The Josh Innes Show - Random Thoughts: Aaron Judge Get Paid

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

The Yankees have signed Aaron Judge to a massive deal. Great. They've never been able to beat the Astros with him. They've done nothing to change their standing in the AL pecking order. Astros should be thrilled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aaron Judge getting paid $360 million, nine years. I'm fascinated by these contracts these baseball players get because so many of them are getting deals, and a lot of them are just not winning players. They're good players, and is it their fault that the team doesn't win? Like, is it Bryce Harper's fault that the Phillies haven't won a World Series since he got there? No, he's a really damn good player. So I don't know who you blame, how you blame, whatever you do. But when you look at Aaron Judge, his is fascinating because Aaron Judge, 30 years old, bopped a bunch of home runs last year. Cool.

Seventh best home run season of all time. Cool. La-di-da. The thing that stands out about Aaron Judge and the Yankees, and this is my favorite part of this whole thing, is that the Yankees continue to spend money on guys like Aaron Judge. They feel they need to keep Aaron Judge so they pay him $360 million, even though they know he'll be 40 at the end of this contract and he will be Albert Pujols' Miggie Cabrera when this whole thing's said and done. But they're buying for now. They're trying to win now. Essentially, they're buying the first four years of this contract and hoping that he's not just putrid for the back five. Like Miggie Cabrera. Miggie Cabrera has a deal that was similar.

And Cabrera, the last three or four years, has just been awful. I was listening to a sports radio show in Detroit. I was listening to Mike Valenti. I'm on the radio in Detroit, so sometimes I listen to the sports radio to just kind of get a vibe of what they feel there. And he's a Yankees guy that's on the radio in Detroit, so sometimes I listen to the sports radio to just kind of get a vibe of what they feel there. And he's a Yankees guy that's on the radio in Detroit. And his comparison was, and why he didn't want the Yankees to give Aaron Judge a nine-year deal or that type of deal, is because you see Miggy in Detroit. Miggy Cabrera is a dude that, at the beginning of that deal, seems like a good idea.

You're a competitive team. You're attempting to win the World Series. You think you're still in it. You get it. At the back end of it, Miggy Cabrera, for a lot longer than you might think, has stunk, not been mediocre, not been decent, has been terrible. For really four or five years, he's been a bad baseball player at the back end of his contract there.

And that's what the Yankees are getting, and that's what they're risking here with Aaron Judge. Now you might say, Josh, what is the evidence that Aaron Judge will break down or that it won't work out or that he'll stink? Well, everybody in baseball, unless you're Barry Bonds, tends to stink by the time you're 40 or by the time you're a 38-, 39-year-old offensive player where power matters. Pitching, Verlander can still do it. All these

guys can still go out there, although he's sort of a unicorn. But for the most part, you're not going to have guys go out there and still bop 50 home runs and be that good when they're 40. And they know this. So the Yankees are buying the first four years of this deal for Aaron Judge. First four or five. They think they're hoping and assuming that what they saw last year will be more of what they got. Now, is he going to hit 62 home runs? No. They want him to be a guy that's going to hit 40-plus homers and drive in 100-plus runs. That's what they want him to be, and they think they can win that way. But what's fascinating about that is that while the Yankees go out and give Aaron Judge $360 million and he's going to make $40 million a year. They spent this money in a win-now mode, yet they're not getting better anywhere else.

We know what the story is with your best player being Aaron Judge. We know what the Yankees are. The Yankees are get to the playoffs. The Yankees are lose to the Astros. That's who the Yankees are. The Yankees with this move did not get better. They have stayed the same and they can make a couple of little dinky bullpen moves. That's fine, but they did not get better. The Yankees are still a team that will

lose to the Astros. What did the Astros do? The Astros go out and get better offensively. Jose Abreu now, he might fall off a cliff too. You'd throw out the age. We're going to talk about Aaron Judge being 30 and see what his numbers are going to do in 10 years. Maybe Jose Abreu falls off a mountain. He didn't have a good year this past year. He had like 13 home runs. I watched a lot of those games because Jilly likes the White Sox. Wasn't that impressed at times? But in theory, until we see if he stinks

or if he's great, they got better. Well, Josh, the Astros lost Verlander. How do you get better losing the Cy Young winner? You don't, but they're also loaded, loaded with starting pitching talent that's great. Yes, Verlander's dominant, and yes, he was a great regular season pitcher, and I'd still take him. He's great, and I don't think he's going to have a regression this year. I think he's very good.

