Aaron Judge is chasing one of the most revered numbers in sports: 60 home runs in a season, doing it while wearing the same pinstriped uniform as Babe Ruth when the Sultan of Swat first accomplished the feat in 1927. Judge is doing this in an era when pitchers are throwing harder than ever, when getting a base hit is harder than it's been in five decades, in a season in which no other player is close to his home run total. If he gets there, it will be a historic season.

Shohei Ohtani is chasing only his own impossible goals: to star as both pitcher and hitter, something no player has done in the major leagues since Bullet Joe Rogan in the Negro Leagues in the 1920s and Ruth with the Red Sox more than 100 years ago. Ohtani is doing this in an era when players are bigger and stronger than ever, and even Ruth, who does fit that category, did it for only a short time before switching to full-time Sultan. Ohtani did it last season and he's doing it again — back-to-back historic seasons.

It should be an MVP race for the ages, but instead it feels like, barring injury, Judge has the award wrapped up. Maybe he should have it locked up: Judge leads Ohtani in WAR, he leads in narrative, and the Yankees are in first place while the Angels — once again — will finish with a losing record.

With the Yankees in Anaheim Monday through Wednesday — unfortunately, Ohtani pitched Saturday, so we won't get a head-to-head showdown against Judge — let's dig into the MVP race and these two remarkable seasons. I want to break this discussion into three different categories:

Who has the most value? The MVP discussion is mostly about numbers, and the simplest way to slice and dice the two players is to simply look at their WAR. Judge is at 7.4 via Baseball-Reference, while Ohtani, after seven shutout innings to beat the Blue Jays on Saturday, is at 7.0 — 4.2 for pitching, 2.8 for hitting. FanGraphs gives Judge a little bigger edge, 7.9 to 7.0. Both figures are presented with a precision that doesn't actually exist, so perhaps the actual value of the two players is closer.

Who is having the more impressive, iconic season? Numbers aside, which season will we most remember in the future? Certainly, if Judge can surpass Maris' 61 home runs, this favors him, as he would not only establish a new American League record but set what many fans will consider the true home run record. That's a narrative difficult for Ohtani to overcome, no matter the impressive nature of his two-way play.

Whose game is the most aesthetically pleasing? To steal from another sport, this is in many ways the heart of the Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James argument. Jordan had an acrobatic beauty and flair to his game, while James' game is more one-dimensional — brute-force drives to the basket and pull-up jumpers — less appealing in style (at least to me, that is). Does Judge or Ohtani own an advantage here?

Let's dig in.

Who has the most value?

The first thing to understand about Judge's season — he's sitting at 49 home runs while also leading the AL in runs, RBIs, walks, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases — is that he's doing this in a context unlike any of the eight previous 60-homer seasons.

Ruth famously homered more than every other AL team in 1927 when he hit 60, but teammate Lou Gehrig hit 47 and topped Ruth in total bases and extra-base hits. When Maris hit 61, he went toe-to-toe with teammate Mickey Mantle most of the season, pulling away in September as an injured Mantle finished with 54. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both topped 60 in 1998 (and Ken Griffey Jr. hit 56) and then again in 1999. And when Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001, Sosa hit 64 (and Luis Gonzalez hit 57). In other words, none of these guys was all alone at the top of the leaderboard.

Judge, however, is all by himself. He's 14 home runs ahead of Kyle Schwarber, who is second in the majors in home runs with 35. The last player to lead the majors by at least 14 home runs was Jimmie Foxx in 1933, when he hit 48 with Ruth next at 34. For further context, when Judge hit 52 home runs as a rookie in 2017, the average AL team scored 4.71 runs per game and the league-wide OPS was .753; this season, those figures are 4.19 runs per game (a number inflated by the runner-on-second rule in extra innings) and .698. It's the lowest OPS in the AL since 1981. Yet Judge is still on pace to hit 62.