The Yankees have a problem. Aaron Judge is out of the lineup, his shoulder has been bothering him for weeks, and now imaging has confirmed a bone bruise on his upper right rib that is pressing into the shoulder.
The captain is officially day-to-day. The Yankees are not ruling out an injured-list stint. And his recent performance suggests this thing has been quietly hurting him for longer than the team admitted.
Judge has hit one home run in his last 18 games dating back to May 10. For most major-league hitters that is a fine stretch. For Judge, the reigning AL MVP who set the league on fire last year, that is a red flag.
Now we know why.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone confirmed that Judge had been dealing with shoulder soreness for “the last couple of weeks.” Things escalated in Sacramento over the weekend, where the swing started feeling actively painful. The team did tests Monday during the off day and the bruise showed up on the imaging.
Judge met with team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad on Tuesday. After the Yankees lost 9-4 to Cleveland, Boone announced Judge will see a specialist on Wednesday for additional testing.
That timeline matters. When a star player needs a second opinion in a different city in the middle of a stretch run, that is rarely a vote of confidence in the day-to-day designation. The Yankees almost certainly know more than they are saying publicly.
The on-field numbers tell the rest. Judge is hitting .248 with 17 homers and 38 RBIs through about 55 games. By his absurd standards, that is a slump. He should be on a 50-homer pace by now if healthy. The 17 are still better than most lineups in baseball can produce from their best hitter, but it is not what the Yankees paid for.
If Judge ends up on the IL, the Yankees are in trouble. The lineup behind him is good but not deep enough to absorb the loss of a top-three player in the sport for two-plus weeks. Giancarlo Stanton remains a question mark. Anthony Volpe is a steady glove with limited offensive ceiling. The DH role is in flux.
Cleveland just took two of three. Detroit is breathing down their neck in the wild-card race. Toronto is climbing. The AL East was supposed to be a one-team race a month ago, and now the Yankees are playing without their best hitter.
The hope is that the bone bruise responds to rest. These injuries typically take one to three weeks to heal. If Judge is shut down completely for 10 days, he could come back in the second half of June ready to play. The Yankees would lose somewhere between 8 and 12 games on the calendar in that window.
The fear is that the bruise is masking something structural. Shoulder injuries are notorious for being deeper than they appear at first imaging. If Wednesday’s specialist finds something behind the bruise, Judge could be out longer than the Yankees can afford.
Boone gave the kind of update reporters always get in these situations. “We’ll know more soon.” Translation: he knows more right now and is not going to tell you yet.
The smart move is to put Judge on the IL retroactively, give him 10 days to heal up, and bring him back for the late June series against the Mets. That is what most other teams in baseball would do. Whether the Yankees treat the situation that conservatively will tell you everything about how worried the medical staff is.
For now, Judge is day-to-day. The Yankees are vulnerable. The AL East just got real.
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.
