The Yankees’ season is officially over, and that could mean the Aaron Judge era in New York has also come to a close.
The Houston Astros swept away the Yankees with a 6-5 win Sunday night in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series.
Once the World Series concludes and the new league year begins, all eyes will go toward Judge. The likely AL MVP winner is about to become a free agent for the first time in his career, and he couldn’t have picked a better year to hit the market. Judge, of course, just set the American League single-season record for home runs and came close to winning the Triple Crown. It will go down as one of the greatest offensive seasons of all time, and that’s the springboard he’ll use into free agency.
Whether the Yankees are willing to lose a player of that caliber remains to be seen. In the immediate aftermath of Judge’s season (and contract) coming to an end, the New York outfielder sounded like someone committed to seeing things through the long term in the Bronx.
“It’s never, but I think it will definitely make, when we finally get there and secure this thing, I think it’ll make it a lot sweeter going through the tough times like this, that’s for sure,” Judge told reporters after Game 4, per video from SNY.
The big question: What exactly does Judge mean when he uses the word “we” about finally winning the World Series? Yankees fans hoping for the best obviously would read that as “we, the Yankees.” Then again, it could be Judge taking a very political approach and leaving himself open to being back in New York.
Or maybe he just said some words that don’t really mean anything because he’s a professional athlete who has to answer questions after playing games.
If the Yankees do pony up the money to bring back the 30-year-old Judge, they’ll likely have to shell out north of $300 million in order to do so. Ideally, they’d probably like to see a little more postseason production if that’s the case. Judge had a brutal postseason, going 5-for-36 with just two home runs and three runs batted in while striking out 15 times. If you remove a small five-game showing in 2018 when he went 8-for-19, Judge is a .184 career playoff hitter with 10 home runs and 21 RBIs in 39 games.
Then again, if the Yankees don’t bring back Judge, the playoffs are no sure thing, either.
