.319/.466. 5 HR, 9 RBIs (16 G)
Miguel Cabrera, 2012 Detroit Tigers: .265/.368/.449, 2 HR, 8 RBIs (13 G)
Buster Posey, 2012 San Francisco Giants: .200/.294/.350, 3 HR, 9 RBIs (16 G)
Kris Bryant, 2016 Chicago Cubs: .308/.400/.523, 3 HR, 8 RBIs (17 G)
Jose Altuve, 2017 Houston Astros: .310/.388/.634, 7 HR, 14 RBIs (18 G)
Mookie Betts, 2018 Boston Red Sox: .210/.300/.323, 1 HR, 4 RBIs (14 G)
Of those eight, Posey, Bryant, Altuve and Betts won the World Series.
What does all this mean for Judge and Ohtani?
In one sense, small sample size trumps everything, but the collective postseason totals here feature over nearly 1,400 plate appearances and the MVP winners certainly didn't dominate. If opposing pitchers aren't willing to challenge Judge and Ohtani, they have to be willing to take walks and not chase out of the zone. That plays to Judge's strength a little more than Ohtani: He ranked in the 97th percentile in chase rate while Ohtani ranked in the 61st percentile.
What about others with all-time seasons?
OK, since Judge's season was such an all-timer, let's look not merely to recent MVP winners, but hitters who had the best offensive seasons of all time. To do so, we isolated the 30 best seasons via OPS+ on Baseball Reference for those who played in the postseason. This gave us a bunch of Ruth seasons, several Mickey Mantle seasons and Judge's own 2022 season (when he hit .139 with two home runs in nine playoff games), as well as seasons from Jason Giambi, Yordan Alvarez and Freddie Freeman. (A lot of these guys, like Ruth and Mantle, went directly to the World Series under a different postseason format.)
The raw postseason totals of those players: .297/.423/.618
The accumulated totals: .272/.406/.596
OK, this group fared much better than the MVP winners, which is what you would expect from this collection of sluggers. Thirteen of the 30 players had an OPS over 1.000 in the playoffs. Of course, it helps that Ruth was a monster in the World Series during his Yankees days, hitting .348/.497/.788 in his seven trips to the Fall Classic in pinstripes. But still, it's good news for Judge and Yankees fans.
Let's consider one stat for Judge, Ohtani and Witt: how they fared against fastballs of 95-plus mph. Unlike Ruth, they're going to see a lot of those.
Judge: .380/.464/.686
Ohtani: .303/.390/.513
Witt: .330/.390/.606
Ohtani is the interesting one to watch here as his numbers -- while still good -- drop compared to his overall slashline. Pitchers will try to get him to chase those four-seamers up in the zone (and preferably out of it).
How do established stars perform in postseason debuts?
In his seventh season, Ohtani had played the most games of any active player without appearing in the postseason. Asked before the NLDS if he was nervous, he had a one-word answer: "Nope."
Let's see how some other big stars fared in their postseason debuts after a somewhat lengthy wait to get there:
Ted Williams, 1946 (fifth season, plus three missing years due to World War II): .200/.333/.200, 0 HR, 1 RBI. Williams famously struggled in the only World Series of his career, although he played with a badly swollen and painful elbow he sustained during an exhibition game to get the Red Sox ready for the World Series.
Dave Winfield, 1981 (ninth season): .182/.286/.273, 0 HR, 3 RBIs. After eight seasons with the Padres, Winfield signed a big free agent deal with the Yankees and struggled in the postseason, leading George Steinbrenner to call him "Mr. May."
Ken Griffey Jr., 1995 (seventh season): .364/.442/.818, 6 HR, 9 RBIs. Griffey had a huge ALDS against the Yankees, hitting five home runs, although he would hit only one in a six-game loss in the ALCS.
Vladimir Guerrero, 2004 (ninth season): .167/.286/.417, 1 HR, 6 RBIs. Guerrero made the playoffs in his first season with the Angels, but they were out in three games.
Carlos Beltran, 2004 (seventh season): .435/.536/1.022, 8 HR, 14 RBIs. Traded from the Royals to the Astros at midseason, Beltran had one of the greatest postseasons ever.
Todd Helton, 2007 (11th season): .220/.298/.317, 0 HR, 2 RBIs. Helton was past his prime when the Rockies finally reached the playoffs, but he scuffled even as they reached the World Series.
Giancarlo Stanton, 2018 (ninth season): .238/.273/.381, 1 HR, 1 RBI. Stanton homered in the wild-card game, but the Yankees lost to Boston in the ALDS.
Those are just a few names, and it's more anecdotal information than anything else. But it was fun to see that a couple of these guys went off -- just like it would be fun to see Ohtani have one of those Octobers for the ages to put an exclamation point on his 50/50 season. Ohtani most compares in current stature to Griffey, who was the biggest name in the sport in 1995. Griffey didn't seem too nervous, either.
What about players under 25?
Witt ranked fifth in the majors in OPS+ at 171, but it was his youth -- he's 24 years old -- and all-around excellence that stood out as he helped the Royals reach the postseason. He tore it up in July with a .489 average and hit 10 home runs in August before fading a bit in September.
To determine what we might expect from Witt, let's look at a list of similar players: 24 or younger with a high WAR and an OPS+ in a somewhat similar range to Witt's. I didn't want a list of players whose value was tied mostly to their hitting, so this was a list of 20 mostly up-the-middle players and excellent defensive players. Some names included Joe DiMaggio (1937), Willie Mays (1954), Fred Lynn (1975), Cal Ripken Jr. (1983), Ryne Sandberg (1984), Alex Rodriguez (2000), Mike Trout (2014, in his lone abbreviated trip to the postseason), Kris Bryant (2016), Carlos Correa (2017) and Alex Bregman (2018).
Here's how this group fared in the postseason: .283/.365/.486.
Pretty solid, similar to the MVP list (some of these 24-and-younger guys were also MVPs). Correa had a big postseason for the Astros in 2017 with five home runs and 14 RBIs, although that was when the Astros were found to be stealing signs. Henry Aaron had a big World Series in 1957, hitting .393 with three home runs. Jose Ramirez struggled in 2017, going 2-for-20. Derek Jeter had many trips to the postseason, but 1998 was not one of his good years as he hit .235 with only three RBIs in 13 games. The Yankees won anyway.
So, what's the overall takeaway?
The reality of October, of course, is that any player can step up and turn into Mr. October: It was Randy Arozarena in 2020, Eddie Rosario in 2021, Adolis Garcia in 2023. It might end up being Fernando Tatis Jr. this year, given his hot start: 9-for-14 with three home runs through four games.
But when a superstar steps up and does it? Those are the Octobers that are remembered forever -- Babe Ruth's called shot, Reggie Jackson's three home runs in 1977, George Brett in 1985 or Kirby Puckett in 1991. After the seasons that Judge, Ohtani and Witt had, it will be supreme entertainment if they keep it going. A World Series title is a team victory, but nothing beats the star player putting the team on his back.