11 surprising stats that have defined the 2025 MLB season - ESPN

From the standings to the league leaders to the scoreboard itself, numbers are narrative in baseball.

Each season is a little different and 2025 is no exception. Some numbers tell the story as it unfolds; others suggest where the game is and might be headed.

Here are a few numbers that are holding my attention as we approach the halfway point of the campaign.

What the number is: Aaron Judge's batting average on balls in play

Why it's important: Judge has reached that rarefied place few other hitters have: when a star batter becomes so lethal, debates emerge about whether it would be better to simply walk him every time he comes up.

The short answer to that is no — the math doesn't check out — but that doesn't mean Judge isn't doing something that seemed all but unthinkable during his recent run of dominance: He's gotten even better.

All of the usual indicators that have made Judge the game's best hitter are in line with his recent standards. He's on track to homer in more than 8% of his plate appearances for a fourth straight season. His strikeout rate is up a bit lately but is also comparable to his composite for the past few years.

The glaring difference is Judge's batting average: .372. Even with a recent slump, he's in position to challenge for the American League's Triple Crown. That by itself is remarkable for a player who, at the age of 25 in 2017, homered 52 times but also had 208 strikeouts.

Judge's average spike is in part because of a better whiff rate than his early years, but it's mostly driven by that BABIP. He's always been a high BABIP hitter — .352 for his career — simply because he hits the ball hard so often, but we've never seen anything like this.

This BABIP has a chance to be truly unprecedented.