New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge won his third AL Most Valuable Player (MVP) award on Nov. 13, making it back-to-back seasons he’s done so. It was a tight finish, with Judge beating out Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, as Judge received 17 first place votes.

There has been a lot of discussion over whether voters made the right decision or not, but if we are looking at both players statistically, Judge deserved to win the award. 

In 2025, Judge led Raleigh in On-base percentage (OBP), On-base plus slugging percentage (OPS), walk percentage and had a lower strikeout rate than Raleigh. While Judge had another legendary season, this isn’t to discredit Raleigh’s record-breaking season. 

In 2025, Raleigh hit 60 homeruns, shattering the previous record for the most home runs in a season for a catcher, previously held by Salvador Perez, who had 48 in 2021. He finished the season with a .948 OPS with 125 runs batted in (RBIs).

Raleigh also hit for a .247 batting average, which was 84 points less than Judge’s batting average of .331. Since the modern voting system began in 1931, the lowest batting average held by a position player who won MVP was Marty Marion in 1944, with a .267 batting average. 

I understand batting average can be a flawed stat and a little outdated, but every statistic can be important with context. What makes Judge so special is his ability to put the ball in play while also hitting with extreme power. 

While Raleigh hit for five more home runs than Judge, Judge had a .688 slugging percentage, compared to Raleigh’s .589 slugging percentage. Judge’s slugging percentage in 2025 is the 19th highest ever out of 196 position players who have won the award in voting history. 

This context puts in perspective just how good of a season Judge had and how good of a player he is. Raleigh led the league in home runs and helped Seattle reach the playoffs for just the sixth time in the franchise’s 49th season of existence and still fell short in voting.

With that being said, I believe Raleigh’s season still wouldn’t have been enough in recent memory. Since 2010 and excluding the 2020 covid season, the average OPS for MVPs during that stretch is 1.022. 

While this number is inflated by the calculation of 28 MVP seasons, only four MVPs during this time finished with an OPS lower than Raleigh’s OPS of .948. 2016 NL MVP Kris Bryant is the only player with an OPS and Baseball Reference WAR (bWAR) below Raleigh’s.

A big argument I’ve been seeing for why Raleigh deserved to win the award is the fact he fields arguably the toughest position at catcher and offensively had a legendary season at the plate for a catcher.

I understand this defense, but believe that this is not the way that we should determine the most valuable player of the league. 

If we took this isolated approach and argued that Raleigh deserved to win because of his season as a catcher, shouldn’t Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes get more recognition for his NL Cy Young season where he had a 1.97 ERA and 7.7 bWAR?

His ERA this past season is the 24th lowest for qualified seasons in the history of MLB. While I think Skenes deserved better than a sixth place finish, I think most people would agree that he did not deserve to win MVP.

Raleigh had a historic season that will potentially define the way we look at single season performances by catchers, but with that being said, it’s tough to beat someone like Aaron Judge who simply is just better than arguably every player in the league.

Benes can be reached at [email protected].