The Yankees have a history of retaining their greats when they were in their prime. If Aaron Judge bucks the trend to leave New York, it could a Day of Judgment for the team. But, in doing so, he won’t be the first.
In the past, Babe Ruth left only when he was beyond his best days, and Yogi Berra, went to play for the Mets only after his 39th birthday. Lou Gehrig left baseball when he was told he had Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Even before free agency, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle played their whole careers for the Yankees. Derek Jeter and Mo Rivera also played their whole careers for the Yankees. Aaron Judge ranks among those immortals.
Robinson Cano was the only star to leave the Yankees as a free agent when he was in his prime. He signed that $240 million, 10-year deal with the Mariners nine years ago, even though the Yankees’ best offer was said to be $175 million for seven years.
Aaron Judge has been a Yankee his whole career, but now there is a real chance that he will leave. He just had one of the finest seasons any New York player has ever had, going back to Ruth and Gehrig. Judge beat Ruth’s best home run season and Roger Maris‘s 61 home runs set in 1961. Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs and won the AL MVP Award. In the last six seasons, he has now hit more than 50 home runs twice, which only Ruth and Mantle did as Yankees.
Alex Rodriguez hit 54 home runs and drove in 156 runs before opting out of his contract during the 2007 World Series. After that, he went to the free agent market. But no one had thought that Rodriguez would leave the Yankees before he signed a new 10-year deal with them. Cano too went to Seattle in 2013 for a contract of a similar length.
Aaron Judge is a notch above Cano. He is of the same class as Jeter and Rivera and remains the face of the Yankees. If he hadn’t hit as well as he did in the second half of the season, the Yankees might have lost the rest of the season badly.
After a year like that, Aaron Judge is now on the market. The San Francisco Giants, who have money to spend, have been wooing him hard. Chris Mullin, a New Yorker who played for the Warriors and made the Hall of Fame and the Dream Team, is one of the people trying to get Judge to move to San Francisco.
“We’ve been waiting for someone to replace Barry Lamar Bonds, and [Judge] is the perfect fit,” Mullin told.
Bonds was the MVP when he left the Pirates in 1992 and became a free agent. The Giants signed him. Then Bonds showed up in San Francisco and won his second straight MVP Award, which was a long time before he got into trouble for using drugs to help him play better. He became the star player for the Giants and was a great all-around player like Willie Mays used to be for the Giants. Does Aaron Judge want to repeat that?
Now, after all this time, the Giants plainly believe they can find a successor for the young Bonds if they can persuade Aaron Judge, who grew up a couple of hours away in Linden, to leave the Yankees.
Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ president of baseball operations, recently said:
“I think from a financial standpoint there’s nobody that would be out of our capability. And then it’ll just be a question of whether there’s mutual interest and how we put together the best possible team.”
Last spring, the Yankees had the field to themselves when they offered Judge a contract extension for $213.5 million over seven years. This was on top of the $17 million he was already getting for 2022. Aaron Judge said no and chose to let things play out. Then everyone saw how he had really worked things out. On the day Judge was named the Most Valuable Player in the American League, Brian Cashman said the Yankees had made a new offer to Judge and were now “on the clock.”
“We’re not messing around,” Cashman said.
No one has said yet that the Giants have given Aaron Judge a formal offer. No one knows how much Judge is being offered by the Yankees right now. At this point, no one knows if the Dodgers might be interested in Judge. It’s a well-known fact that money has never been an issue for the Dodgers, though. But the Yankees hold an advantage over both teams from California.
Aaron Judge, the best player on the Yankees and the most popular player in baseball this year, is now a free agent. Fans are hoping that he will not be the best-ever Yankee to depart. He might, though. When he left the Yankees for the Mariners, Canó was a big player for them. Not like this.
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