Aaron Judge is going to get paid. MLB Trade Rumors estimates that he will earn a $332, eight year (AAV: $41.5 million) deal. The Yankees have competition too: the Giants and Dodgers have plenty of payroll space, and Mookie Betts has already offered to move to second to clear an outfield spot for him.
It doesn’t take much searching to find a graveyard of bad contracts given to big-time sluggers like Judge. Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera were arguably better career hitters than Judge, but spent most of the last decade as aging albatrosses.
Judge’s Baseball Reference similar batters don’t inspire a ton of confidence either. None of these players were productive deep into their 30s.
That said, I’m comfortable giving Judge a ton of money. Here’s why:
Aaron Judge Just Had The Best Season of All Time
Okay, maybe this point is obvious. Aaron Judge is really good. He just hit 62 home runs in a highly competitive, low offense year. Arguably, he is coming off the best season of all time.
When Judge first burst into the majors, everyone’s big concern was his strikeout rate. Sure, he hit the ball hard, but he also struck out over 30% of the time. While he was effective, the concern was that he couldn’t be a consistently elite hitter without making more contract.
Somewhere around the pandemic, Judge improved his strikeout rate considerably. Now he’s striking out just about 25% of the time, barely above the league average. He now sets up as far away from the plate as possible, using his long reach to cover both the outside and inside pitch.
Judge hasn’t shown any sign of decline, unlike Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera at the same age. He will eventually decline, but I don’t think there’s any reason to expect it to begin right away. We shouldn’t expect a repeat of The Best Season of All Time, but I personally expect Judge to be better in 2023 than he was in 2018-2021.
Robo Umpires Are Coming
MLB is testing out two systems in Triple-A in 2023: one replaces umpires with a computer entirely, while the other gives teams a limited number of challenges to balls and strikes throughout the game. My guess is that the latter ends up in MLB pretty soon; maybe as early as 2024.
Any Yankee fan knows that Aaron Judge will be a huge beneficiary of robotic umpires:
How much will Judge benefit from a fair strike zone? It’s hard to tell. The Yankees have complained about it for years, but Judge still loses a lot of balls to bad umpiring. Pitchers understand this advantage and throw him more strikes. Judge knows the problem and swings at more borderline low pitches. After the rule change, Judge can reliably take more pitches out of the zone while pitchers will be forced to throw in the zone. The difference could be pretty huge, and provide a real buffer against Judge’s inevitable mid-30s decline.
The Shift is Going Away
The players that will benefit the most from the shift going away are left-handed batters. I’m sure Anthony Rizzo is rejoicing right now. While Judge may be famous for hitting home runs all over the field, he’s a dead pull hitter on ground balls and line drives:
Judge hits ground balls so hard that fielder don’t have a lot of time to move around and catch it. With only two infielders on the left side, Judge is going to get a few extra hits. If he earns his paycheck, it will always be from home runs, but a few extra singles will count on the margins.
Judge is More Athletic than Other Sluggers
Pujols and Miguel Cabrera are big, slow first basemen. Aaron Judge played a solid center field for most of the 2022 season. He’ll go back to right field for the foreseeable future. Since 2019, he’s been one of the very best players in the majors at that position:
Judge will continue to provide a lot of value on defense for the foreseeable future. Even if he declines a lot, he has a lot of room to decline before becoming a negative defensive contributor. Contrast that with Albert Pujols, who was worth -7 wins on defense at first during the life of his Angels contract.
Furthermore, Judge is a good defender and baserunner because he is more athletic than a lot of big sluggers. I think that’s a good sign that that his skills will stay strong into his 30s.
There Aren’t A Ton of Other Players to Spend Money On
I was upset when the Yankees passed on Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Both reached free agency at a freakishly young age for the majors. Like Judge, most free agents are available to the Yankees only after their prime years are almost over. The Yankees should have jumped at the opportunity to add elite young talent to their roster. But that ship has sailed.
If you peer out into the next few years of free agencies, there is only one player on the level of Harper and Machado set to become an elite free agent: Juan Soto will hit the market after the 2024 season at the age of 26. The Yankees should be all-in on Soto if he hits free agency, but the Padres also have two years to sign him to an extension.
Other than Soto, I’m not sure where the Yankees spend their money if not on Judge. The top free agents this offseason are Trea Turner and Carlos Correa, but neither fit the Yankee roster well. Rafael Devers is an intriguing option after the 2023 season, but he's also an extension candidate. The Yankees would probably end up spending the $40 million on a bunch of mid-tier free agents, or not spend it at all.
Economists have a concept called the “auction winner’s curse.” If a lot of people are bidding on an auction and the highest bidder wins, the auction winner places the highest value on an item. As the outlier, they are probably wrong about how valuable an item is. In baseball, the team that values a free agent the most will probably pay more than he is worth during the life of the contract.
But the auction winner’s curse assumes that an item is equally valuable to every bidder. Aaron Judge is the face of the Yankees. He’s an amazing ambassador for the team. He’s the leader of the clubhouse. He came up with the Yankees. Without Judge, the Yankees are probably not winning the AL East in 2023, but are strong contenders with him. He’s probably more valuable to the team than any other. I want to watch Aaron Judge in pinstripes for the next eight years, even if the contract might not make strict economic sense.