Predicting how much Aaron Judge likely to earn from new contract 2023 season

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Aaron Judge has had a great season till now and it is going to be historic for MLB. It would be hard to do better for many in the years to come. The star of the New York Yankees and frontrunner for AL MVP is finishing up a season in which he is trying to win the Triple Crown and break Roger Maris’ American League single-season home run record.

And Aron Judge is doing this right before he will become a free agent. Judge’s 60th home run on Tuesday night has set him up for a huge, huge paycheck.

After declining to sign a seven-year, $213.5 million extension prior to this season, he had said:

“Very few people get this opportunity to talk extension. Me getting this opportunity is something special and I appreciate the Yankees wanting to do that. But I don’t mind going into free agency … At the end of this year, I’ll talk to 30 teams. The Yankees will be one of those teams.”

We know that the Yankees offered seven years and $213.5 million because the team’s general manager, Brian Cashman, held a press conference to talk about the offer. Judge didn’t seem to like that. “That was something I thought was private between my team and the Yankees,” he once said. Reports claimed the slugger asked for 9–10 years at $36 million per year.

In spring training, the Yankees made a fair offer. Now, almost six months later, Judge has done what once seemed impossible – he has made more money. Teams pay for how well someone will do in the future, not how well they did in the past. But with his performance, Aaron Judge is forcing teams to look at his 2022 performance and then bid. The perceived ceiling for him is going to be a record too. He can no longer “just” have MVP-level seasons. He has the potential to make history.

The Yankees already making a move, at least in their intent to sign Aaron Judge. Their president Randy Levine recently said:

“We think Aaron Judge is an all-time Yankee. We think he’s a great player, beyond a great player. We think he’s a great person. That’s why we offered him the highest position player contract in the history of the Yankees. I admire him that he went out and took this upon his shoulders and we’ll sit down with him and hopefully figure it out. I think there’s no question we want him back and no question we value him.”

How has Judge’s season changed his chances of making money? Well, a lot. That much we know. After the season he is having, let’s try to figure out what his next contract might look like.

The record offer scenario for Aaron Judge

The Yankees come up with seven years and $213.5 million. If agreed, this would have made Aaron Judge get $30.5 million a year. He would have the second-highest contract in MLB history for an outfielder. Let’s see who are other outfielders to force teams to break their banks.

The Yankees and Aaron Judge almost went to an arbitration hearing earlier this year. They settled on a $19 million salary, which was in the middle of their $21 million and $17 million figures. According to the New York Post, the Yankees were willing to give Judge the $21 million salary he wanted in 2022 as part of the extension. The whole deal lasted eight years and cost a total of $234.5 million.

Overall, the Yankees offered Aaron Judge the second-highest annual salary and the fifth-largest guarantee ever given to an outfielder. Still, neither the annual value nor the total guarantee would have been the most money in the history of franchises.

Gerrit Cole owns the Yankees ($36 million a year and $324 million altogether). Also, Judge’s contract would have been better than Alex Rodriguez’s 2008-17 contract in terms of annual salary ($27.5 million) but not in terms of total guarantee ($275 million).

So, the Yankees did offer to make Judge the third highest-paid outfielder. But they didn’t make him the highest-paid Yankee, either annually or in total dollars. Even though he was a homegrown superstar, he would have still looked up to Cole.

Possible Duration of New Contract

Judge’s earning potential is limited by his age and his history of injuries. Aaron Judge will be 31 shortly after Opening Day in 2023, so his next contract will probably buy a lot of decline years. That’s how long-term deals usually work. Teams don’t mind bad years at the end as long as the good years are up front, and Judge is the best hitter in the sport right now.

Concerns about Judge’s durability come from the fact that he only played in 242 of the 384 possible regular season games from 2018 to 2020, or 63 percent. But with the exception of a 10-day stay on the COVID list last August, Aaron Judge has been healthy for the last two years, so those injury worries are pretty far in the past. The most recent information is a major player who posts every day.

The Yankees know more about Judge’s health than anyone else. They looked at his age and his history of injuries and were still happy to sign him through his 37th season. And the player’s age is the one to pay attention to when looking at the length of a player’s contract. Here’s how long some star players’ long-term contracts are:

• Through age 39: Mookie Betts
• Through age 38: Bryce Harper, Mike Trout
• Through age 37: Gerrit Cole, Francisco Lindor, Corey Seager, Giancarlo Stanton
• Through age 36: Nolan Arenado
• Through age 35: Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr.

Julio Rodrguez’s new deal could keep him with the Mariners until he is 38 years old. Juan Soto turned down an offer to stay until the age of 38. It looks like 38 is the lucky number. That’s the age when the best players in the game, like Betts, Trout, and others, are either signed through or expected to be signed through.

The Yankees offered Aaron Judge a seven-year contract that would cover his seasons from ages 31 to 37. To be honest, the Yankees would probably get off easy if all they had to do was to add one more year to cover his 38th year. Given how well his season is going, Aaron has all the power he needs to ask for a contract that lasts until he’s 39, like Betts’.

Similar star players signed contracts through the 38-39 season as free agents or when they were very close to becoming free agents. Even though he’ll be 31 for most of 2023, Aaron Judge and his agents have enough reason to try to get him at least an eight-year contract this winter that will take him through age 38, if not a nine-year contract that will take him through age 39.

Aaron Judge Average annual value

This offseason, the Mets sealed a deal with Max Scherzer and it raised the average annual income bar in MLB. Here are the baseball contracts with the highest average annual salaries:

Just like that, the top players’ salaries went from about $35 million per year to more than $40 million per year. Scherzer’s record-breaking salary of $43.33 million per year was part of a three-year contract, but someone will eventually get $40 million per year on a long-term deal. Why shouldn’t Aaron Judge? He’s just as good a candidate as anyone else, especially if he wins the Triple Crown and/or sets a new AL home run record for a single season.

