You may have heard that New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge had a pretty good month of May, hitting .361 with 14 home runs. It's not the first time the superstar has gone off in one calendar month. Indeed, his dominance in May led to this question: Is Judge the current king of calendar month hot streaks?
To find out, we came up with a list of the top 10 best calendar months among active players to see where Judge's May ranks -- or any of his other best months. And, yes, a calendar month is a bit of an artificial creation, even more so when considering that in baseball, "April" includes games from March and "September" includes games from October, but that's just how baseball goes. This list is ultimately subjective, but we focused on stats such as OPS, runs created, home runs and RBIs.
To give you an idea of just how dominant the months are that did crack the top 10, take a look at some that just missed:
Bryce Harper, May 2015: .361/.495/.884, 13 HR, 28 RBI, 24 R, 37.2 RC
Mike Trout, July 2012: .392/.455/.804, 10 HR, 23 RBI, 32 R, 39.5 RC
Julio Rodriguez, August 2023: .429/.474/.724, 7 HR, 30 RBI, 19 R, 36.6 RC
Paul Goldschmidt, May 2022: .404/.471/.817, 10 HR, 33 RBI, 20 R, 41.3 RC
We'd be remiss not to include the top honorable mention (and one of my personal favorite months): Freddie Freeman's May 2023, in which he slashed .400/.462/.722 with six home runs, 26 RBIs, 28 runs, 39.7 runs created and 17 doubles. That's no small feat. The last player with 17 doubles in a month before Freeman was Joey Votto in September 2009 -- and the last players with more were Todd Helton (18) and Carlos Delgado (19), both in July 2000, when offensive numbers were much higher than they are nowadays.
Now, let's dig into the top 10.