Michael King discloses Aaron Judge’s approach to his final season before free agency

Aaron Judge's 62 home runs in the 2022 MLB season remains one of the biggest feats in American League history if not baseball as a whole. The Yankees captain broke the long-standing record of Roger Maris, which stood for six decades.

Michael King, Aaron Judge's teammate during that season, recalled AarJudge's gameplan on the Casa de Klub podcast. King said that Judge didn't think of the inidividual numbers or accolades and instead tried to help his team with his at-bats, which were key to his success that year.

"If your main goal is to win the game that you're playing and not care about your stats, your stats then kind of take care of themselves. My college coach taught me that, and then Judgy was the one that was like the main guy that I saw in '22 when he hit 62 home runs, and he turned down a big-size extension in spring training or whenever that was.

"He goes out there, and he's just playing, wanting everybody around him to be as good as they possibly can and wanting to win baseball games, instead of forcing that pressure on himself and having to put up numbers to get more than the extension that was offered to him. It just came natural to him," King said. [17:05]

Ahead of the 2022 season, Aaron Judge was offered a seven-year $213.5 million extension, which he had refused and instead chose to take the arbitration amount in his last year.

Aaron Judge's record-breaking feat helped him garner a nine-year $360 million next winter, with the Yanks designating him as the team captain.

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Michael King doesn't find much difference between playing in San Diego and Aaron Judge's New York Yankees

Michael King was a part of the blockbuster trade that sent him and four others - Drew Thorpe, Randy Vásquez, Jhony Brito and Kyle Higashioka - to the Padres in exchange of Juan Soto and Trent Grisham.

King, asked if it felt any different suiting up for an organization that's not the Yankees having spent four years in New York, said:

"The difference between the Yankees and other organizations—Padres showed out. The stadium's incredible, the fans were incredible, we had a crazy payroll in terms of how talented the guys were on our team. So it's not like I was going to this small market with no fans...

"So going from that Yankees atmosphere and the pressure of being in New York to San Diego, I was thinking it was going to be a lot less media and not as much coverage, so you could just kind of play free. But you still got fans booing you if you didn’t play well. It’s still baseball. We had an awesome team, and it felt very similar". [19:35]

Michael King pitched 13-9 with a 2.95 ERA last season manning the starting rotation in San Diego. He will remain a key starter for the upcoming 2025 season, with the Padres looking to win a World Series title.