Yankees' Aaron Judge wins American League MVP

It wasn’t hard to predict who was going to be named the AL MVP on Thursday night: It was Aaron Judge, who earned 28 of 30 first-place votes after his record-breaking season.

What is harder to predict is where Judge will play in 2023 and beyond and when his free agent journey will end. From the way Judge talked after his MVP award was announced, he’s in no hurry to decide if he’s returning to the Yankees.

Judge has already spoken with Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner. While it would be in the club’s best interest to quickly re-sign Judge so they can plan their offseason, Judge can take all the time he wants to see what’s out there.

“So far, so good,” Judge said of his conversations with Steinbrenner. “I’ve had some positive talks with Hal after the season. Really looking forward to getting this whole free agency process going. It's something that not a lot of baseball players really get, this opportunity to kind of choose where they want to go. So looking forward to getting this process started. I know it's still pretty early and a lot of stuff doesn’t start kicking up until the winter meetings in December. But it's going to be a fun process that my family and I will definitely enjoy.”

Judge said his No. 1 criteria will be playing on a winner.  

“For me, I want to win,” he said. “I’ve come pretty close with the Yankees . . . My ultimate most important thing is just I want to be in a winning culture and be on a team that's committed to winning. Not only for the remainder of my playing career, but I want a legacy to kind of live on within the organization. It's just first and foremost about being in a winning culture and a winning future.”

The Yankees would seem to check a lot of those boxes, and they could offer Judge the chance to be the team captain. Did that come up when he spoke with Steinbrenner? Did anything the two men talked about repair the damage done by the failed contract negotiations before the season and make Judge more likely to stay in pinstripes?

“I’m really not going to get too much into what Hal and I spoke about or whether it moved the needle or not,” Judge said. “I saw it as a good sign that he reached out and wanted to kind of sit down one on one and kind of get a chance to talk. I thought that was a great sign.

“For me, this process, I don't know how fast it's going to go or how slow it's going to go. But definitely there's teams that we've talked to. It's, for me, if we're going to build a winning team, if I can get my stuff out of the way so they can kind of move on and add some more pieces to build teams up, I think that’s always an advantage for wherever I go. I think once you kind of get into this it might move fast. But you never really know.”

Judge, 30, turned down a contract extension offer from the Yankees before the season that would have been worth more than $230 million.  

“He’s a great player who bet on himself,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said after the regular season. “It’s the all-time best bet.”

Then all Judge did was go out and break Roger Maris’ 61-year-old AL home run record set in 1961 by hitting 62.

Judge fell just short of a Triple Crown. He tied the Mets’ Pete Alonso for the big-league lead with 131 RBIs and was second in the AL with a .311 batting average.

Judge also led the majors in runs (133), on-base percentage (.425), slugging percentage (.686), OPS (1.111), extra-base hits (90) and total bases (391) to help the Yankees win the AL East.

The other two first-place MVP votes went to Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani, who won the award in 2021. This year, Ohtani went 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA and 219 strikeouts in 28 starts (166 innings) and hit .273 with 34 homers, 95 RBIs and an .875 OPS.

Judge is the 14th Yankee to win the MVP award and first since Alex Rodriguez in 2007.  

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.