Aaron Judge leaving Juan Soto out of New Year's IG post is objectively hilarious

There's no love lost between former Yankees teammates Juan Soto and Aaron Judge -- wait, alright, that phrase never made sense to me. Isn't there a lot of love lost between them? There was love all summer and into October, as Soto emphasized the "New York" across his chest and crowned Judge, but that love swiftly dissipated in the winter, as the Yankees captain chose not to contact his lineup mate during free agent negotiations, watching him choose Steve Cohen's money and steak and suites instead.

Or maybe the initial phrasing was accurate, and there never was any love to begin with?

Whether the Yankees' entire summer was an act or not, the fact remains that the two parties have gone their separate ways in-season for the next 15 years. Appropriately, Judge's 2024 recap post on his Instagram, launched on New Year's Eve, reflects that separation.

Just a few hours before midnight, Judge posted a carousel of images from the 2024 season, a year in which a Soto home run broke the Yankees' 15-year-old ice and sent the franchise back to the World Series. And yet it was entirely unsurprising that Soto wasn't included in the resulting photo montage of the year's best moments.

Yankees' Aaron Judge makes right call leaving Juan Soto out of New Year's Instagram post

Despite 10,000 hilarious identical Twitter jokes to the contrary, Judge certainly did not drop the ball on this one.

Also important to note: while Judge is almost certainly on board with the addition of Paul Goldschmidt, his post-2022 workout partner, the loss of Anthony Rizzo seems likely to sting in perpetuity, based on their US Open trip making the "goofy" portion of the montage.

Additionally, is that Luke Voit? And is that ... gray-haired cowboy Jonathan Holder?!

We applaud Judge's obviously PR-workshopped and likely difficult decision to leave Soto out of the on-field memories, but it's the correct call here. The ties have been severed. The Yankees haven't gotten "better," per se, but they've gotten more balanced -- and even if you don't think they have, there was nothing they could do about it. Captains lead, and Judge is ready to embrace the troops he's got (and helped construct). We're onto 2025. After the way the World Series ended, that page needs to be emphatically turned.

...Jonathan Holder?!