NEW YORK -- Rookie Aaron Judge was doing his best Derek Jeter impersonation, staying on message to avoid saying anything that could be remotely taken the wrong way.

During Wednesday's pregame after being named the Rookie of the Month, there was Judge being asked by a reporter what the highlight of April was for him.

"Biggest highlight?" the 6-foot-7, 282-pound Judge said with a little chuckle.

He paused, as he often does when answering questions, confident enough to let silence wade in the air and more than willing to search for the right words so as not to say anything uncomfortable.

"I'll have to get back to you on that one," Judge said.

Then, a few hours later, Judge added another highlight, another long home run, and you start to think that this season the highlights might not only end up with the Rookie of the Year Award, but maybe the AL MVP, too. Only Ichiro Suzuki and Fred Lynn have picked up the double in baseball history, but Judge is making it a possibility.

"He's been our everything right now," veteran pitcher CC Sabathia said.

The season is only about 16 percent complete, so there is a lot of time for pitchers to figure out how to solve Judge and make the notion of him as an MVP candidate laughable by October. But that is not close to happening yet.

With his major league-leading 13th homer, a two-run shot in the third off the Blue Jays' Marcus Stroman that was a 426-foot shot to center, Judge is hitting a dinger every 6.54 at-bats, which is on par with Barry Bonds' 6.52 HR/at-bat ratio when he hit 73 long balls in 2001.

His 13 homers in the first 25 games are the most by a rookie in the history of the game. He has six homers in the past six games and 10 in the past 14. He is the seventh player in major league history to hit at least 17 homers in his first 52 games. The other Yankee to do it is Gary Sanchez, who is expected to return to the lineup on Friday at Wrigley Field.

Judge's drive Wednesday was his MLB-leading sixth home run of 425 feet or more, according to ESPN's Stats & Information.

For good measure, Judge recorded the first three-hit game of his young career as well. His seventh-inning, one-out single allowed him to eventually score the tying run as the Yankees went on to win 8-6 over the Blue Jays.

But it's Judge's ability to hit home runs that is making him scary good right now, like Bonds was in 2001. Back then, Judge, who grew up a few hours outside of San Francisco, was a 9-year-old, rushing to his TV to watch each cut Bonds would take.

Now he is the center of the baseball universe. His at-bats are stop-everything events that have spectators breathlessly anticipating what his next highlight might be.

What Judge won't do is get lost in all the hype, even the Jeter comparisons. In an interview with YES Network on Wednesday, Jeter said he was a big fan of Judge's, which Judge took in stride, calling it "special" and "humbling."

Like Jeter, Judge has never seemed overwhelmed by the stage. As a 19-year-old, Jeter made 56 errors in one season in Class A. He had a bad habit of getting his legs crossed when he needed to set to throw. He worked tirelessly on it and was so confident by the time he got to the big leagues, Buck Showalter, his first manager in the majors, suspected at points in his career that Jeter would fool around during warm-ups by displaying his old habit just to chide Showalter when he was managing against the Yankees. The 56 errors are a part of Jeter's lore.

The same might be said one day of Judge's 42 strikeouts in his first 84-at-bats. Despite the inability to make contact, Judge did not act any different last year during his struggles than he has over this first five weeks of this season.

Everything around Judge is changing, beginning with his level of stardom, but he remains the same. He wouldn't give an answer on the biggest highlight so far, but there have been so many it must be hard for him to choose. If this stretch continues, he could join Suzuki and Lynn as the only rookies in baseball history to win the MVP.

There is a long way to go, but with Judge's performance so far in 2017, nothing can be ruled out.