Aaron Judge is cashing in on the bet he placed on himself last spring.
Judge, a superstar outfielder who has spent his entire career with the Yankees, turned down a massive contract extension before the 2022 season began, proceeded to set an American League single-season record with 62 home runs, won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award and on Wednesday was rewarded with a nine-year, $360 million contract, which will be the largest deal ever signed by a free agent.
The contract, which was first reported by MLB Network, is pending a physical but the details were confirmed by two people familiar with the negotiations who were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The Yankees’ original offer before the 2022 season was for seven years and $213.5 million, and so Judge’s bet paid off to the tune of two extra years and $146.5 million.
Judge’s new contract, in terms of total value, will trail only the extensions signed by Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels (12 years, $426.5 million) and Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers (12 years, $365 million). His average annual value of $40 million will be the highest ever given to a position player, and will trail only Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, the co-aces of the Mets, who both average $43.3 million a season.
In Judge, 30, the Yankees retain a player they selected in the first round of the 2013 draft and developed into a wildly popular star. He was the A.L.’s Rookie of the Year when he hit 52 home runs in 2017, has been named to four All-Star teams and hit a new level in 2022 by breaking Roger Maris’s vaunted home run mark — a record given extra weight because everyone with more has been connected to performance-enhancing drugs — and putting up a major league-leading 10.6 wins above replacement, based on Baseball Reference’s formula.
Judge’s pursuit of Maris captivated much of the baseball world, with television networks cutting into other events to show his at-bats and the Maris family openly rooting for him to the point that Roger Maris Jr. was traveling to games to try to see it happen.
But Judge’s 2022 was not defined only by his home runs. He also batted a career-high .311 — challenging for the triple crown until the season’s final days — led the majors in runs scored (133) and tied Pete Alonso of the Mets for the major league lead in runs batted in (131). He also led the majors in on-base percentage (.425), slugging percentage (.686) and total bases (391).
He did all that while stealing 16 bases and playing above-average defense in both right field (54 starts) and center field (74 starts).
There had been speculation that Judge might be willing to leave the Yankees to join the San Francisco Giants, a team he grew up rooting for, but he instead decided to commit to the Yankees through what would be his age-39 season.
Tyler Kepner and Scott Miller contributed reporting.
