New York-based sluggers have maintained their stranglehold on the top of the Hitter Power Rankings. But a Midwestern star has jumped into the top three, while three new names with hot bats have broken into the top 10 since our last edition two weeks ago.
Once again, the Hitter Power Rankings are based on a formula, constructed by MLB.com’s data team, that considers players’ recent performance, season-long performance and performance over the past 365 days. Those three categories are weighted so as to place the greatest emphasis on the first two.
Here are the results. (All statistics are through Tuesday’s games.)
1. Aaron Judge, Yankees (Previously: 1)
With Judge, it’s no stretch to say that we are witnessing history. Not only is he building a legendary career, but the run he has been on for the past year qualifies as nothing short of an all-time heater. (Judge is slashing .362/.489/.759 with 61 homers, 155 RBIs and 13.6 FanGraphs WAR in that time. Oh, and he's batting over .400 this season.) What sparked all this? A change to his batting stance stands out as one reason.
2. Pete Alonso, Mets (2)
That Alonso is crushing the ball is great, but not necessarily surprising for a player who has been one of the game’s elite sluggers for several years now. What’s more fascinating about the Polar Bear’s sensational start is that he owns one of the biggest drops in strikeout rate (close to 10 percentage points) of any hitter from 2024 to ’25. Between that and his excellent contact quality, Alonso is batting .346 (nearly 100 points above his career mark), with the second-largest increase in expected average (plus-84 points).
3. Bobby Witt Jr., Royals (4)
Witt rose into the top three after extending his hitting streak to 20 games on Tuesday, batting .356 during that stretch to raise his season average to .316. The defending AL batting champ only has two home runs so far this season, but he leads the Majors with 12 doubles.
4. Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers (7)
Ohtani isn’t exactly the poster child for baseball “dad strength,” given that he didn’t homer until his eighth game back from paternity leave, on Tuesday night. (With that said, the 114.1 mph shot off Miami’s Sandy Alcantara was Ohtani’s hardest-hit homer of the year, and the 11th hardest across MLB.) Still, Ohtani has played well since the birth of his daughter, slashing .290/.421/.548 with five extra-base hits and three steals.
5. Fernando Tatis Jr., Padres (5)
Tatis is playing like a superstar again, four years after finishing third in the NL MVP race as a 22-year-old. He’s doing it all: hitting for average (.330), hitting for power (eight homers), running the bases (seven steals) and playing top-notch outfield defense (plus-4 Outs Above Average). Like Alonso, Tatis has slashed his strikeout rate without sacrificing his superb contact quality, which is a neat trick if you can pull it off.
6. Corbin Carroll, D-backs (3)
Carroll has cooled off a bit over the past couple of weeks, but it’s pretty nice when posting a .536 SLG can qualify as “cooled off.” That span has included three home runs and three triples, with two of the latter coming against the Braves on Sunday, when Carroll showed off his 98th percentile sprint speed. If Carroll racing his way to a three-bagger isn’t the most exciting play in baseball these days, it’s at least in the conversation.
7. Alex Bregman, Red Sox (not ranked)
Through the first 30 games of his Boston tenure, Bregman has been everything the Red Sox could have wanted (and more) when they signed him to a three-year, $120 million deal in February. While the 31-year-old was a 4-5 WAR player in each of his past three seasons in Houston, he hasn’t hit anything like this (.331/.401/.570, 172 OPS+) since finishing as the AL MVP runner-up in 2019. Starting with a five-hit, two-homer game on April 15, Bregman hit .417/.509/.771 over a 12-game stretch, during which Boston went 8-4.
8. Kyle Tucker, Cubs (8)
If Bregman hasn’t been the most important offseason addition among position players early in 2025, then that honor would have to go to Tucker, one of the main driving forces behind the highest-scoring offense in baseball. Tucker’s 171 OPS+ is a near-match for what he posted during his injury-shortened 2024 campaign in Houston, and over his past 162 games (going back to the end of July 2023), he’s hit .278/.386/.564 with 41 homers, 118 RBIs and 30 steals.
9. Jorge Polanco, Mariners (NR)
There are incredible turnarounds … and then there is what Polanco is doing in 2025. Of the 171 batters who took at least 400 plate appearances in 2024 and have at least 50 so far in 2025, Polanco’s gain of nearly 600 points of OPS (.651 to 1.243) is far and away the largest in the Majors. (Alonso’s 337-point boost is second.) The reigning AL Player of the Week’s latest exploit? He crushed a pair of homers -- his second two-homer effort in a three-game span -- and drove in all five of his team’s runs in a win over the Angels on Tuesday night.
10. Ben Rice, Yankees (not ranked)
We began our list with a Yankees slugger, and we’ll end it the same way. Rice rocked his second career multi-homer game as part of the Bronx Bombers’ 15-run barrage in Baltimore on Tuesday night, giving him eight long balls on the season. Hitting left-handed pitching remains a work in progress for the 2021 12th-round Draft pick, but there have been few better righty-mashers in baseball this season than Rice (.323/.443/.692).
Honorable mentions: Pete Crow-Armstrong (Cubs), Kyle Schwarber (Phillies), Marcell Ozuna (Braves), Pavin Smith (D-backs), Cedric Mullins (Orioles), Jung Hoo Lee (Giants), Seiya Suzuki (Cubs), James Wood (Nationals)