New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman vowed there would be a "pot of gold" for Aaron Judge in the offseason to keep the slugging outfielder in pinstripes after an historic season.
Cashman talked to reporters on Sunday as the team prepared for their American League Division Series matchup against the Cleveland Guardians. Judge broke the American League record for most home runs in a single season with 62 and nearly won the American League Triple Crown. He did it all in the final year of his contract with New York and speculation has run rampant about his future in the Bronx.
Cashman did his best to give Yankees fans some hope that the team will come to the negotiating table with as close to a blank check as possible. He didn’t elaborate on any figures.
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"There’s a pot of gold there," he said, via MLB.com. "It’s yet to be determined how much it weighs, but it’s a pot of gold, no doubt about it. So good for him. It was already a big pot, and obviously it’ll be bigger. He’s put himself in an amazing position to have a lot of choices. Obviously, we’d like to win the day on that discussion. If you need to hear it again, I’ll say it again: of course we’d love to have Aaron Judge back as a New York Yankee."
Cashman added: "I think that history since the ‘70s, and the advent of free agency, shows that players have changed organizations. We always compete to try and keep what we’d like to keep. In some cases we’re successful; other cases, we’re not. We always try to compete and try to take free agents from elsewhere. Sometimes we’ve had a lot of success there, other times we haven’t. It’s part of the market process. That’s all for another day."
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Judge and the contract negotiations with the Yankees came to a screeching halt ahead of Opening Day in April.
Cashman said at the time the team offered him an eight-year contract worth between $230.5 million and $234.5 million, the difference to have been determined in arbitration for this year’s salary.
Judge’s reps were reportedly seeking a nine-year deal and more than Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout makes annually. The sought-after deal would reportedly have been somewhere around $319.6 million in total. Trout makes about $35.5 million annually. He signed a 12-year, $426.5 million deal in 2019.
Yankees chairman Hank Steinbrenner said in July the offer made in the spring was a "very good one."
Now that Judge could be looking at an AL MVP along with the historic record he broke during the season, he could potentially walk to a place where he could feel like he’s most valued. The Boston Red Sox and the San Francisco Giants would be two of the teams potentially in the Judge sweepstakes.