It’s hard to imagine Judge signing for less than Cole’s $36 million per year at this point. Star players already get more than $40 million per season, so Judge’s request wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. It might not happen, but it wouldn’t be crazy for his camp to bring up that number during contract talks. The best players in the league now get paid that much.

Judge’s pay is no longer based on how much other outfielders make. He has earned the right to be paid the same as the best players in the sport, no matter what position they play. That means Scherzer, Cole, Correa, and Rendon are all benchmarks. Judge can say, “I’m better than them, so pay me more.”

The Marquee value

This is hard to measure from the outside, but it does happen, and it goes both ways. Aaron Judge is valuable to the Yankees in ways that go beyond what he does on the field. He fills seats, boosts TV ratings, sells stuff, and does everything else. By the end of this season, the Yankees will have to pay him about $35 million in salary, and he has brought in a lot more money for the team.

Also, being a Yankee helps Aaron Judge. It means endorsement opportunities (Judge had more endorsement deals than any other player in 2021) and all the other benefits that come with being a famous athlete in New York. The New York market has advantages that don’t exist anywhere else. With all due respect, a star Yankee is more famous than a star of any other team.

When the Yankees made their extension offer, they took Judge’s star power into account. They’ll do it again after the season, and Aaron Judge will think about it while he’s taking calls. Because there are so many great opportunities off the field, it might make more sense financially to stay with the Yankees and take, say, $1 million less per year than to join another team. The Marquee value is a major consideration.

An opt-out clause

The Yankees made the opt-out clause popular when they gave CC Sabathia the chance to leave the team after three years in his seven-year, $161 million contract. Sabathia later leveraged that opt-out into an extension. Since then, opting out has become very common. If you want a top free agent, you might have to give him the chance to leave.

It is possible for Judge to opt out, but because of his age, it is less appealing to him and has less value. If you let Judge out of his next contract, say, two years in, he would be able to sign with another team before his 33rd season. At that age, players rarely get paid a lot. Judge might be an exception, but it’s likely that whatever is left on his next contract will be worth more than any new money he could get at 33.

Because of this, an opt-out is an easy concession for interested teams to make. If Aaron Judge wants to become a free agent again at age 33 or 34 (or later), he should be able to. The market isn’t kind to players of that age. J.D. Martinez had a great run from 2018 to 21 and still turned down multiple opt-outs. This could be a way for him to get out of his deep decline years.

The X-factor

At the end of the day, players usually take the best offer. They choose the deal that is bigger than the others. And all it takes to get that crazy contract offer is a general manager or owner who is desperate. Robinson Canó is the best example of this from the past few years. In 2013, the Mariners were so eager to get back into the playoffs that they gave Canó a 10-year deal worth $240 million. The next best offer came from the Yankees. Seven years and $175 million went by. The high bid won the bidding war.

The Los Angeles Angels are for sale, and who’s to say that the next owner won’t want to make a big splash? The Nationals are also on the market. It might not be smart to spend a lot of money on Judge so soon after trading Soto, especially given the state of the team, but who knows? The next owner might want to make news like the Padres did when they got new owners in 2015.

The Giants too want Aaron Judge. The Red Sox can’t be ruled out from the competition. The Mets may pitch for him to trouble the Yankees.

Aaron Judge wants the biggest contract possible and won’t take a short-term deal like Correa’s that just puts things off for another year. There’s not much chance that Judge will raise his free agent stock next year. This is almost certainly his best chance to make a huge amount of money, so a team needs to make a crazy offer to have him.

In the end, Judge’s chances of coming back to the Yankees will go down once he becomes a free agent and can sign with any team. At that point, any team can enter the bidding and, at the very least, force the Yankees to offer more. And Aaron Judge seems ready to join in. He didn’t rule out signing with the Red Sox recently. Once Judge is a free agent, everything changes. If Freddie Freeman can leave the Braves, then Judge has every right to do the same.

Who is the best for Aaron Judge?

The Yankees’ offer was for seven years and $30.5 million per year, from 2023 to 2029. Now, it looks like they might need eight years and $37 million per season from 2023 to 2030 ($296 million total) just to get a chance to talk about a contract. That will keep Judge playing until he is 38, just like Harper and Trout, and his $37 million annual salary is higher than Cole’s, which was the highest till now.

A hometown discount is always possible, but the fact that Aaron Judge turned down $213.5 million in spring training shows he wants to make as much money as he can and is willing to bet on himself. Judge is almost free to sign with any team he wants, so why wouldn’t he try it out and see what’s out there? Even if the plan is to stay in New York in the end, there’s no reason not to look around.

There’s no doubt that Judge is better off as a Yankee, but the Yankees need Aaron Judge more than the player needs them. He is by far their best player on the field and their most popular person outside of it. The whole thing can’t be replaced. This winter, there won’t be any other free agent players who are as valuable to the organization as this one.

The Yankees get a player when they really want him. Three years ago, they offered Cole a deal for seven years, but when the Angels and Dodgers also offered seven years, they raised it to eight. When the Angels and Dodgers offered eight years, the Yankees asked for nine. The point is that when the Yankees want a player, they do whatever it takes to get him, and everything points to the fact that they want to keep Aaron Judge.

The Cubs, Mets, and Red Sox may increase the contract value for Aaron Judge. This could give him the power to get the Yankees to sign him for a ninth year. He may not get $40 million per year but free agency is unpredictable. This bidding war could end with a deal for nine years and $38 million per year, or $342 million in total. Judge has done that much to make himself a more desirable free agent.

Do you agree with this? Will Aaron Judge stay in New York? How much do you think he will get a year?

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