Welcome back to the AL MVP race, Aaron Judge. We were expecting you.
In the 21 games since he returned from a right hip strain, Judge has had 12 homers and 20 walks, was hitting .342 and had a 1.356 OPS. That catapulted him to the AL lead in homers (18) and OPS (1.089) while rising to second in Fangraphs’ Wins Above Replacement and sixth in Baseball Reference’s calculation.
In Awards Watch this week, this surge enabled Judge to complete May in a crowded AL MVP front-runner group that again includes the player who nudged Judge out for this honor in 2021, the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani, pretty much every member of the Rays lineup, the Blue Jays’ Bo Bichette and Matt Chapman, the Rangers’ Marcus Semien and the Orioles’ Adley Rutchsman. (And yes, I see you lingering, Mike Trout.)
At this moment, I could not vote Judge for first place, notably for missing those 10 games — roughly one-sixth of the season — on the IL.
