NEW YORK — Years ago, a wise person once said: “Baseball is the greatest game of all in spite of the people who run it.”
This has never been truer than this weekend when, despite Rob Manfred’s Apple streaming MLB greed grab that deprived most of the country from TV viewership Friday night, Aaron Judge and Albert Pujols calmly went about their business of cleansing baseball’s soul from the steroids plague that previous commissioner Bud Selig took too long to get a handle on.
Suddenly, and somewhat unexpectedly, baseball has found itself with a season of celebration of not one but two “clean” sluggers closing in on home run milestones — Judge breaking Roger Maris’ 61-year-old American League record of 61 homers and Pujols becoming only the fourth player in history with 700 career homers.
And wouldn’t you know, Pujols hit his two homers Friday night to join the exclusive club in the Cardinals’ game that was also exclusively Apple-streamed — so hardly anyone witnessed it unless you were in the ballpark. Shame on baseball.
While Pujols’ feat will be his last hurrah as he heads into retirement, Judge is potentially looking at becoming the highest paid position player in the game after not only breaking Maris’ record but putting together one of the greatest seasons in baseball history. Going into the weekend, he led the AL in batting and the majors in homers, RBIs, runs, OBP, slugging, OPS and total bases. His 60 homers being 20 more than runner-up Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies.
Putting that in perspective with some of the other greatest seasons since World War II:
In Frank Robinson’s 1966 AL MVP year for the Orioles, he won the Triple Crown (.316/49 HR/122 RBIs) and also led the league in runs (122), OBP (.410), slugging (.637) and OPS (1.047). But Mickey Mantle’s 1956 Triple Crown MVP year was even better as he led the majors in batting (.353), homers (52), RBIs (130), runs (132), slugging (.705), OPS (1.169) and total bases (376). In 1949, Ted Williams won his second AL MVP award with a monster season in which he hit .343 and led the AL in homers (43), RBIs (159), runs (150), OBP (.490), slugging (.650), OPS (1.141) and total bases (368).
There is no question Judge’s historical season in which he bet on himself has earned him a substantial increase from the seven-year/$213.5 million ($30.5M AAV) he turned down from the Yankees back in April. The question is how substantial? Judge, in so many words, told the Yankees he felt he should be paid commensurate to Mike Trout’s major league high $35.54 million AAV for position players. At this point, that’s probably not going to be a problem for the Yankees, so the battle is going to come down to the number of years.
For it doesn’t matter how many homers Judge winds up hitting, he will still be a 31-year-old player next year and, as the Yankees (and all the other clubs as well) are fully aware of, contracts of eight or more years to players 31 or older are doomed to ill fortune — the two classic examples being Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year/$248 million signed with the Tigers in 2016 and Pujols’ $10-year/$240 million with the Angels in 2011.
Cabrera, who never again hit over .300 or drove in more than 75 runs after 2016, is staggering to the finish line. Pujols, a .328 lifetime hitter when he defected from the Cardinals to Angels in 2012, never again hit .300, his career average having fallen to .296, and had only three 100-RBI seasons in his nine years with the Angels.
More than likely, given the analytic philosophy throughout baseball about long-term contracts to players in their 30s, the Yankees will be bidding against themselves for Judge. The teams that can afford to go toe-to-toe with them either have expensive free agents of their own they need to re-sign (Dodgers and Trea Turner, Red Sox and Xander Bogaerts) or, in the case of the Giants and Cubs, have too many other holes to fill than to tie up $37 million of payroll on one player in his 30s.
My guess is the Yankees re-sign Judge for somewhere between $260-$300 million, depending on the years — while resigned to the fact it will very likely wind up being the worst contract they ever gave a player.
