OK, hear me out.
Let's acknowledge how great Aaron Judge has been this year. He's launched 30 jacks with a .445 wOBA in 391 plate appearances while cutting his strikeout rate from 2016's cup of coffee by roughly 15 percentage points.
He can hit a bomb to any part of any stadium.
That's that. Aaron Judge just broke Joe DiMaggio's 1936 rookie home run record of 29. 4-2 #Yankees at The Stadium. pic.twitter.com/l0xy8WxUIm
— Elite Sports NY (@EliteSportsNY) July 8, 2017
I'm not saying Judge won't be great the rest of the way; I'm just saying he won't be this great.
The reasons for that are his .398 BABIP, the third-highest mark in the game, and 37.5% home-run-per-fly-ball ratio, the highest rate by just over seven percentage points. Of course, when you own a 47.1% hard-hit rate and 38.8% fly-ball rate, you're going to post above-average numbers in BABIP and homer-per-fly rate, but the clips he is sporting now are a little crazy.
Just to put it in context, the league leader in BABIP last year was DJ LeMahieu at .388, and only three players since 2000 have finished with a full-season BABIP of .398 or better. As for home-run-per-fly-ball rate, only one player (Ryan Howard in 2006) has finished a full season with a rate above Judge's 37.5%.
And it's worth mentioning that while Judge has dropped his strikeout rate by around 15 percentage points, it still sits at 29.7%, the 11th-highest strikeout rate in baseball.
Again, Judge is a monster and isn't about to fall off a cliff, but dealing the guy who is fantasy's top-rated hitter, per ESPN's Player Rater, could allow you to sell high now and address multiple areas on your roster.