Will Aaron Judge spurn Yankees and sign with Giants?

SAN DIEGO – The Yankees were an organization at best in limbo and at worst in disarray Tuesday night waiting for word from free agent Aaron Judge, the concern becoming very real that the team the outfielder grew up rooting for could take him away from the Bronx.

Earlier in the day a report from one national baseball insider stated that Judge “appears headed to the Giants,” a tweet that was soon taken down.

Still, it was enough to send shockwaves throughout the organization as Judge, born and raised in Linden, California,  which is about 1 hour 45 minutes from San Francisco, and his representation throughout the free agent process have kept their thoughts close to the vest.

“A lot of unknown right now,” Aaron Boone said late Tuesday afternoon. “We haven't heard anything. I know it's been, obviously, an ongoing negotiation.”

The Yankees have made multiple offers this winter, all of them in excess of $300 million. A report in the New York Post Tuesday said Judge had an offer from the Giants, with whom he met last month, “in the neighborhood of $360 million.”  General manager Brian Cashman, who along with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner will bear the brunt of Yankees fans’ anger should the club lose Judge, said Monday he had received no assurances from the player's agent, Page Odle, that the Yankees would be given a final opportunity to match or surpass any other team’s offer.

As of this edition’s deadline Tuesday, it was not clear to the Yankees whether Judge, who was rumored to be flying to San Diego Tuesday, had made a decision or if he was even leaning in any direction.

Boone, the Yankees manager since 2018 – Judge’s second full season in the big leagues – has a close relationship with the outfielder and has spoken or texted with him several times this winter.

But Boone characterized those talks as typical.  

“We had a conversation on the phone a few days ago,” Boone said. “Those are kind of normal, in line with, as we sit here in early December, the normal interactions I would have with him during the course of an offseason. Obviously, it's a different situation this offseason than in the past with him being a free agent, but my interactions with him have been fairly normal.”

With one exception.

Boone acknowledged Judge, who was angered just before the season opener April 8 when the Yankees publicized the seven-year, $213.5 million extension offer he turned down, still harbored some of that feeling.

“He and I talked a little bit about it right at the season's end,” Boone said. “So I knew he was a little disappointed about  that.”

In comments published Tuesday morning in Time magazine, which named Judge it’s Athlete of the Year after an AL MVP season in which he hit an AL-record 62 homers, he was even more blunt about the figure being released.

“We kind of said, ‘Hey, let’s keep this between us,” Judge said in the article of the understanding he and his agent had with the Yankees at the start of the negotiations, which began early in the spring. “I was a little upset that the numbers came out. I understand it’s a negotiation tactic. Put pressure on me. Turn the fans against me, turn the media on me. That part of it I didn’t like.”

Judge, though not quite as direct when speaking after the April 8 opener, still made his thoughts known on the issue, saying: “I don’t like talking numbers, I like to keep that private. It was something I kind of felt like was private between my team and the Yankees.”

Cashman, who will speak to the media Wednesday morning, has defended the move, saying the figure would have gotten out anyway (and, it should be pointed out, the numbers did leak from the organization a couple of hours before the Opening Day news conference).

Would that be enough to sway Judge one way or the other? Likely not – it’s always about top dollar or something close to top dollars in these matters. But while Judge very much enjoyed being a Yankee and the pressure and spotlight that came with it, he was not always enamored with the organization itself; the releasing of the contract offer Opening Day but one example.

“I always feel like he certainly belongs in pinstripes, and a guy of his stature and his greatness hopefully spends his entire career [getting] into Monument Park and into the Hall of Fame as a Yankee,” Boone said. “That would be the hope.”