It’s Aaron Judge’s contract year, and it shows. 

The Yankees slugger turned down a seven-year, $213.5 million extension over the offseason in order to bet on himself in free agency, the forum in which the majority of baseball’s largest contracts have been signed. 

His wager can be best described as prudent. The three-time All-Star — soon to be four-time — is on pace for 64 home runs and 130 RBIs and is MLB’s leader in homers, slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+. 

And, he’s now the prohibitive favorite to win the AL MVP. 

At BetMGM, Judge’s odds are at +200, by far the shortest they’ve been all season. That implies Judge will win the award 33.3 percent of the time. Prospective bettors have a betting edge when they think Judge will win this award more than 33.3 percent of the time. 

Back on March 10, Judge was sitting at a juicy +1500 at a lot of sportsbooks. Those odds are now long gone and, unless he gets injured, we won’t see that kind of value on Judge again this season. 

Meanwhile, it’s Shohei Ohtani’s odds that have tanked amid a 14-game losing streak for the Angels entering Thursday. He had been the favorite as recently as last week before dipping to his current price at +375. Ohtani is a great player, but his team is so bad right now that placing a bet on the Angels’ star at such low odds is a risky wager. 

Ohtani’s Angels teammate Mike Trout — who was taken out of Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox with a groin problem — has also seen his odds lengthen amid the losing streak. It doesn’t help that the nine-time All-Star hit a 3-for-30 over the skid the last two weeks. 

The three-time MVP was the second-favorite behind Ohtani at +350 in March but is now +650. It’s hard to see Trout taking home another award while playing on a potentially losing team with another MVP candidate on it. If the Angels continue to struggle, it really favors someone like Judge to win the award. 

Judge is also the odds-on favorite to win the home run title at Bet365 in New Jersey. As of Thursday, he has 22 dingers, five more than his second-best competition in Yordan Alvarez. Mookie Betts and Pete Alonso both have 16. 

Judge’s -125 odds in this market give him an implied probability of 55.5 percent to finish atop the home run leaderboard. That gives the field implied odds of roughly +125. 

Alvarez has +650 odds to finish with the most homers, while Betts (+750) and Alonso (+950) trail closely behind. However, this market isn’t available in every state yet, so bettors may have to settle for betting on Judge to win MVP if you believe he’ll lead the league in homers. There will likely be a direct correlation between those two honors for Judge this season. 

Trout, who has never topped MLB in home runs across his illustrious career, has the fifth-best odds at +1800. That’s also despite a potential stay on the injured list in the coming days. 

It’s hard to believe, but the last time a Yankees player won the AL MVP was Alex Rodriguez back in 2007. However, Judge is the favorite to end that 14-year drought, and if he keeps playing the way he has over the first two months of the season, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to overtake him in the betting odds.