Brian Cashman and the Yankees Haven't Learned Their Lesson with Aaron Judge

Three years ago, the New York Yankees got a historic season from Aaron Judge and wasted it. He made it to 62 home runs, but he just didn't have enough support as a rousing 61-23 start gave way to a dud of a 38-40 finish.

Beginning to sound familiar?

Here we are in 2025, where even a recent cool spell has done little to dim the shine of Judge's overall numbers. He leads MLB in hits, runs, runs batted in, average and both on-base and slugging percentage, and he's already up to 5.2 rWAR.

The 33-year-old is a god among mortals, plain and simple.

Unfortunately, it's hard to separate said cool spell from how the Yankees are performing. Judge is 3-for-26 in seven games since he and the team left Kansas City on June 12. The Yankees have lost six of these and seen their lead in the AL East shrink from a high of 7.0 games to just 2.0 games.

This is not Judge's fault. No player is slump-proof, not even 6'7", 282-pound deities whose bats hurl thunderbolts.

The fault must instead be placed at the feet of general manager Brian Cashman, as this sudden onslaught of Ls speaks to a roster construction problem that the Yankees were bound to crash into.

There Was Only Ever One Way Losing Juan Soto Wouldn't Hurt

It already feels like a lifetime ago that the Yankees ended their 14-year absence from the World Series last October, and that is largely due to the biggest difference between this year's roster and last year's.

The 2024 Yankees had Juan Soto. The 2025 Yankees do not.

When the Yankees added Soto, the obvious idea was to have him and Judge carry the offense in 2024. Perhaps they didn't envision them giving Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig a run for their money, but that's exactly what happened as the Yankees won 94 games and the AL East crown.

Right now, though, the Yankees ought to be able to appreciate the other benefit of having two superstars sharing a lineup: If one stops hitting, the other is there to pick up the slack.

The Yankees saw this play out at both ends of 2024. As Judge was mired in his pre-ejection slump early in the season, Soto put up a .986 OPS to help get the team off to a 22-13 start. And when Judge went cold in the first two rounds of the playoffs, Soto pushed his OPS up over 1.000 and came through with the hit that put the Yankees in the World Series.

Cashman and Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner were clearly convinced of Soto's value after that. They reportedly offered him $760 million in free agency, just $5 million short of what he accepted from the Mets.

Even after that happened, the Yankees' convictions merely changed shape. Even if they couldn't have Soto back, they understood they needed another player like him.

Hence their attempt to trade for Kyle Tucker, which fell short after they balked when the Houston Astros insisted on top prospect George Lombard Jr. and reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil. Tucker instead went to the Chicago Cubs.

Nothing about this is aging well for New York. After a slow start that featured plenty of schadenfreude for Yankees fans, Soto has caught fire and is now the most valuable hitter on the Mets. For their parts, Tucker has a .909 OPS for the Cubs, Gil has yet to pitch in 2025 because of a lat strain and Lombard has been humbled (i.e., .631 OPS) since making the jump to Double-A.

Meanwhile, Judge is providing 34 percent of the WAR the Yankees are getting from their offense. It's an even bigger share than in 2022, when he provided 30 percent.

The Yankees Fooled Around and Are Now Finding Out

Given that the if-not-Soto-then-Tucker plan indicated Cashman knew what he had to do over the winter, it is baffling that he abandoned it.

Whereas he started out chasing Soto and Tucker, the New York GM ended up taking a scattershot approach with deals that paired Judge with Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger and the club's incumbent pitchers with Max Fried and Devin Williams.

It was a classic case of "we can't replace him, but we can recreate him in the aggregate," which is a good idea only up to the point when a season ceases being the stuff of projections and starts being, you know, real.

To his credit, Fried has been everything the Yankees could have hoped for and more with a 9-2 record and a 1.89 ERA through 14 starts. But Williams has been a sub-replacement-level disaster out of the bullpen, while Goldschmidt and Bellinger are largely complicit in a broader 8-11 skid since May 30.

Bellinger, Goldschmidt, Trent Grisham, Anthony Volpe, Ben Rice and Jasson Domínguez have a combined 73 wRC+ since May 30. This is compared to a 131 wRC+ prior to that date, indicating that they have gone from 31 percent above average to 27 percent below average.

Something like this was always inevitable. Bellinger and Goldschmidt are both former MVPs, but they are also several years removed from their primes. Grisham barely had a prime before this year. And while Volpe, Rice and Domínguez are talented young players, all three were clearly playing over their heads earlier in the year.

What hope there is now has to do with Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Giancarlo Stanton being healthy, but there ought to be about a million asterisks after the word "hope." Neither is known for staying healthy, while both are known for running cold as easily as they run hot.

There's Still Time for Brian Cashman to Fix His Mess

It is, of course, important not to lose sight of the positives the Yankees have going for them.

Though the Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays have been creeping up the standings, the Boston Red Sox's trade of Rafael Devers removed a longtime Yankees menace from the AL East. That deal also signaled the start of the summer trading season, and the Yankees should have options ahead of the July 31 deadline.

Though they're already over the $301 million "Cohen tax" threshold of the luxury tax, their actual payroll is $15 million below their final tally from last season. They're also not without prospect capital, especially with erstwhile top-100 prospect Spencer Jones having a resurgent season at Double-A.

Someone to play third or second base must be Cashman's top priority, with Ryan McMahon of the Colorado Rockies representing one obvious target. The Yankees coveted him last year, and he's rocking a career-best OPS+ with stellar metrics in 2025.

Other potential targets include Nolan Arenado, Eugenio Suárez and Yoán Moncada for third base, and Luis Arraez and Brendan Donovan for second base. If the Yankees would sooner upgrade their outfield, there's Luis Robert Jr. and Taylor Ward.

The bummer for Cashman, however, is how many other trade chips are held by AL East rivals who may not be keen on dealing with the beast in the Bronx. In particular, it's hard to imagine them having a shot at Jarren Duran, Wilyer Abreu, Cedric Mullins, Bo Bichette or even Brandon Lowe as long as the Rays remain close.

Further, the Yankees' obvious targets are not exactly Soto-level game-changers. Adding McMahon or whoever would basically be the front office slapping more chunks of clay onto its misshapen aggregate recreation of Soto.

What Cashman really needs to do is make like San Francisco Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey and think big. Devers was obviously a special case, but there's no harm in Cashman taking inspiration and kicking the tires on, say, José Ramírez, Marcus Semien or even Mike Trout.

True, the Yankees are on pace to win 94 games. That's exactly as many as they won last year, which could be taken as an indication that their plan to build around Judge for 2025 is working just fine.

However, it's only working because he has spent most of the season shouldering an unfairly large burden. The Yankees are finding out how bad it could get if the weight gets to be too much, and frankly, it needs to scare them into action.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.