The Yankees are placing Aaron Judge back on the injured list with a similar low-grade calf strain to the one that shelved him earlier this month, manager Aaron Boone tells reporters (Twitter link via James Wagner of the New York Times). Judge only just came off the injured list this week, but he exited his first game back with tightness in his problematic calf muscle.
There’s little doubt that Judge is among the game’s best all-around offensive performers when he’s healthy enough to take the field. He’s batting a ridiculous .292/.343/.738 with nine homers through 18 games and 71 plate appearances so far in 2020 and owns a career .274/.392/.556 line. But injuries have continually hampered Judge since his incredible rookie season in 2017.
The fractured wrist that Judge suffered upon being hit by a pitch back in 2018 can be chalked up as a fluke, of course, and the same could perhaps be said about the cracked rib and subsequent punctured lung he sustained on a bid for a diving catch last September. However, Judge has also now had multiple IL stints for oblique and calf injuries alike. In all, he missed 50 games in 2018, 60 games in 2019 and will now be sidelined for a yet-to-be-determined period in 2020 (already having missed 15 days with the first calf injury).
As has become typical in recent years, a resilient Yankees club has found a way to weather the storm in light of injuries to Judge and several other key players (Luis Severino, James Paxton, Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres). Still, it’s a staggering amount of talent to be shelved simultaneously, and the Yankees are beginning to show the effects; they’ve dropped five straight games and now trail the Rays by two and a half games in the AL East. At the moment, they’re closer in the standings to the third-place Blue Jays than to Tampa Bay.
Judge is a great talent. Just wish there was a way to keep him healthy.
Keep him off the field
Is he ever not injured?
glass!!
The Yankees will have a little dilemma: how do they structure a contract that doesn’t end up like Stanton but keeps Judge there? The dude just can’t stay healthy.
The huge mass of injured players may point to problems with the coaching staff..
Negative, injuries are pretty much the same on all teams this year. It all points to the shortened season and the lack of time to slowly build up the players.
And this is coming from the biggest anti-yankee fan in the universe…
So the repeated injuries to the same Yankee players over the last few seasons isn’t a sign of some issue in the Yankees organization?
DON’T BELIEVE THAT JUDGE WILL EVER GET THAT MONSTER CONTRACT HE IS JUST INJURED TO OFTEN.
just quit already and play with your kids or dog at home, Baseball isn’t your thing anymore
Definitely. That 4.5 war in only 2/3 of a season is so horrible he should never play baseball again.
We know he can hit 52 HRs over mostly a full season, and he was injured for about 6 weeks during that season. Where is the new performance and conditioning staff that was hired specifically for this purpose?
I’m not a direct fan of the Yankees, but it would be fun to see Judge and Stanton in the lineup for an extended period of time. This is a bummer.
I’m not a Yankee fan either but I agree having both healthy and playing full time would be fun to watch.
Judge is a joke. What good are all those muscles if you’re just going to pull them all the time. Scrapheap city.
This guy is more fragile than Tulo!! Bummer because hes so exciting to watch. Time to take up yoga and stretch out those muscles.
Nobody EVER suited up that was more fragile than TULO.
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Jacoby Ellsbury would be on line 1, but he broke a wrist picking up the phone
Ha! Good one
I’m sure the Yankees knows much more of what to do but I would suggest looking at their conditioning and strengthening staff, maybe switch Judge to a DH with frequent breaks here and there, change his workout habit, etc.
I would NOT ink him to a long term deal whatsoever unless he can show that he can continue to play without hitting DL for at least a couple of years.
Completely agree with the strength and conditioning staff getting a good look at. Injuries and the Yankees are becoming synonymous. Only issue is with Stanton even more of an injury scare than Judge, he’s taking the DH role. With Stanton not opting-out(I mean who would given his track record?) The Yankees are in a bit of a conundrum. Should try to offload Stanton’s contract for a bad pitching contracting that they can eat just to free up the DH spot for Judge.
No one is going to take on that Stanton contract. It has another 7 years to go after this season, plus an option for year 8 in 2028. The Yankees would need to eat at least 1/2 of the remaining money and take a back a bad contract in return in order to have any chance of moving him. Stanton also has a full no trade clause so he could prevent any deal he doesn’t like. Sure feels like Stanton will be with NY through 2027…ouch!
They got a new head of performance and S&C this off-season… and the dude is the best in the baseball world… google Eric Cressey… his track record speaks for itself. He’s hands down the best in our field. But just starting the first few months of 2020 isn’t enough time to turn the whole operation around.
Yankees like to collect DHs. They can never have enough….lol
What bad pitching contract would you suggest? Stanton also has to approve of a trade. It’s too bad he didn’t close to outperform his contract otherwise he may have opted out. Last year not playing at all, now this year. At least if he had his 18 numbers last year he maybe could have considered. I wonder though if he really likes playing in NY?
Judge usually hurts himself more swinging the bat and running the bases than he does playing the field.
370 avg. averages 25 hrs per year. Not a great player. slightly above average. He’s no Dave Kingman
Judge has almost passed Kingman in career war in only 414 games. What are you on?
Can’t you understand a joke when you see one, Steve?
