This could be the Red Sox in the MLB playoffs, along with the Yankees

It seems like an old story, but for a few months early in the offseason in 2022, it looked like Aaron Judge was destined to become a San Francisco Giant. As much as I despise the Yankees, I thought letting Judge go was a mistake on par with, if not worse than, the Mookie Betts trade. I said it on the podcast, but it's worth repeating that as a New Yorker, I've never seen a single Yankee capture the attention of the fan base like Judge did, especially before the team traded for Juan Soto.

Of course, all the hand-wringing was for naught, as the Yankees signed Judge, who overcame his playoff woes and hit his first playoff home run of 2024 last night, giving the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the ALCS over the Guardians. He's also poised to win the MVP award for the second time in three seasons after a .322/.458/.701 season in which he hit 58 home runs and 144 RBI. In this business, we call these numbers “big,” “impressive,” and the like.

To be fair to the Red Sox, they signed Rafael Devers to a big contract instead of letting him walk, but the situations aren't quite the same. Judge is better than Devers in the same sense that Betts was better than Devers, and Betts was sent to the Dodgers because he supposedly wanted to leave anyway, or so the fools say. The truth, of course, is that money matters and the Sox didn't give Betts a chance to listen. They didn't want to have the conversation. The Yankees and Judge did it, and now they're two games out of the World Series.

Remarkably, the Sox were in more or less the same position two years ago, but they haven't done anything notable on the field since then, and I'm not holding my breath for next year either. Soto will be a free agent in the offseason, but I also find it hard to believe he'll go anywhere, although I'd be happy if I were wrong. The point, broadly speaking, is that the Yankees tried to win and the Sox didn't, so the Yankees and the Sox don't win. If this story sounds familiar, it's because it's largely the story of the two teams throughout their history. We are back where we started and that is our decision. That could be us – it was us. But now it's hard to imagine that it will happen any time soon.