Erik Boland: Yankees shouldn't play Aaron Judge on artificial turf this weekend
Yankees' Aaron Judge waits on deck during the first inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins Wednesday, a game he left in the sixth inning. Credit: AP/Abbie Parr
Aaron Boone was predictably vague in discussing the leg injury that forced Aaron Judge to leave Wednesday afternoon’s loss to the Twins.
Boone — and Judge for that matter — declined after the game to specify which part of the outfielder’s leg caused the issue, sticking with the club’s earlier press box announcement of “right lower leg tightness.” Judge called it ''lower body.''
Neither, one presumes, would have been upset had the announcement been even more vague than that.
Something along the lines of: “Aaron Judge left today’s game with non-specific unease in a lower-body extremity.”
On Thursday, an off day for the Yankees before they start a three-game series against the Diamondbacks in Phoenix, brought no further information, especially when it came to the most germane topic of all — whether Judge, who missed more than three months with a rib stress fracture and had played all of seven games since returning on Sept. 8, again will miss games.
“Hopefully we get it treated and knock it out and he’ll be a factor at some point,” Boone said.
The “at some point,” for obvious reasons, caused a fair amount of worry among the Yankees' fan base.
But with the Yankees now trailing the AL East-leading Rays by five games with 10 to play after Thursday's win by Tampa Bay, this much came into focus: Regarding that “some point," it should not be this weekend on the artificial turf of Chase Field.
The cost-benefit analysis — stemming from Benjamin Franklin’s “prudential algebra” concept from 1772, in which a piece of paper is divided down the middle by one “pro” and one “con” column on a given topic — is simple.
In this case, the “cons” of Judge playing, even if he feels as if he can, far outweigh the “pros.”
The only “con” that matters?
Judge playing through even moderate discomfort — as of Thursday, it remained unclear exactly what the three-time MVP is dealing with — this weekend isn’t worth the risk of aggravating the injury to the extent that it jeopardizes his October.
And, by extension, the Yankees’ October.
The reality is, the Yankees' chances of catching the Rays, even with four games against them next week at the Stadium, have dropped into the territory of the infinitesimal. If the Rays go 5-5, the Yankees will have to go 10-0 to gain the five games they need to catch them . . . and if Tampa Bay goes 5-5 with even one victory at the Stadium, even 10-0 won't be good enough (the Rays would have the tiebreaker).
And so the Yankees may have to protect Judge — who has gone 4-for-23 with 13 strikeouts since his return as he tries to find the best version of himself for the postseason — from himself.
Judge is revered in the Yankees' clubhouse not only because of his magnanimity as a teammate and the prodigious talent that someday will earn him spots in Monument Park and Cooperstown, but because he is viewed as one of the club’s toughest players. One who under no circumstance wants out of the lineup, even when dealing with pain or discomfort of any kind.
He embodies as much as anyone the oft-expressed sentiment of his predecessor as Yankees captain, Derek Jeter: “If you're hurt, you're not playing. If you're playing, you're not hurt.”
Jeter was revered in his time by teammates for many reasons. High on that list was his propensity for playing through various ailments and rarely, if ever, copping to pain — whether it be publicly to the media or behind the scenes to teammates.
In early September in 2012, Jeter tweaked his left ankle and, other than accepting daily treatment for it, continued to play every day.
During Game 1 of the 2012 ALCS, the ankle snapped.
"It was something that I hurt it, I continued to play on it, probably when I shouldn't have," Jeter said as spring training began in February 2013. “But I continued to play on it and then eventually it broke.”
Judge, now in his 10th full season, has proved himself to be cut from the same mold.
It was not bravado talk when, speaking to reporters in Minneapolis after Wednesday’s game, he said: “Just thought it would be best, instead of pushing through like I normally do and it might become a little worse, get somebody who’s ready to go in there. Just trying to do what’s best for the team.”
“Pushing through like I normally do . . . ” Judge has done it countless times in his career, most of them never becoming public.
But this year’s rib fracture was one. Judge traced it back to an April 26 game in Houston in which he crashed hard to the Minute Maid Park turf while diving for a ball. Thinking it might just be the soreness that pretty much every player deals with during the long season, Judge played on. He eventually said something during a May 31 game in West Sacramento, rounds of testing followed and Judge did not play for 99 days.
Whatever the “right lower leg” issue is that cropped up Wednesday — calf, Achilles or something else — shouldn’t be trifled with.
Having Judge at his peak heading into October, or as close to peak as possible, should be the priority over the next week-plus.
It’s difficult, given the events of Wednesday, to see how Judge playing this weekend accomplishes that aim.
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.
