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David Schoenfield
Multiple Authors
Who is the best current player in the game?
There have been five impassioned, ongoing debates in baseball history regarding that question. The key word there is “ongoing,” as it suggests a period of several years or more, involving the same two players. These are the five:
• Ty Cobb versus Honus Wagner, from the late 1900s into the early 1910s
• Ted Williams versus Joe DiMaggio in the 1940s, with an interruption for World War II
• Mickey Mantle versus Willie Mays in the mid-1950s stretching into the early 1960s
• Barry Bonds versus Ken Griffey Jr. for much of the 1990s
• Shohei Ohtani versus Aaron Judge … right now
We are in the middle of the fifth great debate, as Ohtani, playing for the back-to-back reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers, and Judge, captain of the New York Yankees, enter their fifth season battling it out for best-in-the-game supremacy. Of course, this is a debate won in spreadsheets and on social media as much as on the field, especially with the two players now in different leagues and both able to win MVP awards — which Ohtani has done in four of the past five seasons (all four of those, remarkably, unanimous wins) and Judge in three of the past four.
The consensus entering 2026: Ohtani is No. 1 with an exclamation point. He easily topped ESPN’s MLB Rank of the top 100 players in baseball this season. “It almost seems unfair to include Ohtani on this list,” Alden Gonzalez wrote. “At times, it feels as if he belongs in a category all his own.” Judge followed Ohtani at No. 2. “Judge, not Ohtani, is the best hitter in the world,” Jorge Castillo wrote. “The Yankees captain has ascended to all-time great status.”
Ohtani is certainly the most inconceivable player we’ve ever witnessed. But is he really the more valuable of the two?
I’ll admit: When I submitted my top 100 rankings, I put Judge first and Ohtani second, even though I agree with Alden’s statement. Ohtani does belong in his own class, especially as he returns to his first full season of pitching since his elbow injury in August 2023. His accomplishments — from his 50/50 season in 2024 to his three-homer/10-strikeout performance in the National League Championship Series last October — continue to astonish in singular fashion. He’s 1-of-1.
Yet … Judge is astonishing as well. Since he beat out Ohtani for AL MVP honors after hitting 62 home runs in 2022, Judge has arguably been the more valuable of the two in three of the past four seasons:
WAR, however, is by no means the end of the discussion. More pertinent to 2026: Ohtani is a better hitter than he was with the Los Angeles Angels in 2022, he didn’t pitch at all in 2024, and he threw only 47 innings in 2025. For the first time since 2023, we’ll get to see Ohtani perform at the peak of both his hitting and pitching powers.
So, let’s break both players down in each category of the game and see who comes out on top.
Hitting
Let’s focus on just the past two seasons, since Judge missed time with that torn ligament in his toe in 2023. On the surface, the numbers look similar:
Judge: .326, 111 home runs, 259 runs, 258 RBIs
Ohtani: .296, 109 home runs, 280 runs, 232 RBIs
Of course, 30 points better in batting average isn’t nothing, and Judge also draws more walks, so he has a sizable edge in the all-important on-base percentage, .457 to .391. Baseball-Reference estimates that Judge has created 356 runs over the past two seasons compared with 328 for Ohtani.
But now we factor in baseball’s lifeblood: outs. Judge has made 793 outs compared with 911 for Ohtani, so Judge has not only created more runs, but he also has done it while consuming far fewer outs. Judge’s offensive numbers have been as astonishing in their own historic greatness as Ohtani’s two-way prowess.
Using runs created and outs made, Baseball-Reference then calculates each player’s batting wins compared with an average hitter: Judge has averaged 9.4 batting wins the past two seasons compared with 6.8 for Ohtani. That’s how dominant Judge has been. Ohtani has been the second-best hitter in the game, and Judge has still been 2.6 wins better per season. That’s the difference in 2025 between, say, Bobby Witt Jr. and Dansby Swanson, or Francisco Lindor and Marcus Semien. It’s a big gap.
None of that considers clutch hitting, but both players have — unsurprisingly — also excelled in high-leverage situations over the past two seasons, with Judge hitting .315/.466/.630 and Ohtani hitting .314/.428/.638. (Postseason clutch hitting is another discussion; we’re sticking to regular-season analysis here.)
