New York Yankees star Aaron Judge has won three of the last four American League Most Valuable Player awards, and will enter this season with a chance to become the third player in Major League Baseball history to win three in a row (joining Shohei Ohtani and Barry Bonds). That doesn’t mean Judge is content with his game. Rather, he’s looking to add a new dimension this year.
“Baserunning’s on my mind this year a lot,” Judge told reporters on Monday. “I saw a lot of guys around the league with 40, 30 bases that you don’t usually normally expect to be running that much. Especially with how the game’s changed with the pickoffs and the pitch clock, I think that’s one way we can utilize, or, at least, I can utilize some of my skills a little bit more, getting into scoring position.
“With the lineup we have, this was probably the best offense in all of baseball last year. If I can find a way to get myself in scoring position, if they’re going to walk me or do something, then some good things are going to happen.”
To Judge’s point, 17 different players swiped at least 30 bases in 2025. That group included the likes of Juan Soto (38) and Josh Naylor (30), neither of whom fits the conventional picture of a high-volume thief. In fact, Soto and Naylor both finished in the 13th percentile or worse in Statcast’s sprint speed, suggesting their steals were the products of their smarts — and their leveraging of the aforementioned pickoff limit and pitch clock rules — instead of their wheels. Judge, for comparison, ranked in the 42nd percentile in that measure, which helps to explain why he’s been a legitimate center-field option for the Yankees in the past despite his size.
Judge, 33, has never stolen more than 16 bases in a single campaign despite succeeding at around a 75% clip. The key matter for the Yankees is whether or not the additional value he’d provide in running more often would be worth the downside of increasing his injury risk. Given how much Judge produces at the plate (he’s hit .312/.445/.674 and averaged 49 home runs over the last three years), the Yankees can be excused if they decide by Opening Day to give him the red light just as often as in the past.