Don't Fear the Ninth Year.

 

All right, show of (invisible, electronic) hands here:

How many of you out there in the dark regret our 2009 World Championship?

What, nobody? In fact, you remember it as the last time you felt unmitigated joy over our favorite baseball team?

How can that be? What is wrong with you? 

Don't you understand that that title was won only through the decision by your New York Yankees to sacrifice further titles for years to come???

Think back, back to the hazy days of October, 2007, when the agent of archfiend Alex Rodriguez announced, during the dying moments of the thoroughly forgettable, 2007 World Series, that A-Rod was opting out of his Yankees' contract.  

This was depicted as something akin to a war crime by MLB and its innumerable sycophants in the sporting press. But A-Rod soon came back to the fold, in exchange for a new, 10-year contract, at the then low, low total of $275 million.  

It was ridiculous, of course. Sure, A-Rod had won his third MVP award in 2007, but he was already 32, and a constant disappointment in the postseason. 

Was Alex going to be the same player by the end of that contract, 10 years later? Of course not. And even the Yankees' front office, that Fortress of Obliviousness, knew this was so. The real hope was that Alex would shatter the all-time home-run record—already invalidated by Juicin' Barry Bonds—and keep the turnstiles spinning.

Well, things didn't quite work out that way—to put it mildly. A-Rod gave us, at most, three-to-four years of play at the high level he had established, before his career dissolved in a welter of suspensions, injuries, and a farcical PED investigation waged by Rob Manfred, the Inspector Clouseau Javert of MLB.

You'll see no tears for A-Rod here. But if you'll remember, that little window of greatness that remained for Rodriguez—drug-induced or not—included leading our Yankees to the 2009 championship.

Hey, I'll take it. 

Look, the truth is that all ballplayers decline. Their peak year is, on average, reached by the time they are 28—and sometimes much earlier. Nearly all big free-agents deals acknowledge the fact that the player in question will be a shadow of himself by the end of it.

So what?

Say Aaron Judge goes to the Giants and leads them to another three championships. Are we going to gloat if he's having a terrible 2031? Are we going to happy if he "only" leads them to one World Series champagne fest?

No, we will not. 

For those of you who really think the Yankees are going to "rebuild" if they let Judge go, I can only point to the last time they got outbid by a small, left-coast city for a regular all-star. 

After they let Robbie Cano jog off to Seattle, did the Yankees institute a bold new, rebuilding plan?

Only if you consider signing three aging, declining players—Brian McCan't, Beltran, and Hurtsbury—"rebuilding." You can expect the same this year, as the Yanks dangle before us the idea of trading leading prospects for a 27-year-old, .262 hitter.

There was, to be sure, an argument to be made for getting rid of Judge and trying to rebuild. That argument should have been made and resolved last year about this time. 

One of the key ways teams with real front offices rebuild is to deal their existing assets—older players they don't intend to retain—for younger starters and prospects. If the Yankees were serious about rebuilding, they should have traded Aaron Judge for younger players last season. 

They did not. Instead, with their first priority being—as always—the Steinbrenner family's bottom line, they decided to bet that their leading asset would get injured or have a mediocre season. They lost. They need to pay up—or lose that asset for nothing.

Will Aaron Judge be close to the player he is today in 2031? No, he will not. We will care—if he has won us a championship along the way? I, for one, will not. Nor will I care if he has "merely" played outstanding baseball for, say, 4-5 years of that time. 

The only person who should care is Hal Steinbrenner's financial advisor.

Face it: the alternative to re-signing Aaron Judge is not a great rebuilding program. It's not the signing of two or three other, outstanding free agents who will lead us to victory. The alternative to re-signing Aaron Judge is still more money added to the billions already controlled by an enigmatic, unsmiling Floridian who has never shown much interest in the New York Yankees or any of us, their fans.

Don't fear the ninth year. Don't fear the Reaper, either. It will come for Aaron Judge's career, as it will for all of us. In the meantime, I'd like to see him play in pinstripes.