Aaron Judge Landing Spots After RF Rejects Yankees' Contract Extension Offer

Aaron Judge began the 2022 season with the New York Yankees. Unless they fall out of Major League Baseball's newly expanded playoff race, he is beyond likely to also finish the season with them.

After that, 29 other teams will also be able to go after Judge in free agency.

The slugging right fielder ensured as much by rejecting an extension offer that, per the Yankees, would have paid him $30.5 million per year over seven seasons. According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, Judge wanted a $36 million average annual value over eight years.

Since he will turn 30 on April 26, Judge is going out on a limb by choosing to bet on himself. But he won't necessarily regret it if he stays healthy and enjoys what would be his fourth season as an All-Star and MVP contender, preferably with upward of 40 or even 50 home runs.

Despite the team's unusual decision to go public with its offer, Judge told reporters that the Yankees "will be one of those 30 teams" he'll talk to when he reaches free agency. Yet even if it's a tad early to evaluate other options, it's by no means a reach to think he'll land elsewhere.

So, here's a preliminary and very much speculative list of eight fits for Judge in free agency.

Why start with the Los Angeles Dodgers? Simply because they can never be counted out on any star player.

Just in the last four years, the 2020 World Series champions have traded for Manny Machado, Mookie Betts, Trea Turner and Max Scherzer. And while they used to have a tendency to lay lower in free agency, they've done nine-figure deals with Trevor Bauer and Freddie Freeman in the last two offseasons.

Come this winter, the Dodgers could have two major holes in their lineup. Turner is due for free agency, while Justin Turner could also hit the open market if his 2023 option doesn't vest. Further, David Price's, Clayton Kershaw's and Craig Kimbrel's salaries will be coming off the books.

However, the Dodgers would arguably be better off focusing on filling Trea Turner's shoes at shortstop, either with Turner himself or perhaps with Carlos Correa or Xander Bogaerts if they opt out of their deals. And even if Los Angeles did want Judge, signing him would require convincing him to move off right field in deference to Betts.

Elsewhere in Southern California, Judge has actually already spent time on the radar of the Los Angeles Angels.

According to ESPN's Buster Olney, Judge "very briefly" was part of trade negotiations between the Angels and Yankees during the 2020-21 offseason. Obviously, nothing came of those. Plus, that they were supposedly "the lightest of flirtations" is reason enough to take the whole affair with a grain of salt.

Even still, it's not impossible to anticipate the Angels making a proper run at Judge. They'll have Noah Syndergaard's $21 million salary coming off the books, and they could have a need for an outfielder if former top prospect Jo Adell continues to struggle with strikeouts and defensive miscues.

For the time being, though, the Angels certainly should be committed to Adell. There's also the likelihood that they'll have other ideas for how to spend. Namely, on pitching, a shortstop or perhaps an extension for two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, whose club control only runs through 2023.

Sticking in the American League West, the Texas Rangers are fresh off spending $500 million to upgrade the middle of their infield with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien.

Even after doing so, however, the Rangers are merely a fringe contender with a 7.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. They also don't have much of a farm system, so any efforts they make to return to the postseason might have to involve further spending.

To that end, Judge could be their next frontier as an offensive upgrade. There's arguably a spot for him in their outfield right now, and that will be even truer if they move on from right fielder Kole Calhoun after the season. That would be a simple matter of declining the 34-year-old's $5.5 million option.

Yet the Rangers could find the idea of committing nearly a billion dollars to three hitters to be too risky, especially considering that two of them would be over the age-30 threshold. Since the mound is where they're weakest, they could more so be of a mind to spend on pitching anyway.

Rather than with an established contender or one that's on the fringe, the possibility of Judge catching on with a rebuilder is also worth taking seriously. For instance, the Baltimore Orioles.

Though they're possibly headed for their fourth 100-loss season in the last five years, their future is looking brighter by the day. They already have two controllable stars in center fielder Cedric Mullins and ace left-hander John Means, plus there's two more on the way in superprospects Adley Rutschman and Grayson Rodriguez.