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See terms at picksix.draftkings.com slash promos. That said, the Astros did not get worse, and you can argue they got better. At worst, the Astros did not get worse, and you can argue they got better. At worst, the Astros have remained neutral. If Jose Abreu is anything like he's been in the past, not this season, but previous, he's going to be a major step up from what Uli was this year. So you got better offensively. What have the Yankees done? The team that could not get it done against the Astros, what have the Yankees done?

Their big addition is keeping Aaron Judge, who, as part of that franchise, has not won. What have they done? That is their big bad wolf. That is their Freddie. That is their Jason. That is their pinhead. That is Hellraiser. That is everything.

How do they get past the boogeyman, and the boogeyman is the Astros? How do they do it? Is signing Aaron Judge to a $360 million nine-year deal, really, though, the four or five years is what you're looking at, to say, hey, can we win? Can we finally beat the Astros? By the way, the Astros aren't getting all that much older. Jose Altuve is an older dude.

That's about it. Everybody else in their mid to late 20s, they're still relatively young. There's no reason to believe that the Astros, for the coming years, are going to have a massive drop-off. They did not get worse. The Astros arguably got better this offseason. Offensively, they definitely got better, in theory, with Abreu. May they take a step back without Verlander?

Maybe. They undeniably got better offensively. Can you tell me anything undeniable about the Yankees right now? Anything moving forward other than they're about the same team? And if you're about the same team, why should I believe that you're going to be able to line up and beat the Astros for the next four or five years? Because you've got Aaron Judge and he's making more money? You haven't done anything.

And by the way, the Astros, as we mentioned their age, look at the age of talent that's doing huge things for them. Jordan, for example. Kyle Tucker, for example. Jeremy Pena, for example. Just go down the list of these guys. Bregman's still a young dude. Altuve is an ancient.

The other thing that stands out to me about Aaron Judge, congratulations to the Yankees for spending $360 million, $40 million a year for a guy who has never played in the World Series. And I understand the argument. Look, it's not all his fault, right? for a guy who has never played in the World Series. And I understand the argument. Look, it's not all his fault, right? But what's wild, and I get that the Astros players have played in a lot more games. I understand that because they've gone deep into the playoffs every year for the last half decade plus.

So they're going to have higher inflated numbers when it comes to statistics that are accumulation statistics. Jose Altuve is the second all-time home run hitter in the postseason with 23. You go down that list of guys, the Astros have one, two with George Springer who's got 19 home runs in his postseason career, and Carlos Correa who's seventh who has 18th. There are three dudes in the top 10 all time for postseason home runs that play for the Astros. The leader, of course, is Man Ram. He's got 25, 29 rather. I apologize. But Altuve's got 23. You go down the list, look at all those. You look at Aaron

Judge. He's got 13. Has he played in as many games as some of those dudes? No, but he's got 13. Like, I'm just trying to look at this deal and go, hey, are you any more scared of the Yankees now than you already were? And the answer is no. Keeping a guy who's been part of a team that can't get by you should not scare you. I don't know what the Yankees can do. I do know this. I go out and I see the Phillies just buying every player they can, and I see the Yankees like, well, we kept Aaron Judge. Nothing about Aaron Judge and the Yankees would scare me.

Are they the second-best team in the AL? Yeah, I guess. But what have we seen that would lead you to believe that the Yankees are any major threat to taking down the Astros as the best team in the American League? What have they done? We've seen past performance. They can't beat them. So what did they do?

They stayed the same. So the Astros should feel very nice right now.