NEW YORK — How high can he go?
Aaron Judge’s home run total at the end of this season will almost certainly be stitched into the record books. The outfielder has 60 home runs with 15 games left to play in the regular season, one shy of Roger Maris’ all-time American League home run record.
The question remains, just how many home runs can the Yankees star rack up? According to Sportsbetting.ag, the over/under for Judge’s total home runs this season is 64.5, projecting him to comfortably break the record.
“We initially opened odds for Judge to break Maris’ record back on June 25, and he was a 3-1 underdog to do so,” Robert Cooper, the director of trading at Sportsbetting.ag, told the New York Daily News. “Those odds have fluctuated over the last three months, and of course, are off the board now as it appears to be a foregone conclusion.”
Judge has sent the baseball world into a frenzy with his historic season. His at-bats have become appointment television as the final stretch of this season winds down. The buzz No. 99 created has had the same effect on the gambling world.
“The overall buzz and betting action has been significant,” Cooper said. “Usually, at this time of the season, baseball handle is down except surrounding the teams trying to get into the postseason. But with the Judge and [Albert] Pujols storylines constantly in the news cycle, there’s been a lot of interest around those guys and their teams. The record-chasing has been great for baseball, and great for our industry.”
Pujols is chasing history as well as the Cardinals’ legend is just two homers shy of 700 career home runs. The 42-year-old has smashed 19 homers in 98 games this season.
While the long ball is what gets the attention, Judge is on the cusp of making more history outside of his historic home run chase. The Yankees superstar is currently leading the American League in batting average, home runs and RBIs — the incredibly rare Triple Crown.
Only 10 players in MLB history have won the Triple Crown since RBIs became an official statistic in 1920. The last player to do so was Miguel Cabrera in his MVP 2012 season.
Judge is currently a -150 favorite to win the AL Triple Crown according to Sportsbetting.ag, despite being just one point ahead in batting average of second place Xander Bogaerts. Judge entered the final month of the season with a .296 batting average. He has hit .475 in 16 games during September raising his season average to a league-leading .316.
The buzz around Judge does not stop with his historic home run total.
“The other Judge props we created around the record and Triple Crown excitement have been extremely popular among the bettors,” Cooper told The News. “We’re seeing bets non-stop every day as the excitement gets louder.”
The gambling lines tell the story. Judge is expected to break the AL home run record with ease and has a 63.6% chance (based on the current odds) of winning the Triple Crown which would have been considered lunacy prior to the start of the 2022 season, or any season in baseball history.
