Judge vs Ohtani: Who was the Better Offensive Player in 2024?

One major debate in the baseball world is the question of Judge or Ohtani. Who is more of a generational player? Who makes more contributions to their team? Or simply, who is the superior player? The typical response to this question falls along the lines of, “If Ohtani pitches then he’s more productive than Judge, but Judge is a better hitter by most metrics.” While this is partially true, today I’ll dive deeper into the statistics to reveal that Ohtani might be even better than we think.

Shohei Ohtani

To start, let's break apart the stats that say that Judge did have more dominant performance in the 2024 season. He trumped him in AVG, OPS, HR, and WAR. It can’t be denied that Judge hit 58 homeruns in fewer ABs than Ohtani who hit 54, but both those numbers are still insanely high and judging them based off that one stat is not sufficient. As for WAR, it’s a highly subjective statistic and accounts for several other things than just offensive prowess, and that’s not what we’re analyzing. Sometimes, it also makes very little sense and can differ depending on who calculates it. Furthermore, AVG is an outdated stat that is mostly irrelevant in the world of OPS, but one can say that Judge is still superior to Ohtani in that regard. While this is true, Judge with 1.159 vs Ohtani with 1.036, it’s time to reveal a flaw in the OPS stat.

Aaron Judge

OPS is calculated as the sum of a player’s OBP and SLG. OBP measures what the chances are the player will get on base when he comes up to the plate, and SLG measures the average number of bases a player will get per AB. OBP measures contact and plate discipline, and SLG measures power. (SLG favors extra base hits which matter in determining a player's power, as a double is worth two bases and a home run is worth four, vs OBP in which a home run and a walk count equally) However, this stat doesn’t fully encapsulate a players ability to help his team offensively because it is missing speed. Sure, speed helps players stretch doubles into triples and get more infield hits, but it doesn’t address stolen bases. Stolen bases are heavily undervalued by offensive statistics, and OPS isn’t an exception. This does not do justice to speedy players, as a single followed by a steal of second is effectively a double for the purpose of helping the team. So, why doesn't SLG include stolen bases? It’s not just for double to be worth two, but a single followed by a steal to still be worth one. So now let’s introduce the new stat: SSLG. Speed + SLG. SLG is calculated by adding together all a player’s singles, 2*doubles, 3*triples, 4*home runs, then dividing by the number of ABs. SOPS does the same thing but adds SBs and subtracts for every time caught stealing. (As a single followed by a pick off is the same as no single)

With this new stat, I calculated Ohtani and Judge’s SSLG, and here are the results:

Judge SSLG: .719

Judge SLG: .701

Ohtani SSLG: .732

Ohtani SLG: .646

Judge SOPS: 1.177

Ohtani SOPS: 1.122

As we can see, Ohtani is still not superior to Judge offensively, but the margin closed significantly. All this being said, it can be reasonably concluded from this and the current results of the 2025 season so far that Judge is simply at an unmatchable level, not even by Ohtani. However, once Ohtani gets back to the mound, Judge’s rule as the most dominant MLB player will almost surely come to a halt.