NEW YORK — Aaron Judge walked slowly from first base toward the dugout, turning his head just long enough to watch what must have seemed like a re-run: another October, and another visiting team wearing blue, celebrating atop the Yankee Stadium mound.
It was the Blue Jays, with Cody Bellinger swinging through the final pitch of the American League Division Series. The previous year, it had been the Dodgers ending the World Series. These are the mountains that Judge and the Yankees must climb to claim a championship.
“When I signed back with the Yankees in ’23, I wanted to finish a job here and bring back a World Series,” Judge said. “We’re still on that mission.”
So what now? Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said fans should enter Spring Training with a realistic belief that their team can win a title. He felt that way, and so did Aaron Boone, who thought the 2025 club was his strongest yet.
Both teams won 94 games, tying for the AL’s best, yet the separation was palpable during the regular season. The Jays won eight of 13 meetings with New York, and that carried over into the postseason. As Steinbrenner pointed out, the Blue Jays scored 34 runs in a 34-inning ALDS.
“You’re not going to beat the Blue Jays, as good a team as they are, doing that,” Steinbrenner said. “They definitely played better than us. They slugged better than us, they hit the ball and put it in play better than us, and they pitched better than us. That’s why they won.”
Still, the Yankees insist the gap is smaller than outsiders think.
Steinbrenner said he considers spending to be “a weak correlation” to winning, even after watching the Dodgers become the first back-to-back champions since the dynasty Yankees in 1998-2000.
While the Dodgers’ reported $415 million in expenditures easily dwarfs all others, Steinbrenner noted that the second- and third-highest payrolls belonged to the Mets and Yankees, respectively. The Mets missed the playoffs entirely, and the Yanks’ run ended not soon after.
“Hats off to them. It’s not easy to do twice, and they did it in dramatic fashion this time,” Steinbrenner said. “We’ll see what they do next year and how it pans out. But there was nothing low about my payroll and the Mets’ payroll, and look where we ended up.”
So it’s not necessarily how much a team spends, but how wisely. Of what Steinbrenner said was a $319 million payroll, there were large expenditures toward Marcus Stroman ($18.5 million), DJ LeMahieu ($15 million) and even Aaron Hicks ($10.785 million).
LeMahieu remains on the books for one more season, but that can’t hinder the Yanks as they look to strengthen their core around Judge, now a three-time American League MVP still in his prime.
Should they land one, Jasson Domínguez and Spencer Jones could hear their names mentioned in trade rumors.
“There’s certain salary levels we’ll tag out at,” Cashman said. “That’s yet to be determined. At times, we’ve driven hard and still not gotten things done because the markets take it — whether it was [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto or [Juan] Soto, they go on and on to places you never expected.”
As for the infield, the Yankees sound tempted to run back their ’25 alignment. That would mean Ben Rice, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Anthony Volpe (also rehabbing from surgery) and Ryan McMahon at some point, with José Caballero and Oswaldo Cabrera competing to be the Opening Day shortstop.
That, too, appears to be an area where Cashman and his staff could look to augment. Steinbrenner and Cashman have all but circled the bullpen in red marker as an obvious area of need, especially with Devin Williams and Luke Weaver currently free agents.
The Yankees are confident in their rotation, though they’ll have to weather early-season absences of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón, both of whom are recovering from surgery. Clarke Schmidt could be a second-half contributor.
“Hopefully health is blessed in the early portion of February, March and April,” Cashman said. “But you can’t count on that. We’ll be exploring how to protect ourselves so we’re not taking on water early.”
How much of this is posturing ahead of the Winter Meetings? We’re about to find out.
