Aaron Judge is the New York Yankees‘ most powerful hitter, and he showed it in 2022 with an AL-record 62 home runs.
Harrison Bader is probably the fastest player on their roster, and DJ LeMahieu and Oswaldo Cabrera the most versatile.
Anthony Rizzo or Judge battle it out for having the best plate discipline.
No one, not even Judge, hits the ball harder than Giancarlo Stanton.
In fact, there is a good case to be made that it’s Stanton who is the one with the most raw power, but Judge’s health helps him more and his swing is more geared to home runs than that of Stanton.
But when it comes to just destroying a baseball, only Oneil Cruz is in Stanton’s league.
“Of the Yankees’ 10 hardest hit balls in 2022, 9 belonged to Giancarlo Stanton,” Talkin’ Yanks tweeted.
For years, Stanton routinely finished with the hardest-hit ball in baseball every season.
It didn’t matter if he played just a handful of games because of injury: he always managed to hit at least one laser that nobody else could match.
Cruz, the rising star of the Pittsburgh Pirates, hit a 122.4 mph single in August 2022, becoming the owner of the hardest-hit ball in the Statcast era (since 2015).
For years, that honor belonged to Stanton, who had hit several balls over 120 mph.
Despite playing just 110 games and hitting .211 this past season, Stanton managed to knock 31 balls out of the park and will comfortably reach that number again if he plays enough games.
Judge may be the Yankees’ home run king and deservedly so; but Stanton is their exit velocity king.
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