Yankees Mag: Value Proposition

Anthony Rizzo took his place behind the rostrum in late January, flanked by the best baseball players in today’s game. The former first baseman, recently retired and looking trim and happy in his sharp tuxedo, was tasked with presenting the 2025 American League MVP Award to his good friend Aaron Judge.

What do you even say in a moment like that? With Judge, the hyperbole is real; the superlatives aren’t cliche. It’s all just … true. If you win an MVP Award, it means you had a great season, one worth saluting and remembering. If you win two, you’re almost certainly a great player.

Three? That’s reserved for the titans: Jimmie Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and Barry Bonds. And now Aaron Judge.

It’s a tough test, taking measure of a man in a short speech, fully aware that everything that can be said already has. Judge’s 2025 season was obviously remarkable; they all have been, in different ways, since his astonishing 2017 AL Rookie of the Year campaign (when, it’s worth noting, he finished second in the MVP voting).

Judge’s 53 homers, the batting title, the incredible reliability … you don’t need to work hard to state the case for the Yankees’ captain. But Seattle’s Cal Raleigh had pretty remarkable stats, too, some even better than Judge’s.

So, Rizzo stepped to the microphone and spoke nearly 900 words, some five minutes, before he mentioned even one thing that Judge had done with his bat. This was a vibes-only moment, and Rizzo was on point with his thesis.

“He’s the most special person I’ve ever been around,” Rizzo said. “There’s a lot of great players, a lot of great history in the New York Yankees organization. And right behind me, who’s about to accept this award, is arguably the greatest to ever put on the pinstripes.”

“Tonight, we honor an MVP season. But this room really knows that baseball is better because Aaron Judge is in it.”

***

No one on the Yankees’ roster has a bigger physical presence, but Judge’s footprint has always proven well larger than his size 17 shoe.

“He’s been great since Day 1,” says Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing general partner and chairperson who, beyond his commitment to winning every year, also inherited his father’s instinct to serve the public good. “He knows my family. He knows what’s important to us and the work we do and how we like to be involved.”

In 2018, Judge established his All Rise Foundation, dedicated to helping children develop citizenship skills and reach their greatest potential. The foundation has made an enormous impact on youth in New York City and Judge’s home state of California. For those around Judge, it was clear even before he reached the Majors that giving back would be hugely important to him, and he quickly worked to emulate leaders such as CC Sabathia and Derek Jeter, following their examples as his profile grew.

Jeter recalls the “Captain’s Camp” he would run for young Yankees prospects after he retired in 2014. Judge, drafted in 2013, made an immediate impression on the legendary shortstop.

“You could tell when you’re speaking who’s paying attention and who’s not; who’s really listening and who’s not,” Jeter says. “And I always found him to be a sponge for knowledge. He stood out, obviously, because of his size. But I think more so than that, you tend to notice when people are paying attention and listening.”

Judge would follow in Jeter’s footsteps, earning the title of Yankees captain after 2022, his first MVP season, then signing a long-term deal to remain in New York. But the next year, he would follow the Hall of Famer in another meaningful way. Judge won the 2023 Roberto Clemente Award, which goes to the big leaguer who best mixes work in the community with on-field greatness. Ask players around the league, and there’s little question that the award is among the most meaningful a baseball player can receive.

Willie Mays was the first honoree in 1971 (when it was named the Commissioner’s Award; it would be named in memory of Clemente in 1973, after the outfielder’s tragic death while on a humanitarian mission). In total, 21 Hall of Famers -- including Jeter -- have won it, and recent honorees such as Pujols, Clayton Kershaw, Yadier Molina, Mookie Betts and Judge figure to add to that tally.

A baseball team’s captaincy is something of an enigma. Not every team has one, and there are no official responsibilities that come with it; there’s no coin toss in baseball, nor are there limitations on who is and isn’t allowed to plead with umpires. It is a leadership honorific, but it isn’t, definitionally, ambassadorial.

