The New York Yankees are playing the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS without Aaron Judge, and they are doing it by choice. Manager Aaron Boone and the club left their captain off the 26-man roster because his right calf is not ready. Tampa Bay leads the series 1-0 heading into Game 2 on Monday night.
What we know about the injury
Judge suffered a moderate strain of the soleus muscle in his right calf on September 16 at Target Field against the Twins. He received a platelet-poor plasma injection in late September. He has been working his way back since, taking live batting practice at Yankee Stadium on Monday and more at-bats in Bridgewater, New Jersey on Wednesday. He also worked out Friday at the team’s facility in Tampa.
That is a lot of baseball activity for a player who is not on the roster. It tells you the Yankees were close. They simply were not comfortable.
Boone put it bluntly: “I just feel like he’s not quite ready to do it.”
The pinch-hitter idea and why it died
The Yankees did discuss carrying Judge as a pinch hitter for the first two games. Boone said they decided against it because that role would have taken away days when Judge could do real work. In his words, keeping him on in a pinch-hitting role would have “stripped away the ability to have some really good days.”
I get the logic, and I think it was the right call. A one-swing Judge is a nice idea, but a half-healthy Judge who aggravates a soleus strain in October is a disaster. The Yankees are betting that a few more days of controlled work get him back for a bigger moment.
To make room, New York added left-hander Ryan Weathers and removed Amed Rosario, leaving an 11-pitcher staff.
The ALCS door is still open
Here is the important part for Yankees fans. Judge remains eligible to be added to the roster for the AL Championship Series if New York gets there. That means the Yankees can win this round without him and still get him back.
It also raises the stakes for the lineup around him. Losing their captain for a short series is a real cost, and the Yankees have to scrape together offense with a younger group. They trail 1-0, and they will see Freddy Peralta for the Rays on Monday night.
Everything after that depends on how the calf responds. Neither the team nor Boone has put a firm date on a return, and no timetable beyond the ALCS eligibility has been announced. If the Yankees survive, expect Judge’s status to become the biggest question hanging over the next round.
For now, the Yankees’ postseason runs through a lineup that has to produce without the one bat opposing pitchers fear most.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
