The Yankees spent most of the weekend treating Aaron Judge’s calf like classified material. On Monday, Aaron Boone finally said the part that matters.
Boone told reporters the Yankees are “not expecting” Judge to be available for the AL Wild Card Series. Judge landed on the 10-day injured list Saturday with a moderate grade strain in his right calf, suffered in a game against the Twins. He received an injection in the calf during Monday’s off day.
Boone left a sliver of a door open. “I’m not expecting it, but I’m not ruling it out either,” he said. He also volunteered the standard recovery windows for a calf strain of this grade: two to four weeks, or four to six weeks. The Wild Card round begins in less than two.
Translation: plan on a best-of-three without him and treat anything else as a bonus.
The Number the Yankees Cannot Spin
New York is 41-25 in games Judge has played this season and 48-41 in the games he has missed. That is not a catastrophe, but it is also not a team that shrugs off losing the best hitter in the sport. Those games without him are spread across a long summer. A three-game series is a different animal, where one cold night from a lineup ends a season.
The Yankees have been leaning on pitching for weeks and believing the bats will show up. Carlos Rodon has a 2.08 ERA across three September starts after clearing left elbow inflammation. Max Fried is at 1.69 in three September starts after two trips to the IL. Gerrit Cole is behind them, and Cam Schlittler has pitched his way into the AL Cy Young conversation.
That is a rotation you can win a short series with. It is also a rotation that will need to carry a lineup missing its engine.
Who Replaces the Irreplaceable
Nobody does, and the Yankees know it. What they have is a group that has quietly gotten hot at the right moment. Ben Rice cracked his team-leading 39th home run and is hunting 40. Austin Wells has three homers in his last six games. Heliot Ramos has gone deep in back-to-back games and could matter more in October than anyone expected in March.
The bullpen is the bigger worry. Brent Headrick leads the majors in appearances and his velocity has dipped. Tim Hill is not generating grounders the way he used to. If the offense is playing short-handed, those innings get very loud very fast.
Why the Timing Stings
Tampa Bay came into the Bronx holding a six-game lead with seven to play. One Rays win ends the AL East race and locks New York into the Wild Card round, which means the Yankees are looking at a best-of-three against a Red Sox team that just clinched and has been the second-best story in baseball since April.
A healthy Judge makes that series a coin flip New York would happily take. Without him, the Yankees are asking their rotation to be perfect for three games against a Boston club that has no fear of that ballpark.
Boone is right not to rule Judge out entirely. He is also right not to build a plan around him. This roster has one week to prove it can score without the guy who has been scoring for them all year.
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.