Judge, though, clearly views the role as an extension of all that he has valued since the beginning. In stadiums across the country, Judge is remarkable in his interactions with children, always chatting and signing autographs for kids, and notably willing to get down on one knee to better look a child in the eye. Every year during HOPE Week, when the entire team branches out into the community, Judge is front and center, never hiding behind other duties to get a day off from dancing to brighten people’s day, or anything of that nature. And when he was asked to participate in the annual Steinbrenner Family Children’s Holiday Concerts in Tampa, Fla., during the offseason, he jumped at the chance, teaming up with his wife, Samantha, to read “A Visit from St. Nicholas” with the backing of the Florida Orchestra.

“There are no words,” says Jennifer Steinbrenner Swindal, the Yankees’ general partner and vice chairperson. “He is a machine. And he is such an amazing ballplayer to watch. Just as importantly, you want to see how he is with people. And I think that’s where I’m the proudest of him: his interaction with children.”

The message -- and the expectations that create it -- resonate with Judge.

“You’re more than a baseball player,” he says. “Baseball is just one part of the job. It’s an important job. We want to go out there and win. We want to go and bring a championship back to New York. But it’s the little impacts, the little experiences you get to do. This is stuff we’ll be talking about for years to come. It’s a message I try to share with a lot of the Minor Leaguers that haven’t even made it up to the big leagues yet. They’re so focused on getting up to the big leagues -- I’m just going to play ball -- and that’s all important, but getting a chance to play for the Yankees, it’s a lot more than just baseball.”

***

It could be that he grew up in a house with two educators, who always demanded that he prioritize school. But as teammates go, you’re not likely to find any better teacher than Aaron Judge.

Everyone can learn something from the Yankees’ captain. He just wants to win, but it’s clear in talking to him, observing him or just checking in with the other guys in the Yankees’ clubhouse how much value he both adds to and extracts from those around him.

His selflessness can be, admittedly, a challenge for writers trying to get color from the slugger after a moment of great achievement. Judge is nearly incapable of discussing his own feats without diverting the attention to those around him. “It was a cool moment,” Judge says of his three-run homer in the 2025 ALDS, the one that tied an elimination game and created a seismic event in and around the Bronx. “That’s all it was, just a moment.” He reserves his emotional response for excitedly pointing out that the blast put Jazz Chisholm Jr. in a position to hit a go-ahead shot one inning later.

Measuring a player’s value is largely tied up in understanding what he, himself, does. But how do you measure the things that Judge does for those around him, the things that allow them to be their best? When Yankees general manager Brian Cashman was shopping in the free-agent market this offseason, he knew that Judge was also working the phones, checking in with Cody Bellinger, and he knows that he can pitch the opportunity to play with one of the all-timers. “Having one of the greatest players on the planet is an attractive component,” Cashman says. But it’s not just about the stars at the top of the call sheet.

Ryan Yarbrough signed with the Yankees as camp was breaking at the end of Spring Training 2025. He showed up just in time to get on the team bus to the airport. That’s a weird time for any newcomer, and even though Yarbrough vaguely knew a bunch of his new teammates from competing against them with the Rays for many years, it still was a less-than-optimal way to start in a new environment.

“He was the first guy that really came over and talked to me,” Yarbrough says of Judge. “We’ve played against each other enough, we’re friendly. And he’s just like, ‘Man, I’m pumped you’re here.’”

Those aren’t just throwaway comments. Judge is a hard worker and a deep thinker, with worlds of insight to share with teammates. More notable than that, though, is his willingness. Yarbrough says that he has asked Judge for advice on how a batter reacts to his arsenal on the mound. Which pitches does he eliminate? What does he look for? Likewise, Yankees hitters know that there’s an encyclopedia of knowledge wearing No. 99, and that Judge is more than willing to share the goods.

It makes sense: Judge wants to win a championship. “Since I got up with the Yankees, even before that, I just wanted to be a team player that not only elevated my game, I wanted to push the guys around me to elevate their game a little bit,” Judge says.

