Aaron Judge is not walking through that door.
That’s in part because the Yankees’ best and most vital player revealed on Saturday that he still can’t walk without pain, much less run, which he sees as the key to really making progress from a torn ligament in his right big toe.
“It’s better, but not great, or else I’d be out there,” Judge said before the Yankees played their 17th game since the most important moment of their season, when the reigning AL MVP ran into the Dodger Stadium right-field wall on June 3, slammed his foot on an unpadded slab of concrete and created a before-and-after fracture line in the team’s season.
The way Judge sounded Saturday, no one should expect him back anytime soon. Judge still holds irritation that the Yankees announced a three-week approximation for his return in 2018 after he was hit by a pitch and incurred a chip fracture in his right wrist. That took seven weeks to heal. Judge is not a player who wants to be perceived as a malingerer at anything, including rehab. So, the Yankees are now more cautious about putting Judge’s business out on the street.
Still, when I asked Judge if he knew a timetable for his return, but was avoiding a public pronouncement because of that lingering annoyance, he said the doctors had given him a general idea of when he might play again. But he acknowledged there are factors that make it murky. This is not a common baseball injury with prescribed expectations for return. And even if it were, Judge is not common. He sits on his back right foot to hit, and at 6-foot-7, 280 pounds, arguably puts more force down on that foot to swing than anyone in the game.
Manager Aaron Boone has portrayed Judge as making progress toward a return and said he expects the slugger back this season. But every day without him exposes what a basketball team the Yankees have become. The absence of one player in baseball is not supposed to be like removing Nikola Jokic from the Nuggets or Giannis Antetokounmpo from the Bucks. But the Yankees look so inept without Judge that I asked him, a half-season into his nine-year, $360 million contract, if he were underpaid.
He laughed, hesitated, modestly said, “I don’t think so” and then asked what I was up to. But it wasn’t a trick question. Just reality. Judge was removed from the lineup and what was left has been the equivalent of nine Joey Gallos. There might be a homer popped once in a while, but mostly it is just one horrific, unproductive, overmatched at-bat after another — certainly not enough strung together to put an opposing pitcher under duress.
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The Yankees hit .196 in the first 16 games without Judge and averaged 3.1 runs per game — both MLB lows for the period. They were 6-10 in that span — five of the losses were by one run, another was by two, three were in extra innings. They have been one big hit away from wading troubled waters so much better. But they pretty much can’t get that hit.
Their run prevention has remained generally strong, but the margin for error has evaporated. So, if Michael King goes from their most valuable reliever to shaky, the impact is much greater. Every pitch is a stress pitch because they can’t score enough to win a game comfortably.
I thought Judge was the AL MVP last season — emphasis on “Valuable” — over the brilliant Shohei Ohtani because the Yankees would have blown a 15 ¹/₂-game division lead without Judge almost single-handedly carrying the offense in the second half. It was hard to be more valuable. Now, we are seeing what that same offense looks like without its best player and, if anything, it is making an MVP case for Judge again because of what his removal has meant (obviously, he can’t win the award missing this many games).
I also have always believed timeliness is integral to an MVP case — or an anti-MVP case. Will Josh Donaldson, DJ LeMahieu and Giancarlo Stanton hit? Maybe. But the Yankees need them to hit for impact now, not as backup singers when Judge returns. Boone sat both Donaldson and LeMahieu on Saturday against the Rangers and started Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who led the Yankees in batting (.333) in Judge’s absence. Billy McKinney was at .319. The rest was a disaster, headlined by the 14-for-128 (.109) combo of Donaldson, LeMahieu and Stanton.
Judge, negativity-rejecting Yankees captain, of course said the club will play well enough to make sure they are playing big games when he does return. He said he expects Carlos Rodon back soon to join Gerrit Cole to provide a big 1-2 for the rotation. He predicted Donaldson, LeMahieu and Stanton would hit. He cited the Yankees’ annual trait of enduring setbacks over 162 games and still making the playoffs.
But for that to happen between now and when Judge returns, they need a big-money player (or two or three) to be viewed as most valuable.
