The pain has only just begun for Yankees fans.
Aaron Judge, fittingly, was their last hope this season. The man who hit 62 home runs, the leader of the clubhouse, the face of the franchise and free-agent-to-be, stepped to the plate facing fearful odds.
Ninth inning, two outs, down a run, facing a team that had beaten the Yankees three in a row to begin the American League Championship Series and eight of 10 on the year.
Aaron Judges’ Yankees suffered postseason humiliation as they were swept in the ALCS
After the greatest contract walk year in MLB history, the Yankees cannot afford to let Judge go
The Houston Astros advanced to the World Series after completing a four-game ALCS sweep
Judge had completed the seemingly impossible already this year when No. 62 landed 391ft from home plate in Arlington, Texas. But with New York’s spluttering season reaching its final breath, even he could not resuscitate them. He grounded softly back to Houston Astros pitcher Ryan Pressly, who flipped the ball to first and that was that.
The Yankees, who at one point this year were 56-20 and eyeing single-season win records, came up with nothing. No wins in the ALCS, no pennant, no World Series crown for the 13th straight year, and now no control over their talisman.
And after the greatest contract walk year in MLB history, the Yankees cannot afford to let Judge go.
Their offer will need to be a fair way higher than the seven-year, $213.5 million deal that Judge rejected before this season began, betting that he could produce a campaign as singular as this.
The presumptive AL MVP winner led his league in home runs, runs, RBI, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, extra-base hits, total bases and wins above replacement, and was four hits shy of becoming the first Yankee to win a Triple Crown.
He stole 16 bases, played a strong center and right field, and outpaced his competitors by a laughable margin – the only hitter within 20 home runs of Judge this season was Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber on 46.
No Yankee has ever left the franchise the same winter that they won an MVP award, and it has been 30 years since any player did it – when Barry Bonds swapped Pittsburgh for San Francisco after the second of his seven NL awards.
But it’s not just what Judge can do that means Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner must open his checkbook wide this off-season. It’s what the rest of the team cannot.
After the All-Star Break, Judge hit an absurd .349 with a 1.286 OPS, 29 home runs and 61 RBI in just 68 games.
The rest of the Yankees combined to hit .223 with a .652 OPS. No99 was on a historic run but the Yankees still went 35-35 after the break, and there is a genuine possibility that he was the only reason they won the division title, avoiding one of the most humiliating collapses in recent memory.
Will that get any better next year without him? Will the likes of Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Harrison Bader be able to fill the 6ft 7in, 282lb hole in their lineup? Of course not.
The Yankees’ loss means Aaron Judge’s future is uncertain after his historic season
The Yankees, on true talent, are probably not the .500 club that finished this season, but they are definitely not the 120-win pace they produced in the first half, and in the postseason some alarming weaknesses were exposed in their lineup against strong pitching staff.
They scraped past Cleveland, the youngest team in the majors, and were then completely dismantled by Houston, who eliminated the Yankees from the play-offs for the fourth time in eight years en route to yet another World Series appearance.
The whimper that was the Yankees’ play-off push offered a glimpse into what 2023 could be like without Judge. He had just five hits in 36 at-bats, striking out 15 times.
Afterwards, he was hardly reassuring about his future. Asked if he wanted to stay, he said: ‘I’ve been clear on that since I first wore the pinstripes.
‘Now I’m a free agent, and we’ll see what happens.’
Ironically, it was star slugger and record-breaker Aaron Judge who was last at bat for Yankees
So how much is Judge worth? It depends on who you are asking. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has said there is a ‘pot of gold’ awaiting his Judge, but you could cite his age, 30, his relatively poor record of staying on the field in his career (although he has produced near-full campaigns each of the last two years) and the fact that he will almost certainly never have a season like this again.
Judge should still get offers in the $250-275 million range over six to eight years. But the Yankees’ deficiencies became so glaring from July onwards that – even discounting their financial heft – they should be willing to go further than most.
They won’t be short of competition, however, and the list of contenders for Judge’s signature is one worst nightmare after the other for Yankees fans. It is probably too soon for them to bear thinking about Judge signing across town this winter, but Mets owner Steve Cohen has a bottomless pit of money, a couple of outfield positions to fill and a fanbase to satiate after their own disappointing play-off exit . One relief for Yankees fans is that Cohen will also need to re-sign Jacob DeGrom and rebuild almost all of his pitching staff.
Judge hit his 62nd home run of the season to become the all-time leader earlier this month
Judge surpassed Roger Maris’ American League single-season home run record on Oct 4
The Boston Red Sox might be an even worse outcome than the Mets for the Yankees. Even with the new tweaked schedule, Judge would be on the other side of the sport’s biggest rivalry 13 times a season, and almost always in primetime with the whole country watching. If shortstop Xander Bogaerts walks away – and even if he doesn’t – Judge can be the new star in Boston.
The front-runners if he does leave New York appear to be the San Francisco Giants, despite a horror regression that saw them go from 107 wins in 2021 to 81 this year. Judge grew up a Giants fan in Linden, California – a short hop over the Diablo mountains from the Bay Area – and as a teenager turned down offers to play tight end for UCLA, Notre Dame and Stanford to join the Fresno State baseball program.
Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has a huge amount of payroll space to fill, with $104m on the books for next year, $28.5m the year after and only Wilmer Flores’ $3.5m player option for 2025. Giants fans were furious they did did not capitalize last winter on their first division title in nine years, and it is now or never if they are to dethrone the LA Dodgers long-term.
The Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs on Sunday night and fans are calling for change
Speaking of whom, when are the Dodgers ever out on a big free agent? Even after signing Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman to long-term deals, the NL West champions need a two-hole hitter to replace the departing Trea Turner, and an outfielder to replace Cody Bellinger – who will either leave this off-season by being non -tendered, or as a free agent after 2023.
Then there’s the rest of the big-market teams – the Phillies, the Angels, the Cardinals, the Rangers – and the fact that no team will be fully out on a player who captivated the sport the entire year.
The season did not end in glory for Judge, but he’ll be a winner this winter all the same.
It’s up to the Yankees to decide whether they want to be one too.
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