Reading comments on this site, you’ll stop thinking people are joking when they say dumb stuff.
Well, I understand where you are coming from, but Dave Kingman was a prototypical DH (even when in the NL!) – no glove, all HR, all K’s! Judge is the opposite, and therefore is no Dave Kingman!
You’re right, he’s no dave kingman
370? Maybe for one week of baseball. He’s a .275 hitter
Hard to believe he’s not on steroids with all these injuries and the amount of time it takes him to heal from them
Agreed. His type of injuries and inability to recover have always been symptoms of steroids. I am sure the thought has crossed through many fan’s mind, but people are afraid to say it. Then again, maybe he’s just extremely injury prone.
BTW, I’d take Kingman just for the fact that he could stay in the line up more consistently and did not require juiced baseballs to accumulate high home run totals. If they used a juiced baseball in Kingman’s prime, he’d probably hit 60 HR annually. This crap about WAR doesn’t hold water if you can’t stay on the field.
WAR is a cumulative stat so it does in fact take staying on the field into account.
Judge isn’t the problem, the Yankees’ group of staffers are. End of discussion.
Time for Florial to show he belongs so they can move on from Judge or Stanton
Why are you commenting? This guy said End of discussion. We must all stop talking now.
fair-critic Are they though? There is such thing as injury prone players in sports. The Yankees did make changes in that department since last season. It’s not the exact same group of staffers. Eventually you have to drop the ‘No it’s everyone else’s fault’ stance with him.
They need to DH him. The issue is that he’s too big and strong for his own body. He’s like a battleship cannon. You can fire the gun so many times until the pure power damages itself. He’s so strong it hurts his body.
This is his body telling him that he’s gotten too big for his frame to support it. He needs to stop power-lifting, slim down and work exclusively on core strength and flexibility. This will only continue to get worse unless he makes some serious changes to his workout routine. If he drops 25-30 lbs of muscle, he’ll still be plenty strong enough to hit 50 HRs per year; he just needs to be able to stay on the field.
Where are you drawing this information from? I’m also curious what your definition of power-lifting is? I just find it ridiculous you think you know how to train a professional athlete better than guys who have master’s degrees and do this for a living.
Even if the Yankees could unload Stanton they can’t help themselves and would go out and add another disaster contact. It is in their DNA. Ellsbury should of been the end of that but they didn’t learn and never have since the 70’s. When Epler gets fired in California they can bring him back in and he can show them on to waste $$$ on pitching
Arenado for Judge. Who says no? (Mainly because I want to see Judge hit in Coors.)
This was fairly easy to presume once he returned so quickly from his first calf injury. That injury is quickly becoming an automatic 60-day stint for a lot of players, for example, Donaldson, Judge, Stanton, etc. I cringe now when I read minor calf strain, or whatever the current terminology is that attempts to assuage worry. To keep these guys healthy they will need to rest them a lot more, it seems. They need really solid realia me backup position players so Judge/Stanton can rotate through 100-120 games per year, imho
Cashman with his responses like “our data shows….”
Yeah, does it show that getting 15 of the same type of player that lifts weights and swings for the fences is the right way to build a roster?
They all get hurt continually.
Also spends 200M plus on payroll every year and rarely wins a championship.
Wait until your boss wakes up from his nap and realizes this.
The data shows under his leadership, more money spent than any other team for payroll, scouts, coaches, facilities, amenities and one WS trip or 3 less than the damn red sox…..
yup- and you didn’t even address he awesomeness in building a starting pitching staff from within, through trades or the FA market (other than cole)
Its time to see how brilliant he is in KC, Pittsburgh, or Miami
So you want the yankees players to stop lifting weights?
Nobody has a worse draft record than Cashman. It’s appalling.
Not a Yankees fan but I feel for the guy. He seems like a nice dude. Hang in there brah… and make some changes to the workout routine.
I’ve decided that error in judgement doesn’t drink enough coffee. That’s why he constantly needs to be recalfinated.
If he was a horse he would be put out if his misery!
That’s sad but funny .. maybe a good family would take him and just don’t ride him if he was a horse
Time to trade him. And Gary. Either can’t stay on the field or inconsistent. Turn the page and invest elsewhere.
Stretching and staying loose practices of the Yankees need to be reassed. Both Judge and Stanton got hurt during DHers.
Maybe he should just be a dh and tell him don’t run hard on the bases.. and tell him and aj watt to stop with over doing the gym workouts . ..
I now heard that Gausman does not want to come to the Yanks….not that he is the answer but he would have been a nice pickup…..I will say this right now…..This current Yankee squad will go nowhere in the playoffs. Judge and Stanton are two potato chips…Sanchez feasts off of bad pitching, but when it comes time for the playoffs and really good pitching……especially like the Dodgers he is a zero. He is overrated. When his bat meets the ball it goes yard.. Unfortunately, that does not happen too often. He just fishes at the worst pitches, plus he gets hurt a lot….. Gardner is getting older by the minute,,,,and it now seems like everybody is getting hurt. and now the bullpen seems to me a total mess…..In my opinion, there is only once chance for them to go anywhere in the playoffs…get Clevinger..period. they need a lights out starter…and with Cole and him in short series….it can happen. Thoughts guys?