NEW YORK – Yankees captain Aaron Judge, his teammate, and a fan base in New York exhaled Saturday when he learned that the two AL MVPs have a flexor strain in their right elbow but have no acute damage to the ulnar collateral ligament, which could cause a long-term layoff.
The judge was sent to the MRI on Saturday, missing the second game of the season, losing 9-4 to Philadelphia. He has received platelet-rich plasma injections and is on the injured list, but initially hopes to return to action in 10 days to 2 weeks as a designated batsman.
“You don’t want to go to the tube. That’s never fun. You don’t know what’s going to show up,” the judge said. “That’s why I pushed away a lot of that kind of imaging and stuff like that.
The judge will lead the major leagues with a batting average of 0.342 and an OPS of 1.160. He has 37 home runs and 85 RBIs with the New York team, which opened a seven-game Al East lead by late May, but dropped Toronto’s No. 1 season 6 1/2 game on Saturday.
“Overall, there was good news today,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “I think we all feared the worst.”
Boone was worried when he found out how strict the judge was. The judge told Boone he threw difficulties during his 12-5 defeat to Philadelphia on Friday.
“I couldn’t go past 60 feet,” the judge said. “We play against the Phillies team. They can hit the ball on the park. I didn’t want to put the pitcher in danger.
Boone received the results of the scan just before the start of Saturday’s match, when team officials were receiving further reviews. The pain affected his throw but was not hit, so the judge went into a fight to the IL.
“That tension put UCL at risk because when we got out there and played with it, we started to heal it,” Boone said.
Boone said it was too early to tell if the highly regarded Spencer Jones could be raised from Triple A Scranton/Wilkes Barre.
The judge probably won’t throw for 10-14 days. You will then need to throw for a few days to build up the strength of the arms on your back before returning to the outfield.
“I was really reluctant to go to IL or something,” the judge said. “I was like, ‘If I can hit, let me hit,'” he said. “When this 10th day is over, I’ll start DHING.”
Giancarlo Stanton, the team’s leading DH, will begin exercising in the outfield next week to help fill in for the judge.
“It’s never a relief to know he’s going out at all, but I think you can say the best case of what it is,” Stanton said.
The judge said he first felt pain in six innings of Tuesday’s game in Toronto. The judge created a strong slow home to prevent a run of unity, but Davis Schneider defeated the tag of catcher Austin Wells.
After the innings, the judge won after catching Alejandro Kirk’s seventh fly at the corner of the right field, throwing to two-base-handed Jazz Chisholm Jr., when Dante Bichette tagged him to go from second to third. The judge saw the network camera clasped his right hand.
“He’s as harsh as they come, and he even shows vulnerability, pain, etc,” Boone said. “We knew we probably had problems, so we can always be afraid of the worst, but that’s why we wait for you to respond.
