Jordan Walker was out front with eight home runs for the St. Louis Cardinals, and the early 2026 race for the major league home run lead already had some familiar names pressing close behind. Brandon Lowe of the Pittsburgh Pirates sat at seven, while Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, CJ Abrams, Gunnar Henderson and Yordan Alvarez each had six.
That opening line mattered because it came in a season where the market was still treating Judge as the man to beat. As of April 15, Kalshi had him installed as the favorite to lead the league in home runs at 34%, with Schwarber at 28% after a surge of 13 percentage points and Shohei Ohtani at 19%. The numbers reflected a race that felt far more open than the first glance at the leaderboard suggested.
Judge’s case is built on more than reputation. Over the past four years, he led the American League in runs with 133 and 137, home runs with 62 and 58, RBIs with 131 and 144, and walks with 111, 133 and 124. He has also chipped in double-digit stolen bases each season over that span, a reminder that even in a power chase his value has not been limited to one category.
The recent record also explains why bettors and baseball watchers have kept circling back to him. Judge missed 56 games in 2023, yet he still carried one of the most punishing profiles in the game when he was on the field. His contact batting average over the last two seasons was.464 and.470, and his average hit rate was 2.078. He posted his lowest RBI rate in six years at 15.1%, came to the plate with 59 fewer runners on base in 2025 than in 2024, cut his strikeout rate to a career-low 23.6% and maintained an elite walk rate of 18.3% over the past three seasons.
That mix leaves the race in a strange place. Judge is still the favorite, but the early board is crowded and the contenders are not waiting for him to separate. Schwarber’s rise to 28% and Ohtani’s 19% keep pressure on a market that already assumes another slugging sprint is coming, while Walker’s eight early homers show how quickly the lead can change hands in April.
The broader backdrop only sharpens the point. MLB did not have a 60-homer season from 2001 to 2021, then produced two of them over the past four years. With 2026 still young, the home run chase is again living in the space between expectation and surprise, and Judge remains the player everyone is measuring against, whether he is in front or not.
