2025 Fantasy Baseball: Aaron Judge Profile, Preview, Predictions

New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge may have struggled in the postseason last year but he is still one of the top targets in the entire fantasy baseball market heading into the 2025 season. While the loss of Juan Soto to the cross-town rival New York Mets may have an impact on Judge's numbers, Judge is still being drafted within the top 5 in high-stakes fantasy baseball leagues.
OF Aaron Judge, NYY (ADP – 3.5)
Two things stood out for Judge last season outside of his elite power. First, hitting behind Soto in the lineup led to a significant jump in his RBI chances (471 – career-best) and a new high in his RBI rate (19). Second, the Yankees' lack of a proven power clean-up bat led to Judge getting 20 intentional walks and a career-high in walks (133 – 18.9%). He had far fewer opportunities to hit the ball over the fence by drawing that many walks.
His contact batting average (.464) was electric while having elite success in this area over his previous three seasons (.403, .448, and .414). He led the majors in average hit rate (2.178), exit velocity (96.2 mph), and hard-hit rate (60.9), but all three stats were below his injury-shortened 2023 season (2.296/97.6/64.2). Judge had a higher fly-ball rate over the past two seasons (50.0 and 46.2), highlighted by his launch angle (20.4 and 18.9).
After a slow start in batting average (.207) in April last year, Judge tore the cover off the ball over the next four months (.369/93/45/105/6 over 360 at-bats). He finished with almost equal success at home (.328/65/31/71/5) and away (.316/57/27/73/5) and against lefty (.326/94/42/106 over 427 at-bats) and righty (.311/28/16/38/5 over 132 at-bats) pitchers. The Yankees hit him third in the batting order for all his at-bats.
Fantasy Outlook: New York added a couple of veteran bats (Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger) behind Judge in the batting order to hopefully offset the loss of Juan Soto at a fraction of the price. I expect his RBI chances to regress, and some pullback in batting average should be expected. His power is immense, and he had a career-high 95 extra-base hits last season. Judge had a floor of 550 at-bats in three of his past four years, helped by more chances at DH (41 games in 2024). Buy the 50+ home runs with a high floor in runs, RBIs, and batting average. A higher ceiling starts with repeating his career-best strikeout rate (24.3). Judge missed 30 or more games in 2018 (50), 2019 (60), 2020 (32), and 2023 (56).
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