{"id":480588,"date":"2026-02-17T11:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T11:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480588\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T11:42:07","slug":"how-yankees-aaron-judge-wants-to-mimic-2025-juan-soto-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/480588\/","title":{"rendered":"How Yankees\u2019 Aaron Judge wants to mimic 2025 Juan Soto in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, FLA. \u2014 Aaron Judge<\/a> says he never pays attention to stats until after the season.<\/p>\n

The Yankees<\/a> captain looked this past winter. After putting up numbers that brought home another MVP, his second in a row and third in four years, Judge took notice of what Juan Soto did in his first season with the Mets<\/a> after a year with the Yankees.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, Soto stole 38 bases in 42 attempts and swiping seven in 11 tries as a Yankee and never having more than a dozen steals in his first seven seasons.<\/p>\n

Judge knows Soto never has been a superfast runner, too. In fact, Judge\u2019s sprint speed is better than Soto\u2019s in Baseball Savant\u2019s analytics.<\/p>\n

Judge also noticed Soto\u2019s big uptick in steals was a trend last season.<\/p>\n

For instance \u2026 <\/p>\n

Josh Naylor, one of the slowest runners in the majors, stole 30 bases and was caught stealing twice playing for the Guardians and Mariners with his sprint speed rating in the bottom three percentile. The first baseman had 25 steals combined in his first six seasons. <\/p>\n

Others setting career-highs in steals last season included Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story, who was 31 for 32 after never topping 20 since his two previous best steal years, 27 in 2018 and 23 in 2019.<\/p>\n

Also, Luis Robert Jr. stole 33 bases for the White Sox, 10 more than his previous high in five seasons, and Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz blew away his previous high, jumping from 22 to 38. Then there\u2019s Guardians third baseman Jose Ramirez, who had 41 steals in 2024 and 44 last year after never reaching 30 in his first 11 years.<\/p>\n

Every year, Judge goes into spring training with a part of his game singled out for improvement.<\/p>\n

Last year it was become an even more-rounded hitter after hitting a career-best .322 in 2024.<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished. Judge hit .331 and won a batting title in addition to hitting 53 home runs, the average and power carrying him to another MVP even with Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh hitting 60 homers.<\/p>\n

This season, Judge wants to pull a Soto and become a bigger basestealing threat after going 12 for 17 in 2025, swiping a career-best 16 in 2022 and averaging 6.5 over his first nine years.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely, baserunning\u2019s on my mind this year a lot,\u201d Judge said after Monday\u2019s spring training workout. \u201cI saw a lot of guys around the league with 40 or 30 (stolen) bases that you don\u2019t normally expect to be running that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge thinks he can steal more bases by taking advantage of the 2023 rule change that limits pitchers to two pickoff throws per at-bat. Also that year, MLB increased the size of the bases from 15 to 18 inches square, a change that dropped the distance between the bases by 4.5 inches.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially with how the game\u2019s changed with the pickoffs and the pitch clock, I think that\u2019s one way that I can utilize some of my skills a little bit more getting into scoring position,\u201d Judge said.<\/p>\n

If Judge\u2019s 2026 is like his 2025, he\u2019ll have more opportunities than anyone to steal. He finished fourth in the majors in hits and second in walks last season while running up a .457 on-base percentage that was by far the highest in the majors. Blue Jays outfielder George Springer was second at .399. <\/p>\n

\u201cWith the lineup we have, probably the best in all of baseball last year, if I can find a way to get myself in scoring position, if they\u2019re going to walk me \u2026 that\u2019s when good things can happen,\u201d Judge said.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s realistic for steals this year?<\/p>\n

If Soto can get to 38, 40 might be obtainable for Judge.<\/p>\n

Or maybe he\u2019ll try to one-up Shohei Ohtani, who went from topping out at 26 steals in his six Angels seasons to becoming the charter member of the 50\/50 club in his first Dodgers season with a 54-homer, 59-steal 2025.<\/p>\n

Judge already has a 62-homer season, so he jokingly was asked if he\u2019ll be gunning for the first 60\/60.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves,\u201d Judge said with a laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, FLA. \u2014 Aaron Judge says he never pays attention to stats until after the season. The Yankees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-480588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}