Hal Steinbrenner must ask for face-to-face meeting with Aaron Judge
Hal Steinbrenner needs to reach out to Aaron Judge. Not Brian Cashman. Not an intermediary. This is a job for the Yankees owner.
He should tell Judge to decompress after a disappointing end to a season that taxed the slugger mentally and physically as he carried a franchise and pursued history. But Steinbrenner should also tell Judge he would like to meet in person sooner than later. They both live in Tampa, so the logistics are not an issue.
Once together, Steinbrenner should ask Judge face-to-face with no other prying eyes and ears — “Do you really want to be a Yankee for the rest of your career more than anything else?”
If Judge says, “Yes,” then Steinbrenner should tell him, “great then bring in your agent, I have my guys outside and let’s not leave the room without reaching an agreement.” Because this is what the “quiet period” between the end of the regular season to the conclusion of the World Series is supposed to be about. There is, by rule, no tampering allowed in this window (fill in your own laugh track). This is when a player’s current team is permitted a final exclusive period to retain their player before the sport-wide seduction ensues.
So this would be a moment for Steinbrenner to essentially make this case: “The bid we made in spring [seven years at $213.5 million] is irrelevant to the negotiation now because your 2022 season takes you to a different financial stratosphere. We are here to get a deal done understanding that. If this is the resolution you seek, then let’s avoid all the nastiness and hard feelings that emerge in free agency by both of us having to negotiate with potential replacements.
“You don’t want to read we are talking to Carlos Correa, Trea Turner and Brandon Nimmo and we don’t want to read you are talking to the Giants, Dodgers and Mets. Freddie Freeman wanted to stay a Brave last offseason and the Braves insisted they wanted to retain their championship first baseman and face of the franchise. But the fog of free-agent war that sets — the agendas, innuendo, outside noise — led to a nasty divorce.
“We want to avoid that. The fringe benefit of doing it now is that we know we are going to spend a lot more to retain you than we budgeted seven months ago. So if we can do this before the free-agent market opens, knowing your salary will provide us greater clarity of what else we can do. And if your goals are what you have said the whole time — to stay a Yankee and win championships — this would help in building this best title contender.”
This should be Steinbrenner’s face-to-face pitch.
Should Judge accept to even meet with the Yankees owner before the bazaar opens? He has every right to reject that. A large swath of players do not reach six years of major league service. The honor of doing so is for the first time as a pro you get to be bid upon in an open market. Judge stared down the Yankees in spring believing their bid was insufficient. He turned down guaranteed multi-generational wealth. He gambled and responded with one of the greatest seasons in history — one that undoubtedly enriched the Yankees via attendance and TV ratings.
Judge could (and probably will) decide you don’t run the first 26 miles of a marathon and then stop before completing the final 0.2 of a mile. He endured the service time and won a hefty gamble. He has earned the right to discover what 29 other organizations will do for him. Just how much wine, dine and dineros are there for him? Steve Cohen showed last offseason, for example, a willingness to far outdo the previous highest annual average value ($36 million per for Gerrit Cole) to do a shorter deal that paid Max Scherzer $43.3 million per for three years.
The Dodgers have discussed such structures before with, among others, Bryce Harper and did something like it with Trevor Bauer. Could they or the Giants or the Mets or some other club offer Judge $50 million per for four or five seasons? Could some organization desperate to become relevant again — especially at the turnstiles — give Judge $400 million for 10 years?
Judge has done the time to find out. He gambled on himself. The payoff to that gamble has arrived and he can tell the Yankees to get in line with every other franchise now. In this way, Judge is hard to read. He has said all the right things about the Yankees and their fans. But he also has made it clear he is open to free agency. Is that just a script his agents have provided to make sure he does not provide the Yankees any leverage?
For example, I never for one second thought Derek Jeter would ever leave — that no matter how bruising negotiations became he would always find his way back to the Yankees. I have had more than one second of wonder if Judge would prefer to be closer to his northern California home or simply will allow the largest bidder to win. My inclination is he wants to stay and that Steinbrenner does not want him to leave. But it is an inclination in trying to read the Sphinx-like Judge.
But if both sides truly want the marriage to persist, shouldn’t they give this one more shot before each starts dating other people? This is not normally the Yankees’ free-agent blueprint. They usually tell even those they want to find their market and then the Yankees swoop in and beat it. But they already were un-Yankee-like in trying to ink Judge before his walk year.
So maybe the Yankees will be different here also. Or, perhaps, the Yankees have a longer memory than just 62 homers. They know Judge missed a lot of time injured before the last two seasons. They know he will play at 31 next year. They know that as great as 2022 was, Judge just had his best season. History screams that is not repeatable. Factor it all in and what is the right price — and for how long — essentially all the worries the Yankees expressed when formulating their spring extension offer? Do the Yankees want to wait to see if the industry has all the same trepidations and Judge’s market does not soar as expected?
Except Steinbrenner does not want to lose this player on or off the field. So he should get face to face with Judge and show his seriousness by offering eight years at $296 million — the $37 million average topping the Yankees record of Cole and Mike Trout’s $35.54 million position player record. If Judge does not even see that as the ante to exceed $300 million or perhaps climb to $40 million per year, then so be it. Both sides should then do what they must in the marketplace. Let the bad will of dating others begin.
But don’t the owner and slugger — if this is really what they want — have to try one last time before a cold war starts?
