A Aaron Judge It wouldn’t bother him if the Dominican free agent Juan Soto get a more lucrative deal with the New York Yankees that your own agreement 360 million dollars for nine years.
“It’s not my money. I don’t really care as long as we have the best players. As long as we can get the most, I’m happy with whatever,” Judge said Friday, a day after unanimously winning his second American League Most Valuable Player award. “It’s never been something I think about, who gets paid the most.”
Judge He led the major leagues with 58 home runs, 144 runs batted in and 133 walks while batting .322 with the Yankees, who reached the World Series for the first time since 2009, only to lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Soto had a .288 average with 41 homers109 RBIs and 129 walks in his first season with the Yankees and finished third in MVP voting, also behind Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.
The Dominican, a free agent at age 26, has met with the Yankees, Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox, and plans to also talk with the Philadelphia Phillies, said a person familiar with the negotiations. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the meetings have not been publicly announced.
Negotiations are unlikely to intensify until after Thanksgiving—November 28.
Judge, who experienced free agency after hitting an American League-record 62 home runs in 2022, has not spoken to Soto since the World Series.
“The best thing is to really give them space,” Judge said. “I talked to him all season and he knows how we feel about him and I think the most important thing now is to let him do his thing with his family, think about it, talk to people and make the right decision for him and his family ”.
Soto met with Yankees executives Monday at a hotel in Southern California. The group included owner Hal Steinbrenner; team president Randy Levine; general manager, Brian Cashman; manager, Aaron Boone, and senior advisor for baseball operations, Omar Minaya
“We had a good meeting. “It was an honest back-and-forth dialogue that lasted a couple of hours,” Steinbrenner said Wednesday.
When asked how confident he was about retaining Soto, Steinbrenner said: “I have no idea. We will be in the options. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Soto and Judge ranked 2nd and 3rd in the Yankees’ batting order in a franchise-record 153 games, surpassing Joe Dugan and Babe Ruth’s 145 in 1923, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
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