It seems like ancient history, but for a few months early in the 2022 season it looked like Aaron Judge was destined to become a San Francisco Giant. As much as I despise the Yankees, I thought letting go of Judge would have been a mistake on par with, if not worse than, the Mookie Betts trade. I’ve said it on the podcast, but it’s worth repeating that as a New York native, I’ve never seen a single Yankee monopolize the fanbase’s attention like Judge, especially before the team traded for Juan Soto.

Of course, all the hand-wringing turned out to be for naught when the Yankees signed Judge, who overcame his playoff woes by hitting his first playoff home run of 2024 last night to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead against the Guardians in the ALCS. He’s also a longshot 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 had 144 RBI. In this industry we call those numbers ‘large’, ‘impressive’ and the like.

To be fair to the Red Sox, they signed Rafael Devers to a huge deal instead of letting 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 was challenged by the Dodgers because he apparently wanted to leave anyway, or so the suckers say. The truth, of course, is 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 it’s two games out of the World Series.

Interestingly, the Sox were more or less in the same position two years ago, but they haven’t done anything of note on the field since, and I’m not holding my breath for next year either. Soto will be a free agent this offseason, but I find it hard to believe he’ll go anywhere either, although I’d love to be wrong. The point is, broadly speaking, the Yankees tried to win and the Sox didn’t, so the Yankees win and the Sox don’t. If this story is familiar, it’s because it’s largely the story of the two teams throughout their history. We are right back where we started, and that is a choice. This could be us – it has been us. But now it’s hard to imagine that this will happen anytime soon.