Aaron Judge could be a Yankee for life, so how high can the 62-homer slugger climb on franchise leaderboards?

The New York Yankees and reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge agreed to terms on a nine-year, $360 million deal Wednesday morning. There’s fallout all over the place, but one aspect — a strong one — is the likelihood that Judge will end up being a career Yankee. In this day and age, that’s pretty rare. Given that Judge just set the single-season team record for home runs with 62, we can’t help but let our minds wander down the road of other Yankees career leaderboards he could climb. 

Then again, this is the most storied franchise in MLB history and one of the most in all of sports. The leaderboards are kind of ridiculous. 

Let’s check it out anyway. Judge has nine more years with the Yankees. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of 2022 being his career year, but he still has a good chance to be very productive for a portion of the contract. We’ll look at some of the all-time Yankees leaderboards to figure he might end up, all the while keeping in mind Judge’s chances to go down as a Yankees legend. It’s a much higher bar here than with other franchises, but it’s still possible. 

To be clear, these are Yankees-only records and we’ll only look at counting stats for today, since we’re talking about impact over a long period of time. Off we go. 

Home runs

As noted, Judge currently has the Yankees (and AL) records with 62 homers in a single season. With 220 career home runs, however, he has a long way to go to get to the top. 

1. Babe Ruth, 659
2. Mickey Mantle, 536
3. Lou Gehrig, 493
4. Joe DiMaggio, 361
5. Yogi Berra, 358

Judge should be able to crack the top four here. Even if he only averaged 16 home runs per season through the life of this contract, he’d end up with 364. The race to Gehrig and then 500 could get interesting. It’ll be top heavy — the expectation is he’ll hit a lot more early in the contract than late — but Judge needs to average a touch over 31 home runs per season to get to 500. 

In order to top Ruth? Judge would have to average 48.89 home runs per season to get to 660. Take the under. 

RBI

After driving home an MLB-best 131 in 2022, Judge now has 497 RBI in his career. He’s not even close to the top 10 in franchise history just yet, as Don Mattingly’s 1,099 sit 10th in Yankees history. The top five: 

1. Gehrig, 1,995
2. Ruth, 1,978
3. DiMaggio, 1,537
4. Mantle, 1,509
5. Berra, 1,430

Judge would have to average about 74 RBI per season just to top Mattingly…