NEW YORK — Aaron Judge won’t be bothered if free agent Juan Soto gets a bigger deal from the New York Yankees than the captain’s nine-year, $360 million contract.
“It ain’t my money. I really don’t care as long as we get the best players, we get the most that we can, I’m happy with whatever,” Judge said after he was a unanimous winner of his second AL MVP award. “That’s never been something on my mind about who gets paid the most.”
Judge led the major leagues with 58 homers, 144 RBIs and 133 walks while hitting .322 as New York reached the World Series for the first time since 2009, only to lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Soto batted .288 with 41 homers, 109 RBIs and 129 walks in his first season with the Yankees and finished third in MVP voting, also trailing Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt. Jr.
A free agent at 26, Soto has met with the Yankees, Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, and he plans to meet with the Philadelphia Phillies, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings have not been publicly announced.
Negotiations are not likely to intensify until after Thanksgiving.
Judge hasn’t spoken with Soto since the World Series. Judge went through the free-agent experience after hitting an AL record 62 homers in 2022.
“The best thing is to really give those guys space,” Judge said. “I talked to him all season and he knows how we feel about him and I think the most important thing is now let him do his thing with his family, pray about it, talk with people and come to the right decision for him and his family.”
Soto met with Yankees officials at a hotel in southern California, a group that included owner Hal Steinbrenner, team president Randy Levine, general manager Brian Cashman, manager Aaron Boone and senior adviser for baseball operations Omar Minaya.
“We had a good meeting. It was a very honest back-and-forth dialogue, a couple hours long,” Steinbrenner said.
Asked how confident he was about keeping Soto, Steinbrenner said: “No idea. We’ll be in the mix. I’ll leave it at that.”
Soto and Judge filled the Nos. 2 and 3 slots in the Yankees batting order in a franchise-record 153 games, topping the 145 of Joe Dugan and Babe Ruth in 1923, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
“I get to see a lot of pitches,” Judge said. “He’s going to be a tough at-bat in front of me. He’s going to wear down the pitcher right there in the first inning, within the first 15 pitches or so. Yeah, I think that was a big impact just having having a guy like that in front of you.
“If I could have eight Juan Sotos in the lineup with me, I would love that.”
After the World Series, Judge spent about a week in Tampa, Florida, where the Yankees hold spring training, and met with Steinbrenner.
“We kind of just discussed a lot of things from Juan to other guys that are kind of out there that I think could definitely help this team,:” Judge said. “So I kind of just gave my input on a couple things.”
Judge said when he agreed to his big deal in late 2022, Steinbrenner wanted to have a deeper relationship. They’ve been meeting every week or two, and pitcher Gerrit Cole has developed a similar exchange with the owner.
“I think just having that relationship to where I can kind of communicate with him about what I’m seeing, what I’m feeling, what I see with the guys, what I see against other guys that we play against,” Judge said. “I think it’s a cool part to where I think just the more communication you have from top to bottom, it just — it makes everybody better.”
Judge’s contract is baseball’s fourth largest behind the deals of the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani ($700 million), the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout ($426.5 million) and the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts ($365 million). Judge cited the example of teammate Giancarlo Stanton, whose $325 million deal was the highest when he joined the Yankees ahead of the 2018 season but now ranks tied for ninth.
“Even though he signed one of those — the first big mega-contracts back in Miami, once he came here he didn’t care about the highest-paid guy. He just wanted good players around him,” Judge said.
In joining Mickey Mantle in 1956 as the Yankees’ only unanimous MVPs, Judge credited his teammates.
“You look at every single one of my teammates in that room and know that each and every single one of them impacted me in a way that put me in that position,” Judge said. “So it’s always going to be a team award in my book.”
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