The Yankees just got the worst-case scenario.
Aaron Judge has been diagnosed with a stress fracture of the first rib on his right side and was placed on the 10-day injured list, the team announced. Judge will be re-imaged in approximately four to six weeks, which means he is going to miss serious time during the most important stretch of the season.
The kicker is that Judge has been playing through this since late April. He told reporters the injury started when he dove for a ball more than a month ago, and that he kept playing through “discomfort” until the pain became too much to ignore. That is so on-brand for Judge that it almost feels scripted. The captain plays through everything. The captain does not complain. The captain breaks his rib diving for a baseball in April and tries to fight through it for six weeks.
Then the captain finally taps out, and now the Yankees have to figure out how to win games in the American League East without him.
The numbers Judge put up while playing hurt were absurd, which is what makes this even more painful for New York. The three-time MVP was hitting in the high .300s with double-digit home runs and a 1.000-plus OPS through 60 games. He was on a pace that would have put him in MVP conversation again. He was carrying an offense that needed every ounce of production he could give them.
Now Aaron Boone has to fill that hole with what is left in the building, which is not much.
The Yankees recalled 6-foot-7 outfielder Spencer Jones from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Judge’s spot on the active roster. Jones is the team’s No. 5 prospect, a former first-round pick out of Vanderbilt, and a power hitter with serious tools. He also batted .167 with a .426 OPS in 10 major league games earlier this season before getting sent back down on May 22.
That is not a replacement for the AL leader in OPS. That is a desperate flier on a 25-year-old prospect because the Yankees do not have anything better right now.
The bigger problem is what this does to New York’s trade deadline plans. The Yankees were already going to be aggressive on Aug. 3 because that is what the Yankees always are. Now they have to be aggressive with a hole in the middle of their lineup that nobody on the market can really fill. There is no Aaron Judge available on the trade market. There never is.
The realistic targets are corner outfield bats like Tyler O’Neill, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Mike Yastrzemski, or Joc Pederson if the Texas Rangers are willing to move him. None of them are Judge. All of them would help a little. The Yankees are going to have to make a series of small moves to compensate for the loss of one giant move’s worth of production.
The injury also reshapes the AL East race. The Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox both got new life. The Tampa Bay Rays are still hanging around. The Baltimore Orioles, who were starting to find their stride, just got a much clearer runway to a division title.
For Judge personally, the timing is brutal. He is 34 years old. He is in the final guaranteed year of his nine-year, $360 million contract before the player options kick in. He has been chasing a championship his entire career, and this Yankees team felt like it had a real chance to win one this year. Now he has to sit and watch.
The 4-to-6 week timeline puts his potential return somewhere between mid-July and early August. Even if everything heals perfectly, he is going to miss roughly 40 games. He is going to come back rusty. He is going to need time to ramp back up.
The Yankees can survive this. They have done it before. Brian Cashman has built deep enough rosters in the past to absorb big injuries. But the margin for error just got dramatically smaller, and the Aug. 3 deadline just became must-make for a front office that cannot afford to whiff.
The captain went down. Now the rest of the Yankees have to figure out how to keep this season alive.
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.