Edge to … Judge (2.6 offensive WAR advantage)
Defense and baserunning
There are a few runs around the margins to consider as well. Ohtani had a lot of baserunning value in 2024 when he stole 59 bases in 63 attempts — about 10 runs of value, which translates to about one win — but he was 20-for-26 in 2025 and is unlikely to chase 50 steals again this season. Despite that, Ohtani is still a little better on the bases than Judge and grounds into fewer double plays. Overall, the FanGraphs baserunning metric credited Ohtani with plus-3.7 runs in 2025 and Judge with minus-4.1 runs, while Baseball-Reference had Judge a little closer.
However, Judge plays the field, whereas Ohtani is strictly a DH when he’s not pitching. Judge remains a good right fielder, with plus-3 defensive runs saved in 2025 and even better fielding metrics via Statcast, where he ranked in the 86th percentile in range and 84th percentile in arm value. Both players receive a hit in positional adjustment, with Judge’s overall defensive WAR for 2025 coming in at minus-0.5 and Ohtani’s at minus-1.7.
Could Ohtani be a good right fielder? Undoubtedly. But the fact is he doesn’t play the field, so that positional adjustment must be made. Combining defense with baserunning, Judge ends up with an advantage of about 0.6 wins of additional value. Combined with his 2.6-win advantage at the plate, he’s about 3.2 wins ahead of Ohtani.
That’s the margin Ohtani has to make up with his pitching.
Edge to … Judge (0.6 defense/baserunning WAR advantage)
Pitching
This much is certain: If Ohtani can combine his best hitting season (2024) with his best pitching season (2022), this is no longer a debate. It’s Ohtani in a landslide — Usain Bolt in the 200 meters. Ohtani had 9.0 WAR as an offense-only player in 2024 and 6.3 WAR as a pitcher in 2022. That would be an unfathomable 15-WAR season. Even leaving out the 50 steals, a 14-WAR season is in play.
The two questions: How effective will he be as a pitcher? And how many innings will he pitch?
As far as effectiveness, Ohtani’s final spring start might be an indicator of what’s ahead. Pitching against the Angels at Dodger Stadium in the Freeway Series, Ohtani struck out 11 batters in four innings, including six in a row at one point, although the first three batters singled in the fifth inning and came around to score. Still, it was an electric performance, and after the game, manager Dave Roberts reasserted the desire for Ohtani to go “wire-to-wire” as a pitcher.
Ohtani stated his goal as well: 25 starts. “I do see that as an important benchmark as a starting pitcher,” he had said earlier in spring training.
With the Angels in 2022, Ohtani made 28 starts, going 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA over 166 innings. Since he returned to pitching in 2021 after his first elbow surgery, he has accumulated 15.3 WAR over 88 starts — an average of 4.3 WAR per 25 starts. That figure, however, includes some short stints last season when he first returned to the rotation. He’s at full throttle to begin 2026. If he averages 5.8 innings per start, like he did from 2021 to 2023, that gives him 145 innings over 25 starts and 4.7 WAR at his historic rate of value.
That’s more innings and more value than the projection systems are estimating, which generally have him around 110 to 115 innings and 2.5 to 2.6 WAR. If we split the difference between the higher-workload Ohtani and the lower-workload Ohtani, we get about 3.7 WAR in pitching value.
Edge to … Ohtani (3.7 pitching WAR advantage)
Final verdict
That pitching estimate puts Ohtani just ahead of Judge in overall value by 0.5 WAR.
There are other unknowns to consider, however. Ohtani is 31 years old now compared with 28 in 2023, the last time he attempted both hitting and pitching for a full season. How will his body handle the rigors of doing both for 162 games? It’s worth noting that his best season hitting came in 2024, when he only hit — although, to be fair, he wasn’t far off that track last season. Although he hasn’t hit as well over his career when he pitches — that aforementioned NLCS game notwithstanding — two of his best three months last season came in August and September, after he had returned to the rotation. There’s no reason to expect anything except another huge year at the plate, with a third consecutive 50-homer season the benchmark.
As for Judge, he turns 34 at the end of April, and he’s not going to keep putting up an OPS over 1.100 forever. Does the regression start in 2026? The projection systems do forecast decline, but that’s in part because his 2024-25 level of production is almost impossible to repeat. A third straight 50-homer season — and record-breaking fifth altogether — remains the benchmark for Judge, perhaps with a second straight batting title as well. If he is to be the best player in 2026, there is clearly little room for even minimal regression.
In the end, I’ll admit I was probably wrong in my top 100 ranking. As long as Ohtani pitches enough innings, his two-way value will be difficult to beat. But it’s close. Close enough that the debate remains — unlike many Ohtani or Judge fly balls — in play.
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