Aaron Judge will not play in the Wild Card Series next week. The Yankees spent a good chunk of Monday laying cloud cover for the announcement that was all but confirmed Tuesday morning. Aaron Boone told us the superstar has a moderate grade — which is not a medical term — strain of his calf, in particular the now-infamous soleus muscle, and a PPP injection would leave Judge off his feet for the next couple of days.
Judge himself had been far more coy than the inner circle of journos was willing to be, swearing he would be available for the team in the postseason. Maybe he genuinely believed that; pro athletes aren’t necessarily known for their introspection. Maybe he’s just incredibly canny with his responses; we’ve seen before that he’s perfected the non-answer to the degree that he could be a US Senator upon retirement. Either way, it’s become clear that Judge gets to operate under a different set of rules than the other guys on the roster.
It wasn’t long before we learned that Max Fried didn’t have any tendon damage, but instead a bone bruise in his elbow. We knew that Jazz Chisholm Jr.‘s thumb sprain was reasonably minor almost immediately, and indeed Jazz was activated from the IL while I wrote this. We get detailed info dumps on the physical health of men we’ve never met seemingly on demand, except from Aaron Judge.
I’m not sure we should fault him for that either. It’s always been a little weird that we know so much about these people’s bodies. If I call out sick from my day job, my boss is not allowed to ask what’s wrong with me unless there’s reasonable evidence that I’m abusing the system. Even if I need to go on short-term disability there are rules and regulations around what exactly is shared with my employer. Professional athletes are not regular boring employees like me, of course, but then again the reasons often trotted out for why we know the intimate details of a stranger’s anatomy so well are folly too.
Michael Kay on his radio show Monday lamented the gambler, which is ironic because he does a pretty good job in the YES booth of downplaying the DraftKings ad reads he’s compelled to give. People are going to be betting on these games and they deserve to know the exact medical diagnosis of players we were all pretty sure weren’t going to be playing anyway, the Voice of the Yankees says. I don’t care about the gambler, and any moral hazard caused by someone within the Yankee org taking advantage of insider information would be resolved by not letting people bet on every single pitch thrown in an MLB season.
As to the fanbase and general interest in the last week of the season, as well as a Wild Card Series that is shaping up to be more of a whimper than a bang, the compelling factor is whether Aaron Judge will play or not. We know he won’t. Having the exact grade is irrelevant, Judge ain’t gonna be there. The exact grade of the strain will determine whether or not the Captain is back for a potential ALDS showdown with the Rays, but if you lose two of three to Boston next week, the grade of the strain becomes irrelevant again.
This isn’t to downplay the annoyance people can find in Judge’s coyness, but rather to encourage other players to adopt it. We need to know someone is hurt, and how long to reasonably expect them to be unavailable, since that informs whether someone might buy a ticket or tune into a given game. It’s probably a good idea to schedule out possible rehab assignments, as MiLB teams rely on those attendance boosts from a big-leaguer making appearances. That’s about it. I don’t need to know about the exact degree of testicular torsion from the backup catcher.
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