As far as a possible pursuit of Judge is concerned, equally important is that the Orioles don't have any guaranteed salaries on the books after 2022. They could sign him and still have plenty of room for other expenditures, be it either during the offseason or any time thereafter.

This is, of course, assuming that the Orioles aren't spooked by Judge's price tag. It could be about $100 million more than what the team spent to re-sign Chris Davis, which didn't work out so great. In lieu of a giant leap, perhaps the O's will therefore try to take baby steps out of their rebuild.

If the Orioles were to make a run at Judge, they would essentially be copying the playbook that recently led the Detroit Tigers to drop $217 million on Javier Baez and Eduardo Rodriguez.

But what if the Tigers decide they want Judge for themselves? They aren't a heavyweight in the American League Central just yet, and it's not as if their payroll is maxed out. It's in the $130 million range right now, or about $70 million short of the club's peaks from 2016 and 2017.

Further, this offseason would be an opportune time to go after Judge. Incumbent right fielder Robbie Grossman is due for free agency, and it may well be the end of the line for Miguel Cabrera. If the Tigers cut Cabrera loose rather than continue carrying him and his $32 million salary into 2023, the team will have another hole to fill in its lineup.

At least on paper, it's hard to find anything not to like about this fit. The one thing gnawing at us is the possibility that Judge has any hard feelings for Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, who formerly managed the Houston Astros amid the team's sign-stealing scandal in 2017. Famously, Judge was not amused.

If not the Tigers, perhaps another team will see Judge as its ticket to get over the hump and into contention. As they've been trying to do that for 20 years, we can't help but think of the Seattle Mariners.

As it is, they came close to snapping their 20-year playoff drought with a 90-win effort in 2021. They then did plenty of shopping over the offseason, snapping American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray off the free-agent market and Jesse Winker, Eugenio Suarez and Adam Frazier in trades.

There was nonetheless a sense of disappointment in Seattle that the Mariners didn't do more, in part because Suarez didn't quite fit the bill as the impact right-handed hitter the team reportedly wanted. Meanwhile, the M's have a modest 21.1 percent chance of making the postseason.

The Mariners could thus be in a position to rectify a mistake by pursuing Judge. It wouldn't be the first time the team has lured a superstar from the Bronx. And if it were to happen, Judge would fit nicely alongside Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez, as right fielder Mitch Haniger is likewise slated for the open market.

Maybe it won't be a rebuilder or a contender on the rise. If the Boston Red Sox put themselves in the market for Judge, there will be the possibility he will leave to join the Yankees' biggest rival.

One "yeah, but" here is that apart from multiyear deals for Trevor Story, Enrique Hernandez, Jake Diekman and Hirokazu Sawamura, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has merely done one-year deals below $10 million in free agency. Another is the presence of manager Alex Cora, who was the mastermind of the Houston scandal.

All the same, Boston will have excuses to chase big fish. Free agency is going to take the big salaries of J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi off the books, and the signs indeed point toward Bogaerts opting out of the last three years of his $120 million contract.

There will therefore be loads of space for Judge both in the Boston lineup and on its payroll. And because the team has some primo prospects on the way—i.e., Triston Casas, Marcelo Mayer and Nick Yorke—he wouldn't necessarily have to worry that he'd be jumping aboard a sinking ship.

Let's end with the San Francisco Giants, because Judge putting on one of their uniforms would be all too appropriate.

Come on, the simple sight of a 6'7", 282-pound slugger wearing a jersey with "Giants" on it would be amazing. Another, more relevant reason that Judge as a Giant would be appropriate is that he was a fan of the team as he grew up and played high school ball in Linden, California.

The fly in this ointment is that, like Bloom with Boston, Farhan Zaidi has largely avoided risk as the Giants' president of baseball operations. The largest deal he executed this offseason was Carlos Rodon's two-year, $44 million pact. In so doing, he made good on reports that he wouldn't ink any nine-figure contracts.

Because of Zaidi's caution, though, the Giants have all of one guaranteed salary on the books after next season. And with Brandon Belt and possibly Evan Longoria (who has a $13 million club option for 2023) likely to enter free agency this winter, the team will have the incentive and the means to bring Judge home.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.