Yankees superstar slugger reveals he almost signed with Padres in 2022 free agency

From his own admission, Aaron Judge would have been playing alongside his New York Yankees superstar teammate Juan Soto one way or another.

The Yankees almost lost their biggest star in 2022

Per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Judge recently came out and revealed that the San Diego Padres’ organization impressed him to the point he considered signing with them during his highly-coveted free agency in 2022 (h/t Benjamin Adduccio of ClutchPoints):

“But man, I was very impressed by [Seidler]. If we weren’t coming from the Yankees and the situation we have here, you never know,” Judge said. “Just how he treated me and my family. Just a couple of hours meeting him, I was like, ‘This is what it’s all about. This is a true owner. This is a guy who cares about every single person from the cooks to the guy they’re trying to sign.’”

Yankees: Aaron Judge could’ve joined the San Diego Padres with Juan Soto in 2022

The Padres not only presented themselves as a first-class organization, but they also threw a wad of money at the former 2022 AL MVP in an attempt to lure him to San Diego. The Padres offered Judge an excess of $400 million, which far exceeded the nine-year, $360 million deal he signed with the Yankees that fall.

Judge would have entered the 2023 campaign next to a slugger in Soto who went for 35 home runs and 109 RBI’s in San Diego that year. The Dominican All-Star came out two months before Opening Day and stated that he never wanted to leave the Washington Nationals — the team that drafted him and traded him to the Padres in 2022 — so had Judge opted to move to the West Coast, he and Soto’s pairing may not have been a career-long one.