Submitted by Fred on

Put Up or Shut Up

Categories
Games

Aaron Judge is a 30 year old, 6’7”, 282 pound Unicorn, ie, a person or thing that 
is highly valued. 

Aaron is presently employed, as my most favorite player, by my favorite Major League Baseball (MLB) team, the New York Yankees.  

No doubt, he is highly valued, but the problem is quantifying his Unicorn value.  

Aaron achieves Free Agency at the end of this Baseball season and will thus be free to “test the market” as to his unique value and be signed by any MLB team.  

This Spring the Yankees, still having Aaron under contract, made a contract renewal offer of $213,500,000 for a 7 year contract (over $30,000,000 guaranteed per year) and Aaron turned it down.  His feeling was that in this era of inflated player contracts he was more valuable.  

As a consequence, in his “Walk Year”, he is playing for his next contract.  

In essence, he chose to put up or shut up over a guaranteed $30,000,000 per year offer.  Quite a gamble!

At this writing, unquestionably, Aaron is having the greatest “Walk Year” of any athlete in the history of all professional sports.  

He has tied both iconic Babe Ruth with 60 Home Runs (within Babe’s then 154 game schedule) and the Roger Maris single season American League record of 61!  Plus, he leads in all 3 “Triple Crown” categories: Batting Average, Home Runs and Runs Batted In with 7 games still to play. 

The sky’s the limit!

PS: He's a good son too, as he gave the invaluable 61st Home Run ball to his mom :)

Comments

Paul Napolitano

You should pay players for what they are going to do, not what they have done. I’m happy that his strike outs are down and his batting average is up. He should probably be a 50 home run hitter for the next four or five years with a 300 batting average. Is that worth $40 million a year? In this day and age, probably. He’s going to look silly in a Mets uniform.
Daniel Schwartz

I think this is a tough one. Rarely do players play up to their walk year stats after they get that inflated contract. As a Met fan, we have tons of that history, but I would still take him on my team.
Shelley Simpson

As is the case with all of us, we can decide what value we bring to the table. For some they number is based in reality, for others it is not. At the end of the day it comes down to what the employers believes and is willing to pay. Between now and the new contract alot can happen to change both.

Submitted by Judy_Mauer on Thu, 09/29/2022 - 21:47

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Judy Mauer

WOW- I find these numbers obscene. How much money do you have to make to live a comfortable life. I hope he didn’t take the deal because he wants to play for the most compatible team. Or because he wants the best location for himself and his family. Remember Achilles was also a unicorn…. I wish him the best - I hope he makes the right decision- based on things other than money.
Paul Napolitano

I wish that were the case, Judy. It's not. He was made for the Yankees, the fans love him and would probably be made captain of the team. This is solely about money. Now he will go where he gets $35-$40-$45 million dollars a year for 8-10 years.

Love your Achilles comment!
Fred Klein

What is value of fixed money 10 years from now?
Paul Napolitano

Yikes! That just put a knot in my stomach. You're right. If the politicians keep flooding the economy with money, inflation could take half of it in 10 years!
Robert Intelisano

Judge is also my favorite player. Read an interesting piece on him that he is bi-racial, was adopted the day after he was born and at 10 years old asked his parents if he was adopted as he had no physical resemblance to his parents. They said yes and that was it. The money is out of control. Give 1% to the teachers, only 38% of public grade school kids are on the level in math!
ODEY RAVIV

A great player and a good man.
Only Aaron and his next contract will “judge” what he is worth! Please stay a Yankee!
Louis Cappelli

Sorry Paul disagree , as a Met fan he would look Great. [ of course the Mets have been the kiss of death for some good players ]
Rick Raymond

I recognized that the larger a crowd you play to the more money you can demand _ in sports, performance, art.. I can't say whether he deserves it... comparing him to other super stars. Certainly $30m/yr is obscenely more than one needs to live a good life. Responding to the standard perspective that the goal of a business is to create a profit, I've wondered if that stops short ... what is the goal of the profit.. Perhaps the goal is to create life. Responding to Robert's comment, an old issue is the pay of teachers. Who impacts more? It's not how many seeds are in the watermelon... rather now many watermelons are there in the seed? How many great athletes, or authors or firefighter heroes or next presidents are in a good teacher?
Rona Gura

Not a baseball fan. I have to agree with Judy, those numbers are obscene.

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