Aaron Judge's rib injury a saga that culminated with Yankees expecting him to return this season
· Yahoo Sports
Aaron Judge has a stress fracture in his top right rib. He will undergo imaging on the area in four to six weeks. When imaging shows the bone has healed, Judge can restart baseball activities. The Yankees expect he will return this year. Simple. Straightforward. Entirely uncomplicated.
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And yet, nothing about the way the Yankees came to this conclusion – which they announced late Thursday night in an uncharacteristic update emailed to media – was simple or straightforward. Friday, after days of waiting for specialists fueled the kind of speculation they would normally try to avoid, Judge, manager Aaron Boone, and GM Brian Cashman did their best to explain how they got here.
Judge came first, explaining to reporters that he believes he first suffered an injury while diving and trying to avoid Jazz Chisholm Jr. during an April 26 game in Houston. He said he played through the injury in the weeks since then, and that he was able to do so well enough that he felt no need to inform Boone that anything was bothering him beyond normal in-season wear and tear.
Judge’s numbers – an .805 OPS in May with a .194 ISO, both of which are drastically below his career norms – suggested the injury was affecting his play. And Boone admitted later that in hindsight, those effects were obvious, even though the problem causing them did not become so until last weekend in the Yankees’ series against the Athletics.
“I noticed it getting worse by Sacramento. Like, I noticed it,” Boone said. “And that’s when I kind of first said something to him. And I got him out of the game. So it’s tough to say whether it’s something that worsened over the weeks. I think there was that couple week stretch leading up to the other day where it was affecting him a little bit.”
Judge said Friday that by last weekend, he was limiting his swings before the game and his swings during the game were clearly compromised.
“I was kind of feeling the symptoms the past month, and we kind of did everything we could to make sure we could be out there,” Judge said. “Sacramento just kind of got worse. Fought it as long as I could.”
Cashman, meanwhile, said he did not know anything was wrong until Monday, when trainer Mike Schuk called with an unexpected message: Judge’s shoulder was hurting and needed imaging. He admitted he was “caught off guard” by the call, because until that point, Judge had not put the injury on anyone’s radar.
“We turn the clock back and try to figure out, did it happen on this play or that play. I do remember the play in Houston. That dive, along with a couple of collisions with walls along the way as well as diving plays thereafter,” Cashman said. “… Speculatively, that was a traumatic play. But none of the shared feelings from [Judge] at that time leveled up to anything. So in terms of us having any action items to deal with, it really didn’t occur until after the Sacramento series.”
Once the problem did become an action item, Cashman said, Yankees doctor Christopher Ahmad expressed concerns about the initial diagnosis of a bone bruise in the front of Judge’s shoulder. Ahmad knew Judge had injured a rib in a similar place in 2020, so he recommended the Yankees rule out some kind of correlation.
“Intuition was telling him to dig even deeper,” Cashman said.
So Judge underwent more testing and the Yankees consulted Dr. Gregory Pearl, a rib specialist, in Texas. Pearl’s website says he “has made significant contributions to vascular surgery education and clinical practice, particularly in complex vascular procedures and thoracic outlet syndrome management in high-performance athletes.”
That information naturally fueled speculation that Judge might be dealing with thoracic outlet syndrome, which players often describe as feeling in their shoulder even though the issue is not orthopedic. Compared to thoracic outlet syndrome, a mere stress fracture of his rib felt like it would be a relief. But Judge said thoracic outlet syndrome was never something he or the Yankees were worried about.
“I don’t think thoracic was ever involved in this at all. You go to a specialist who is a rib specialist just to see, take a look at this. I don’t know where thoracic got thrown around. It was never thoracic outlet. I don’t know where that came from,” Judge said. “But yeah, I think the worst thing I had in my eyes was a fractured rib, which is what we got.”
As for what comes next, both Cashman and Boone said they are intentionally avoiding identifying a target date for Judge’s return.
“We just have to let the thing heal,” Cashman said. Boone added that as soon as imaging shows the bone is healed, Judge will be able to start ramping back up. Judge, meanwhile, would not touch questions about when he might return.
“I don’t like talking timetables,” he said. “That stuff’s all made up.”
Even so, the Yankees do seem to have a few mile markers in mind when considering his return. First of all, they expect him back this year. When asked if there is a situation in which Judge might not return this year, Boone could cite only existential reasons.
“None of us are guaranteed tomorrow, so there’s always a scenario, he said. “The expectation is that he will be.”
The Yankees are so confident that Judge will return, in fact, that Cashman admitted he is not planning to add anything new to his trade deadline wishlist because of the injury.
“I guess it’s a good question because it’s something I didn’t consider,” Cashman said. “But if we expect him back, which we do, I don’t see why now would impact something for the deadline. We just have to hold the fort.”
Still, when the dust around the diagnosis settled, the consensus seemed to be that Judge’s injury is worse than they had feared, but not necessarily catastrophic. Judge said he was “very disappointed.” Cashman admitted he hoped the problem would be fixed with a minimum injured list stint and would be “less severe.” But both pointed to the Yankees stalwart starting rotation and the emergence of Ben Rice – who homered in his first at-bat after Judge was put on the injured list Friday – as reasons to believe they can survive without him.
“We’ve got a good club regardless,” Cashman said. “It’s obviously not as good without Aaron Judge, but still good enough.”