The Yankees Did What They Had to Do

Well, here’s a story with a lesson. The Yankees couldn’t let Aaron Judge go. No way. They couldn’t let it happen. They’re the New York Yankees, for crying out loud. In their long history, they have NEVER lost a superstar they desperately wanted to keep.

That’s not an exaggeration. When you look at most of the great Yankees throughout history — with the obvious exception of Babe Ruth — here’s what you find: The greatest Yankees spend their ENTIRE CAREERS with the New York Yankees.

Joe DiMaggio — always a Yankee.

Mickey Mantle — always a Yankee.

Derek Jeter — always a Yankee.

Lou Gehrig … Mariano Rivera … Whitey Ford … Bill Dickey … Phil Rizzuto … Earle Combs … the Yankees have nine Hall of Famers who played their entire careers in pinstripes. There are only 55 such modern players in the Hall of Fame, so roughly one-sixth of them are Yankees.

They couldn’t break this cycle with Aaron Judge. He’s everything to this team and this organization. He’s the most important Yankees player since Jeter, for sure, but I think you could go back even further, to Don Mattingly maybe, or maybe even back to Mickey Mantle himself.

Look: What even is this Yankees team? It’s hard to tell. They’ve obviously been very good, of course, but they haven’t been to the World Series since 2009, and they haven’t been able to beat the Astros, and they’re this odd mishmash of ideas.

They’ve spent a lot of money on other teams’ stars, such as Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole and Josh Donaldson and Anthony Rizzo and D.J. LeMahieu and Masahiro Tanaka. That’s been a mixed bag. They’ve also dedicated a lot of resources to developing their own talent. That too has been a mixed bag, with a few success stories mixed in like Gary Sanchez, Miguel Andujar and Greg Bird.

They say New York is a town that revolves around stars, and I believe that.

This Yankees team has good players. But they have one star.

Only one star.

If you were making a movie poster of this team, it would look something like this:

Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

Like, you wouldn’t even know if the movie was called THE NEW YORK YANKEES or AARON JUDGE. That’s how big a star Aaron Judge has become.

And yet this team dickered around with Judge, lowballed him ($213 million for seven years), then bizarrely made their bad offer public. I still don’t know what the Yankees were thinking on that one. They said that they went public for “transparency purposes,” which you know is a whole lot of hooey. My best guess is they did it to mildly embarrass Judge for not accepting so much money … maybe they thought that would bring him back to the negotiating table. My second-best guess is they did it to show their fans that they really did make a good-faith effort … you know, in case Judge left.*

*This, I think, was the Red Sox strategy before they shamefully let Mookie Betts go. I don’t have any inside information here, but I honestly don’t think the Red Sox made a serious offer to keep Betts. I think they made various lowball offers and when Betts turned those down, what do you know, whispers suddenly circulated that Betts wanted out and that he wouldn’t sign with the Red Sox at any price. Then, voila, the Red Sox traded him so they could get under the luxury tax threshold. “It’s just business,” Betts says. “It is what it is.”

Anyway, Judge turned the whole thing around by having a season for the ages and breaking Roger Maris’ American League home run record. The Yankees’ season ended with them getting outgunned and outmanned by the Astros again. Then Judge began listening to teams like the Giants and Padres that were willing to pay him in cartoon bags of money. Already there are reports out there that San Diego offered Judge more than $400 million over 10 years. I imagine the Giants’ offer was at least that too.

I mentioned at the top that there’s a lesson here. And it’s a delightful one: DO NOT TRY TO SHORTCHANGE YOUR MARQUEE PLAYERS.

Because, inevitably, the Yankees had no choice but to go big. They are paying Judge $360 million over the next nine years, $40 million per season, and they’re lucky he didn’t hold out for even more. And, look, let’s be blunt: The deal probably won’t end well for New York. Judge turns 31 in April, he’s 6-foot-8 and close to 300 pounds, he’s had injury problems. I don’t think anyone would bet next month’s rent that he will age gracefully.

But this is the thing: The Yankees had to do it. I really believe this: If the Yankees had let Aaron Judge sign somewhere else for more money, in a small way, they would have ceased being the Yankees.