If that sounds obvious, it’s at least worth noting that growing up in Northern California, Judge marveled at everything that Bonds did, watching in awe as the Giants’ slugger chased down the single-season and all-time home run records. Bonds, though, was a complicated character, as he acknowledged a few years back in an interview on Sabathia’s “R2C2” podcast. “I wasn’t the best clubhouse guy, that’s for damn sure,” he said. It wasn’t just that he was surly and combative with fans and the media. Bonds noted that he also didn’t want to share his intel with the guys on his team because, as he said, baseball is a business, and at some point, today’s teammate could be tomorrow’s opponent. “It was just, ‘Hey Barry, what do you see?’ ‘I see a pitcher.’ ‘What does he do?’ I’d say, ‘He throws balls and strikes.’”

Bonds was strictly business, and not in uniformly bad ways; home runs give your team a better chance to win, and Bonds hit 762 of them. But his process was about devoting everything to making himself the best baseball player possible, so much so that he didn’t want to spend even a second worrying about a teammate. To Bonds, winning or losing was not something you could control; all you could do was focus on your own output.

Everything about Judge shows a competitor who believes the opposite. “I could go 4-for-4 and have the best game in the world, but we can still lose,” he says. “But if I can find a way to motivate the guys around me to do a little better or push a little harder? It takes all nine guys in that lineup to win a ballgame.”

Even in Judge’s version, though, there’s more to it than just a desire to follow the perfect winning recipe. “I don’t think of it as like, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this so I can make the team better,’” Yarbrough says of Judge’s counsel. “I think that’s kind of a byproduct of him genuinely wanting guys to succeed and be the best they can be.”

Or, as Bellinger says, “What he does on the field is truly special, but what he brings into the locker room, what he brings as a teammate, and the confidence that he instills in everyone in that locker room, he’s a huge part of the success of this organization.”

***

Of course, there is also the baseball, the piece of the Aaron Judge puzzle most visible to the public -- the side of the player you see on MLB Tonight or SportsCenter, the thing you buy a ticket to experience.

Last year, Judge cracked the top five on the Yankees’ all-time home runs list, ending the year in fourth place after passing Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio. Ahead of him are three more Mt. Rushmore-class Hall of Famers: Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth.

It’s an astonishing thing, really. A scant few of the fans watching Judge today were alive to witness the feats of Ruth or Gehrig. Even the Mantle era is generations in the past. Yet every night during the summer, you can turn on your TV and watch a new and remarkable assault on the history books of the sport’s most historic franchise. Judge is one of 26 on the Yankees’ roster, but more and more, he’s keeping company with the absolute icons of American sports history.

“The Hall of Fame is one thing, right?” says manager Aaron Boone. “I mean, the best of the best. And especially in baseball, it’s probably the hardest Hall of Fame to enter. But even within that Hall of Fame, I think there’s what they call the ‘inner circle’ of that Hall of Fame, right? And that’s where Aaron’s putting himself.”

We could spend weeks discussing the finer details, and Judge would swat each one away. He’s a big guy with a powerful swing, and he hits a lot of home runs. We get it. But beneath the surface, even the raw home run totals hide a bigger story. After Judge hit that remarkable bomb against the Blue Jays in the Division Series, everyone heard the crazy stats: It was the only pitch outside of the strike zone that he had hit out of the park all season. It was the farthest pitch out of the strike zone that he had ever hit for a homer. It was even the fastest pitch that he had ever blasted into the seats. And we’re not just talking about some whoopsy-doo wall-scraper. Judge crushed a high, inside 99.7 mph fastball two-thirds of the way up the left-field foul pole.

In a pressure-packed moment, Judge essentially abandoned so much of the plate discipline that has made him elite -- the very discernment that helped make him a first-time batting champion in 2025 -- and demolished a ball like never before.

But let’s dig a bit deeper into the home run numbers. Last year, 20 of Judge’s 53 bombs -- about 38% -- came in the first inning. Eleven of them were on the road, and nine with the game still scoreless.

Consider the opening frame. Pitchers are finding their way. Batters are trying to figure out what they’re working with. There’s a whole lot of baseball left to play. And Judge is on the attack. No other player in the league last year was close to Judge’s 20 first-inning homers. Ohtani, Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez all tied with 14.

And this isn’t just a 2025 thing. Since the beginning of the 2017 season, Judge has 85 first-inning blasts. In that period, Kyle Schwarber ranks next on the list with 71. Judge has just the 12th-most plate appearances during that time period, but he also ranks third in walks.

