Aaron Judge wants to play in October. That is the entire update, and it is not as reassuring as it sounds.
The New York Yankees slugger said Saturday he is dealing with a right calf strain in his soleus muscle, an injury that affects him while hitting. He declined to say what grade of strain the MRI revealed.
“I’d like to be back by the postseason. That’s definitely the plan,” Judge said. “I got really no answers for you on any timeline or anything like that.”
Read What He Did Not Say
A player who has been told he will be ready in two weeks says he will be ready in two weeks. A player who declines to name a grade and says he has no timeline is either protecting information or does not have good information to protect.
Judge suffered the injury Wednesday. Manager Aaron Boone’s assessment sounded notably more pessimistic than Judge’s does, which is usually the more accurate signal. Managers talk to trainers. Players talk about what they intend to do.
The Soleus Detail Matters
The soleus sits deep in the calf and does a lot of the work in absorbing force through the lower leg. For a hitter, that means it is loaded on every swing, on every push off the back leg, and on every hard stop out of the box.
Calf strains in that specific muscle have a reputation for coming back. Athletes feel fine at rest, test well in a controlled setting, then re-aggravate it the first time they have to produce real force. That is a bad profile for a player whose value comes from generating the most force in baseball.
This Season Has Already Been Broken
Judge missed 84 games this year with a rib injury before this happened. Eighty-four games is most of a season.
The Yankees clinched a postseason spot anyway, which says something about the rest of the roster. It also means they are heading into October without knowing whether their best hitter can swing at full effort, after a year in which he barely played.
The Yankees currently sit behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East. A Wild Card matchup with Boston looks like the likely first-round setup.
The Honest Assessment
New York should plan as though Judge is not available and treat his return as a bonus. Building a lineup around a player who may reinjure a deep calf muscle in his first at-bat is how teams lose short series.
There is a version of this where Judge shows up in the Wild Card round, hits two home runs and none of the worry mattered. There is also a version where he pushes to be ready, breaks down in Game 2, and the Yankees spend the winter explaining the decision.
Nobody will know which one until it happens, and Judge himself said as much. That is the most honest thing anyone in that clubhouse has said about it.
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.