Yankees: Imagining Aaron Judge in another team’s uniform

I was listening to Jenny Cavnar on MLB Radio’s “Unassisted” Tuesday afternoon when the topic of Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees was raised.

Cavnar is a well-informed, articulate commentator, which is what makes her show so interesting. But given several hours in front of a hot microphone, everybody is going to occasionally say something that sounds cliché-ish and possibly silly.

That’s what happened to Cavnar during a discussion of whether the New York Yankees would be  able to re-sign Aaron Judge, who is a free agent at season’s end.

“I can’t imagine Aaron Judge in any other than a Yankee uniform,” she remarked.

What Cavnar is talking about can be boiled down to one word: familiarity, which is another way of saying loyalty. The fan in Cavnar — and really in all of us — loves loyalty. But loyalty is and for decades has been a valueless commodity, both on the part of teams and players.

That makes the impossibility of Judge playing for anybody other than the Yanks the kind of thoughtless, throw-away line that even good commentators, burdened with the necessity to say something, let sillily slip from their tongues.

Why is it so hard to imagine Aaron Judge in something other than New York Yankees pinstripes?

Why would it be difficult to imagine virtually any major leaguer in some uniform other than the one he has been wearing?

Players, including the big ones, move all the time, and usually for the same reason — straight cash. Sometimes the players want the cash; sometimes teams want to reduce cash payments.

Commentators said the exact same thing for months this winter concerning Freddie Freeman and the Atlanta Braves, then Freeman signed for six seasons and $162 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers. With the possible exception of a few folks in Atlanta, the world has adapted to the sight of Freeman in Dodger blue.

How hard was it to adapt to seeing Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado wearing birds on a bat following eight seasons in Arizona and Colorado, respectively? Justin Verlander played all or parts of 13 seasons with Detroit before being dealt to Houston. Anybody who was discomfited got over it.

Judge either will or will not be in the Bronx next season because of the working of nothing more complex than market forces. In the case of Judge, those market forces involve both dollars and length of contract.

If the Yankees believe he’s too much of a health risk to meet his terms — and if some other team will meet those terms — then Judge will be gone.

Virtually every team can find a manifestation of this reality in their recent history. The Red Sox parted with Mookie Betts, the Cubs with Kris Bryant, the Tigers with Verlander, the Athletics with Matt Olson and Matt Chapman, the Brewers with Yasmani Grandal, the Dodgers with Corey Seager, the Cardinals with Marcell Ozuna, and the Nationals with Bryce Harper. The list could go on indefinitely.

Those very small minority of players who truly are one-uniform guys — Clayton Kershaw with the Dodgers, Joey Votto with the Reds — fit that classification today more due to their age and declining skill set than for loyalty or any other reason.

This does not, of course, mean that Judge will be gone at season’s end. It does mean that the decision of where he plays in 2023 will be driven by cold, calculating financial aspects, and not in the slightest bit by emotion … particularly any emotional attachment to a uniform.