The key to winning is trying.
It seems like ancient history, but for a couple months in the early offseason in 2022 it looked like Aaron Judge was destined to become a San Francisco Giant. As much as I despise the Yankees, I thought letting Judge go would have been an error on par with, if not worse than, the Mookie Betts trade. I’ve said it on the podcast, but it bears repeating that, as a New York resident, I had never seen a single Yankee monopolize the attention of the fan base like Judge, especially before the team traded for Juan Soto.
Of course all the hand-wringing turned out to be for naught, as the Yankees signed Judge, who overcame his playoff woes to hit his first 2024 playoff home run last night to put the Yankees up 2-0 against the Guardians in the ALCS. He’s also a lock to win the MVP award for the second time in three seasons after a .322/.458/.701 season in which he hit 58 home runs and netted 144 RBI. In this business, we call those numbers “large,” “impressive,” and the like.
To be fair to the Red Sox, they signed Rafael Devers to a massive deal rather than let him walk, but the situations aren’t exactly the same. Judge is better than Devers in the same sense that Betts was better than Devers, and Betts got yeeted to the Dodgers because ostensibly he wanted to leave anyway, or so the dullards say so. The truth is, of course, that money talks, and the Sox didn’t give Betts a chance to listen. They didn’t want to have the conversation. The Yankees and Judge did, and now they’re two games from the World Series.
Notably, the Sox were in this same position two years ago, more or less, but they haven’t done anything of note on the field since then, and I’m not holding my breath for next year yet either. In the offseason, Soto will be a free agent, but I find it hard to believe he’ll go anywhere either, though I’d be thrilled to be wrong. The point is, broadly speaking, that the Yankees have tried to win and the Sox haven’t, so the Yankees are winning and the Sox aren’t. If this story is familiar, it’s because it’s largely the story of the two teams across their entire histories. We’re right back where we started from, and it’s by choice. This could be us — it has been us. But now it’s hard to imagine it will be anytime soon.