Erik Boland: Will Yankees' Aaron Judge be back this season? That's becoming the question.
Yankees' Aaron Judge loks on during the third inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium on Friday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Aaron Judge was mostly vague during his meeting with reporters Friday afternoon to discuss his progress from the rib stress fracture that has kept him out of the lineup since May 31 and landed him on the injured list on June 5.
Among the exceptions was his answer to the only question that truly matters at this point.
Does he still expect to be back this season?
“Yeah, definitely,” he said. “I don’t see why I wouldn’t.”
Except, in talking about the long-awaited follow-up MRI on the rib, Judge provided plenty of road map for how the “wouldn’t” could become possible.
“There’s some progress, some healing going on, but not fully healed,” he said. “We’re still waiting on one more doctor to take a look at it, kind of see how we progress forward the next couple of weeks. But definitely a positive sign that we’re seeing some healing.”
Manager Aaron Boone, who often looks as if he’s involved in the making of a hostage video when he’s asked to give an injury update on Judge, said the Yankees had heard back from that “one more doctor.”
That is Dr. Gregory Pearl, a Dallas-based vascular surgeon who specializes, among other things, in rib injuries.
The news was not altogether encouraging.
“Kind of agreeing with Dr. Ahmad,” said Boone — referencing Yankees team physician Christopher Ahmad — after learning that Saturday night's game against the Dodgers had been postponed because of forecasts of additional thunderstorms in the area and rescheduled as a split doubleheader on Sunday. “Obviously, healing going on, which is good, but still not able to start any baseball activities. You need to get to a point to where he’s asymptomatic to where you can really start ramping up to more upper-body stuff.”
The good news?
“The pain is subsiding somewhat over the last couple of weeks, and changing from that sharp [pain] to more of that dull [discomfort],” Boone said. “So hopefully he continues to improve there, and then we can start upping things. So a little more that he’ll be able to do now, but until it continues to heal a little more, we have to be smart here.”
All of which continues to be the most concerning element of Judge’s comments on Friday followed by Boone’s update on Saturday — the fact that it remains very much in question when the three-time American League MVP will be able to begin in earnest the process of building up his body physically for a return to the big leagues.
Because until he receives clearance to do something other than what he’s been doing the last six-plus weeks — strictly lower-body conditioning — a true timeline for when that return is possible cannot be established.
The recent updates brings further into play the possibility that it won’t be at all in 2026.
It is anticipated that once he’s able to start baseball activities, Judge will need in the neighborhood of a month to get built back up physically to play in big-league games.
Judge, not surprisingly, saw through a reporter’s transparent attempt to get him to acknowledge a timeline of any kind. He was asked, “Would it be accurate to say you’ll need a second spring training once cleared to resume baseball activities in full?” and responded with a smile: “I wouldn’t say that. I hate rehab games, so I have to talk with them about all that. Because why waste at-bats in rehab games? We’ll see. I’m not too sure about that.”
Judge, of course, knows full well that the number of rehab games is the least relevant element of the build-up process.
The calendar, already becoming an obstacle, further becomes one the longer he goes without getting the go-ahead from doctors to do the kind of upper-body work required to get ready for daily games at the sport's highest level.
It is for that reason that from the time Judge officially went on the injured list, the organization felt a return by mid-August was a best-case scenario.
With Judge’s report Friday and the subsequent information provided by Boone on Saturday, that’s pretty much out the window.
With an unknown timeline — and, at the moment, an unknowable one — for Judge to start actual baseball work, the best-case scenario now appears a return by early September.
“I feel good about the fact that he’ll be back,” Boone said on Friday. “But it’s just a matter of when.”
It would seem, however, that “if” rather than “when” is starting to become a part of the conversation.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
