Apparently Gerrit Cole wasn’t the only New York Yankees star in the MRI machine on Monday. While the team waits for word on their ace’s pitching elbow, they’re also dealing with some concern surrounding Aaron Judge. The former AL MVP — who’d been on the shelf for the last couple of days with what the team termed general soreness — told reporters on Tuesday morning that he underwent an MRI on his abs. Again, we’re still waiting on results, but Judge added that he won’t swing a bat again until later in the week and that his goal is still to be ready by Opening Day.
Aaron Judge underwent an MRI on Monday after reporting discomfort in his abdominal section and may not swing a bat for the rest of the week, though the Yankees outfielder said that he expects to be ready for Opening Day.
“We ran tests and everything came back good,” Judge said.…— Bryan Hoch ⚾️ (@BryanHoch) March 12, 2024
At the risk of stating the obvious, this is less than ideal for a Yankees team that by its own admission is all in on contending for a title in 2024. Cole is probably the single most important player on the team given the state of the rest of the starting rotation, but Judge certainly isn’t far behind. While this New York lineup hopes to be much-improved over last year — adding Juan Soto, Alex Verdugo and Trent Grisham will certainly help — they’re still reliant on Judge in the middle to lock everything into place. This could just be some of the bumps and bruises that every player goes through during a long spring training, but given Judge’s injury history, fans will understandably be concerned. The outfielder has only cracked the 120-game mark three times in eight years, and missed almost half of the 2023 season due to hip and toe injuries. He was still Aaron Freaking Judge when he was out there — .267/.406/.613, 37 homers in 106 games — but he’ll be 32 soon, and his is the sort of frame that carries questions about how it might age.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the Yankees are a bit better equipped to weather the storm in Judge’s absence this time around. Whereas last year’s rash of outfield injuries left serious playing time to guys like Franchy Cordero, Jake Bauers and Billy McKinney, Grisham in center flanked by Soto and Verdugo is still at least a respectable Major League unit. But it still puts a lot of pressure on guys like Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu and Giancarlo Stanton, guys who are getting a bit long in the tooth and haven’t put together full, productive seasons in a while now. Adding Soto is great, but if Judge were to miss any significant time, the Yankees would need their aging core to turn back the clock if they want to wash out the taste of last year’s 82-80 finish — and capitalize on Soto’s one guaranteed year in the Bronx.
