Around the Empire: Yankees news - 11/23/22

NY Post | Joel Sherman: Aaron Judge touched down in San Francisco earlier this week, and had a meeting on Tuesday with the Giants. Judge has made it quite clear that he intends to play out his free agency a bit, but between this and the latest YES Network discussion it’s clear that the Yankees’ retaliation right now is to point to Judge’s past comments on wanting to be a Yankee for life. There have been plenty of players like Derek Jeter who negotiated solely with their team, but plenty more want to see the field and as Sherman alludes to, a few were former Yankees who still stuck around after some intense pursuits by outside teams.

Time | Sean Gregory: The Yankees and Mets were recently getting investigated for a conversation that was deemed inappropriate over Aaron Judge’s free agency. The Mets were reportedly staying out of the bidding to keep relations calm with their cross-town rivals, which sounds like a potential case of collusion even with the best of intentions. MLB has finished its investigation and has deemed that there was no collusion at hand, however. Of course, this is the league talking about itself and the union has yet to comment on this ruling.

CBS Sports | Chris Bengel: Did you think that the Spider Tack discourse had run its course? Apparently not, as Alek Manoah reignited the topic in the latest episode of Serge Ibaka’s “How Hungry Are You?” podcast hosted on Sportsnet. Manoah was prompted to tell who he thought was the biggest cheater in baseball, and he went right after Cole for being the posterboy of the sticky stuff scandal. Who knows if this dig will be remembered come the start of the season, but I’m sure someone will bring it up the next time these two go head-to-head.

MLB.com | Paul Casella: Justin Verlander and Albert Pujols collected a bit more hardware, winning the Comeback Player of the Year awards in their respective leagues. Of note for the Yankees though is that Matt Carpenter earned some votes for the award as well, despite just playing in 47 games. His incredible run through the summer really made an impact with folks, and deservedly so.