Yanks GM on Judge: ‘We’ll see how this plays out’
NEW YORK — When it comes to Aaron Judge and his future with the New York Yankees, mum is the word.
General manager Brian Cashman declined to comment Friday on whether he has been in contract with Judge’s representatives on a new deal. Cashman, however, did not tiptoe around the importance of Judge to the organization’s plans for this offseason and beyond.
“When you make these commitments on players, you know he’s a fan favorite,” Cashman said during a news conference at Yankee Stadium on Friday. “He interacts with our fans extremely well. He’s respected within that clubhouse, handles his business as good as you possibly can. He’s an elite performer — among the game’s best, if not the best player. With all that being said, those are the types of players you want to retain and have as long as you possibly can.”
Judge’s historic 2022 season — he hit .311/.425/.686 with an American League-record 62 homers and 131 RBIs — has the 6-foot-7 slugger in position to receive one of the biggest contracts in baseball history this offseason.
Cashman said owner Hal Steinbrenner will spend time gauging the market for Judge this offseason to get a sense for what kind of commitment the team will be willing to make moving forward. The fact that Judge is a player who brings fans to the ballpark will play a role in how much money the Yankees would be willing to commit to a long-term contract.
“As George Steinbrenner said, he puts fannies in the seats,” Cashman said. “People want to go watch that guy play, and you want to put great teams on the field that they want to come here to watch compete and win. Certain individual players transcend the team and everything stops when they’re at the bat or they have the ball in their hand. He’s one of those types of talents.”
Whether or not Judge returns to New York will shape the trajectory of the Yankees’ offseason. Because signing Judge would represent the biggest expense for the team, the front office is making contingency plans based on whether it can sign the star slugger and how it would proceed this offseason if it can’t.
“[Judge is] going to dictate the dance steps to his free agency and he has worked extremely hard to earn this position, so we’ll see how this plays out,” Cashman said. “It can tie you up a little bit along the way, but he’s not the only guy that we’re needing to deal with. He’s the most important, but if he came in here today and said, ‘Oh, man, I’m signing up, let’s go,’ there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he had a conversation with Judge in his office at the end of the season and expressed his appreciation for their relationship and how it has grown over the years.
“Of course I hope he’s back and a Yankee forever,” Boone said. “I can’t think of a better guy that you want to be leading your team and leading your organization, and hopefully that all works out. But my conversations with him now are just communicating with him through the winter and hoping that it works out. But, obviously, that’s above me.”
While Steinbrenner committed to Boone returning as manager, questions surround Cashman’s future with the organization. Cashman’s contract expired at the end of October and he remains an at-will employee of the team. He continues to hold planning meetings with the rest of the front office, and said he was told by Steinbrenner that there is interest in keeping him with the team.
Though his future is up in the air, Cashman remains focused on shaping the Yankees’ plans to be a better team for 2023 and win the World Series — with or without Judge.
“We got a lot of other ones we need to deal with to put ourselves in a better position to navigate not just the Astros, but every other up-and-comer that’s pushing their way into the mix to represent the American League in the World Series next year,” Cashman said. “We obviously want that to be us, but that’s something we haven’t been able to push through.
“Regardless of the acknowledgement that Aaron Judge is such an important piece here, he’s one of many that we hope to accomplish in different forms and fashions.”
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Bill Connelly
The 2025 College Football Playoff got underway in Norman, Oklahoma, on Friday night, and we’ve already seen a first. After all four home teams won by demonstrative margins in last year’s first round, Alabama became the first road team to prevail in a playoff game with a stirring comeback against Oklahoma and a 34-24 win.
Here are the main takeaways. We will update this with each completed game.
What just happened?
Oklahoma’s offense only had 20 minutes in it. The Sooners were perfect out of the gate, bursting to a 17-0 lead against an Alabama team that looked completely unprepared for the moment. But the Crimson Tide adjusted and rallied, and OU had only a brief answer. From 17 down, Bama outscored its hosts by a 34-7 margin from there.
We use the word “momentum” far too much in football, but this was an extremely momentum-based game.
1. Over the first 19 minutes, Oklahoma went up 17-0 while outgaining Bama by a stunning 181-12 margin. It could have been worse, too, as the Sooners’ Owen Heinecke came within millimeters of a blocked punt that might have produced a safety or a touchdown.
