Yankees put slugger Aaron Judge on injured list with calf strain

NEW YORK – Yankees All-Star outfielder Aaron Judge was put on the injured list Friday with what manager Aaron Boone called a “very mild right-handed calf strain.”

An MRI on Thursday revealed the injury, which Boone described as a “grade 1 or even lower” strain, an injury he hopes judges will no longer keep off the field.

“It’s something he really wants to try by working and wanting to be out there and it feels like it’s a day-to-day thing, which can be very good,” Boone said. “But it obviously speaks to how important a player Aaron is to us. Being with him [on the IL] retroactively until Wednesday now, a few days in the 10 days, I think it’s very important that he does not go out there and try to do this thing significant damage by playing. So we went ahead and made that move. Hopefully it should be a nice short stint on the IL. “

On Tuesday, Boone took Judge out of a game that the Yankees conveniently won in the sixth inning, and one in which Judge previously had the hardest-hitting home game of the Statcast era (119.4 mph downhill). Boone said he took Judge out of the game against the Atlanta Braves early because of his own appreciation of how the outfielder moved, and related it to just giving him extra rest after playing in all 17 games at that point this season, including four straight on artificial turf at Tropicana Field.

“He just got some normal maintenance treatment for goods with lower bodies on the road trip, and then that night after the game, we focused a bit of the treatment on the calf,” Boone said. “And then the other day, when he came into Wednesday’s game, where he was off the lineup, most of the focus then was on the calf, so we had the MRI yesterday, that.” reveal the mild punishments. “

Judge was limited to 102 games last season mostly due to a tight left turn. At the start of spring training in February, the 2017 American League Rookie of the year was significantly restricted due to a stress fracture in his first right rib and a subsequent punctured lung, an injury he attributed to an attempted dive at the end of last season.

However, in favor of the delayed opening of the 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, Judge was off to a blistering start, hitting .290 with nine home games, a .758 strikeout and a 1,101 OPS.

Boone says he is hopeful that right-wingers can regain shape, although he understands that there are no guarantees of a speedy return due to the unpredictability of calf injuries.

“It comes down to the fact that the calf can be troublesome,” he said. “This is something he might be ready to push through in a few days. But I also think that when you talk about calves, when you talk about a hamstring, it’s a situation where you know you can adjust it. more and then we suddenly see a situation of four to six weeks. That’s really what we’re trying to avoid here. Hopefully we’ve got this thing a little bit ahead. Hopefully it’s a mild situation. “

The Yankees promoted versatile infielder Thairo Estrada from their alternative training site in Scranton. Boone said the Yankees will use a variety of players to replace Judge as their primary referee fielder.

The team is already without Giancarlo Stanton, who is out for up to a month due to a hamstring injury. Stanton hit .293 with three home games in his first 14 games

“We lost two MVP caliber players; that’s a battle. Especially guys who are playing as well as they are right now in Aaron and Giancarlo,” Boone said. “But, absolutely, we have the people who can resist this. And we have a lot of confidence in the lineup we perform from tonight and expect to go out and perform at a very high level.”