There’s obviously nothing like a ninth-inning blast, and to be clear, Judge has hit plenty of those as well. But the first-inning dominance is so impactful in setting a tone and laying out a road map for his teammates.

Boone doubts that it’s a function of getting at a pitcher who isn’t locked in yet. “Any time a team or an opposing pitcher is facing Aaron Judge, they’re on top of things,” the manager says.

So, what is it? How is the one guy you can’t let beat you constantly beating you so quickly?

To Judge, it boils down to preparation, to the video he studies and the charts he memorizes. He knows that a lineup as deep as the Yankees’ will wear on pitchers, but he doesn’t wait to pounce on a tired arm. He’s ready from jump, eager to capitalize on the first mistake a pitcher might make, knowing it could be the only one. “It might be the very first pitch I see in the game, or it might be the pitch I see in the ninth inning to end the game,” Judge says. “If I can help everybody else on the team kind of relax and say, ‘Hey, we got a lead. Everybody just go out there and do your job and try not to do too much,’ that’s been my main focus.”

Mission accomplished.

***

In April 2025, Mark DeRosa, an MLB Network analyst and co-host of the Emmy-nominated MLB Central, visited Yankee Stadium for a momentous press conference. The manager of Team USA announced that Judge would be his captain for the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

“When I was named manager,” DeRosa said, “the first guy I thought of was No. 99. I wanted him to be the captain.” In January, just two months before the tournament would begin, DeRosa was still beaming about temporarily borrowing the Yankees’ captain, and what it could mean for a U.S. squad that lost in the championship game in 2023.

“I just think he’s the all-encompassing perfect guy to lead the United States team,” DeRosa said. “And I think if you polled his peers, they would have voted him unanimously.”

To DeRosa, Judge is the whole package. He’s a leader and a motivator, a guy who wears his hunger for all to see. Team USA’s skipper looks at Judge and doesn’t see any of the ballplayers that he, himself, played with in a 16-year big league career. Instead, he points to a sports icon most associated with wizardry: Magic Johnson.

Johnson was a remarkable player, capable of doing anything on the basketball court. But he also remade the position of point guard. He was a creator, the type of player who thrived by elevating everyone around him. “You’ve never really seen a guy of Judge’s size control the strike zone the way he does, hit homers the way he does, play defense, control the media, handle himself so well on and off the field,” DeRosa says. He lists some of the greats he played with -- Pujols, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Buster Posey -- and how Judge, like them, is able to raise everyone else’s level. “Just through osmosis, we get to relax and do our job because we have our pillar,” DeRosa says. “He’s going to carry us, and we’re going to uplift him and try and honor him by playing well.”

That message is plenty familiar to those who get to be around the captain for more than just a short tournament. Boone knows what to expect on the field from Judge, but more than that, he knows the benefits everyone derives from him off the diamond as well.

“He is obviously probably the best player in the sport, this generation’s greatest player,” Boone says. “But I think everyone that comes in contact with him -- whether it’s his teammates, his peers, his opponents -- everyone realizes what a special human being he is. We’re proud to have him as our captain, as the face of our team, as the face of this organization. He represents us very well.”

The sky is the limit for Judge, who turns 34 this April. Mentally, though, Judge sees little difference between the ceiling and the floor. There’s one measure that matters most -- championships -- and Judge is still chasing his first. For all the ways he approaches his pursuit of baseball greatness differently from Bonds, neither has won a World Series ring -- yet, in Judge’s case.

Judge will keep on chasing. He’ll keep studying pitchers, and he’ll keep sharing his intel. He’ll pounce when the time is right, and he’ll collect accolades and awards and whatever else the baseball world has to offer along the way. And to those around him, Judge will return all that he ever has -- the love, the respect, the pure kindness that fans and teammates have come to expect. The man whose importance on the field is so obvious will continue to redefine what it means to be valuable.

“He pours more into his teammates than anyone I’ve ever seen,” Rizzo said of the Yankees’ captain, once again -- and likely not for the last time -- his league’s Most Valuable Player. “Anyone he meets, their day is better after meeting Aaron Judge.”

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the March 2026 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.