2. Over the next 21 minutes, Bama outscored the Sooners 27-0, outgaining them, 194-59. Freshman Lotzeir Brooks caught two touchdown passes — the first on a fourth-and-2 to finally get Bama on the board (after he caught a huge third-down pass earlier in the drive), and the second TD came on a 30-yard lob that put the Tide up for good. The Tide defense got pressure on John Mateer, and his footwork and composure vanished. An egregious pick-six thrown directly to Zabien Brown tied the game, and Bama scored the first 10 points of the second half as well.
0:58
Zabien Brown stuns OU with game-tying pick-six before halftime
Zabien Brown takes a big-time interception 50 yards to the house to tie the score before halftime.
OU responded briefly, cutting the margin to three points early in the fourth quarter thanks to a 37-yard Deion Burks touchdown. But the Sooners’ offense couldn’t do enough, and kicker Tate Sandell, the Groza Award winner, missed two late field goals to assure a Bama win.
1:25
Tate Sandell’s back-to-back FG misses help Alabama secure 1st-round win
Tate Sandell misses a pair of late field goals as Alabama holds on to beat Oklahoma 34-24 in the CFP first round.
Impact plays
Oklahoma beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa in November — in the game that eventually certified the Sooners’ CFP bid — thanks to a pick-six and special teams dominance. But the tables turned completely in Norman. Brown’s pick six was huge, and special teams completely abandoned the Sooners, both with Sandell’s misses and with a botched punt in the second quarter.
The botched punt was actually the second of a two-part sequence that turned the game against the Sooners. First, Mateer passed up an easy third-and-3 conversion to throw downfield to a wide open Xavier Robinson, but he short-armed the pass and dropped it. On the very next snap, punter Grayson Miller dropped the ball moving into his punting motion. Bama’s Tim Keenan III recovered the ball at the OU 30, and while OU’s defense held the Tide to a field goal, what could have been a 24-3 OU lead turned instead into a 17-10 advantage. That set the table for Brown’s pick-six and everything that followed.
The blown early lead leaves Oklahoma with quite the ignominious feat: In the history of the College Football Playoff, teams are 28-2 with a 17-point lead: OU is 0-2, and everyone else is 28-0. Ouch.
See you next fall, Sooners
We knew that whenever Oklahoma’s season ended, offense would be the primary reason. The Sooners survived playing with almost no margin for error for most of the year. Their No. 49 ranking in offensive SP+ was the worst of any CFP team, but they got enough defense (third in defensive SP+), special teams (21st in special teams SP+) and quality red zone play to overcome it.
The Sooners’ defense still played well on Friday night — Bama gained only 260 total yards (4.8 per play) — but the special teams miscues put more pressure on the offense to come through, and after a brilliant start, it ran out of steam. Mateer began the game 10-for-15 for 132 yards with a touchdown, 26 rushing yards and a rushing TD, but his last 31 pass attempts gained just 149 yards with five sacks and the pick, and his last nine non-sack rushes gained just 15 yards.
Brent Venables therefore heads into the offseason with some decisions to make. OU’s offense technically improved after the big-money additions of coordinator Ben Arbuckle and Mateer, but Mateer was scattershot before his midseason hand injury and poor after it. Do the Sooners run it back with the same roster core, hoping that better health and a theoretically improved run game can give the defense what it needs to take OU to the next level? Does Venables hit the reset button again? Can he ever get all the arrows pointed in the right direction at the same time?
What’s next
Alabama’s reward for the comeback win is a trip out West: The Tide will meet unbeaten and top-seeded Indiana in the Rose Bowl on January 1. Bama’s defense will obviously face a stiffer test from Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza and the Hoosiers attack, but Bama’s defense has been mostly up for the test this season. Their ability to pull an upset will be determined by Ty Simpson and the Alabama passing game.
Simpson began Friday night’s win just 2-for-6 with a sack, and while he improved from there and didn’t throw any interceptions — his final passing line: 18-for-29 for 232 yards, two touchdowns and four sacks (6.0 yards per attempt) — his footwork still betrayed him quite a bit over the course of the evening, and he misfired on quite a few passes. Oklahoma’s pass rush is fearsome, but Indiana’s defense ranks seventh in sack rate itself, and with almost no blitzing whatsoever. The Hoosiers generate pressure and clog passing lanes, and they held Oregon‘s Dante Moore and Ohio State‘s Julian Sayin to 5.1 yards per dropback with 11 sacks and two touchdowns to three picks. Bama will be an underdog for a reason.
That said, kudos to the Tide for getting off the mat. They were lifeless at the start, missing tackles and blocks and looking as unprepared as they did in their season-opening loss to Florida State. But Brooks’ play-making lit the fuse, and Bama charged back.
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