My parents were in town last weekend, an annual tradition where we tackle a medium hike, those mid-tier sushi places that are where your real value comes from, and of course talk baseball. For being in their
seventies, my folks are reasonable ball-knowers, understanding why OPS is such a great catch-all while being easy to work out, and just starting to get FIP. Of course the conversations revolved heavily around Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, and Vlad Guerrero Jr.
My parents are diehard Blue Jay fans, meaning this week has been one of consternation for them, but more to the point of the three players listed above, they get that while Vlad is excellent, he’s a tier below Cal, and another tier below Judge, without really getting why. This led to an introduction to WAR, which I’ll admit they took to better than I thought they would.
Except, teaching my parents about the standard all-in value statistic in baseball also taught me something about Aaron Judge. Checking the fWAR leaderboard is standard practice for me pretty much once a day, especially since Judge began this unbelievable peak run in 2022. He’s notched 37 fWAR in that stretch, with a very good chance of once again clearing ten wins with a good final series against Tampa this weekend. WAR isn’t exact of course — anything within say, a half to three-quarters of a win is pretty well identical — but even applying that grace gap, Judge leads all of baseball in the metric.
We got to discussing the supposed advantage of Judge playing at Yankee Stadium, which has a reputation for being a bandbox. Of course Aaron Judge has the best road OPS since Barry Bonds in 2004 this season, which undercuts this idea that he can only hit in New York. All that is without going into Statcast, park factors, expected home runs … Judge mashes wherever he is. One does note that Cal also hits well on the road, albeit more than 100 points lower by OPS than the Yankee captain.
It’s funny that these conversations came at the same time I finished a re-read of Amusing Ourselves to Death, and social media is aflame with the debate about whether Judge is a more deserving MVP than Cal Raleigh. Amusing Ourselves, the 1985 media criticism, still carries far more relevance than it probably should for the age, and while MLB is among the lower-stakes examples, well…
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
For in the end, he was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in ‘Brave New World’ was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
This is where the Ben Verlanders of the world come into play. The insatiable need for the “For You” page to keep you refreshing, the rise of so-called content at the expense of analysis, the need to have a take for the sake of having a take, isn’t just making us all more simple-minded, it’s pushing down the truth.
That old saying that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on has never been a favorite of mine. It’s not a lie to say that Cal Raleigh is having an extraordinary season — only a fool would try to argue otherwise, which is why I dislike the Yankee-affiliated “gotta give it to the fatass” type of content-shovel. It’s more that when we allow narratives to be driven by who can refresh your timeline faster, we leave behind the simple truth that Aaron Judge is the best player in baseball.
I think one of the reasons my parents were so open to that is that they’re not constantly fed takes by frat boys who land ESPN shows or faceless troll accounts “stanning” one player or the other. When you don’t even engage with the noise, you can start to hear the music.
