From Bryan Hoch:
The Yankees know there is no way to replace Aaron Judge; it’s impossible to subtract a three-time Most Valuable Player and not feel the effects. But even if their rallies look a bit different, they still believe they have enough to win games.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. walked, stole second base, advanced on a wild pitch and scored on Ryan McMahon’s tiebreaking single through the right side, a sequence that proved to be the difference in a 2-1 victory over the Guardians on Thursday at Yankee Stadium.
Obviously, the win is much less important than the news that broke late last night that Aaron Judge has a stress fracture in his first rib, and he will need to rest at LEAST a month to a month and a half before they do reimaging and see what his situation is. If it’s healed, then he could PROBABLY return about two weeks after that, so probably the first week of August at BEST.
It’s a huge blow, to be sure, especially you just KNOW that the dude was playing with a bone bruise this whole time that slowly developed into a stress facture (as bone bruises are wont to do when they experience repeated stress). However, let’s face it, the recovery from a bone bruise like this is actually fairly similar to how you deal with a stress fracture, so Aaron Judge was likely going to miss a month at some point no matter what. I think, generally speaking, we’re talking 4-6 weeks to recover from a bone bruise versus 6-8 weeks to recover from a stress fracture. It really isn’t a huge difference.
We’re seeing it already with Max Fried, who has to miss a lot of time while recovering from his own bone bruise. All you can really do is sit and wait for it to heal. The good news, of course, is that it almost always DOES heal (I really can’t think of an instance when it HASN’T healed for an athlete). And in fact, Judge himself had literally this same basic injury before (it was more severe then, but the same BASIC concept). So you can heal from this, and Judge presumably WILL be back to normal when he is back.
So that’s a very good thing, ESPECIALLY since the Yankees were concerned that this might be thoracic outlet syndrome, where a fracture rib starts to essentially pinch your nerves, and that would be a season-ending surgery, and one that players DON’T come back from the same. So Judge avoided that, and will likely be back to normal as soon as the fracture heals.
That’s good news.
Judge being out for two months is very BAD news, however.
That said, I mean, as we saw in this game, the Yankees pitching SHOULD be very good. And they’ll have Carlos Lagrange throwing 900 MPH in the bullpen soon enough, as well. Brent Headrick and Fernando Cruz in the 7th, Lagrange in the 8th, and Bednar in the 9th is a solid recipe for success (you can let Tim Hill try to work back into the circle of trust, as well, and hopefully trade for a reliever later, as well).
This offense should still be able to score enough runs for this team to win enough. Hopefully enough to still maybe even win the division.
A big boost will be that now they will have an IL spot, so they can first call up Spencer Jones to fill in for the next week in right field, and then, when Jasson Dominguez is ready, Dominguez will take over for the foreseeable future (I have no idea what position he will play, though. Presumably Bellinger moves to right field, but wouldn’t it be easier to hide Dominguez in right field?). Dominguez has real offensive talent, and in a couple of weeks, Giancarlo Stanton will be able to return, as well.
Stanton started 18 games in the outfield last season (and played outfield in two other games). If he is truly healed, they might be able to do that again, which would allow them to continue to use Goldschmidt in the lineup.
Here are a few possible lineups over the next couple of weeks (in three stages as people get healthy)…
Grisham CF
Rice DH
Bellinger LF
Goldschmidt 1B
Jazz 2B
Jones RF
Caballero SS
McMahon 3B
Wells C
Grisham CF
Rice DH
Bellinger LF
Goldschmist 1B
Dominguez RF
Jazz 2B
Caballero SS
McMahon 3B
Wells C
Grisham CF
Rice DH
Stanton RF
Bellinger LF
Goldschmidt 1B
Jazz 2B
Cabellero SS
McMahon 3B
Wells C
Goldy’s resurrection as a hitter really gives this lineup new life to it.
Yes, we would all love to hide Rice at C (so that Stanton could DH and Dominguez play in the outfield), but I just don’t think that that is reasonable.
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maybe they can get a C who
Doesn’t stink at hitting and tell the 2b he’d better wake up or he’s going to lose millions…
losing judge is going to be very painful. See 2023.
2023 was a whole other beast. That team had only one other hitter besides Judge with a 100 OPS+, and that was Gleyber, who didn’t start hitting until the playoff race was mostly over.
This current team has 184 OPS+ from Ben Rice, 135 OPS+ from Bellinger, and 146 OPS+ from Goldschmidt.
And Jazz, Cabby, and Grisham are all between 97-99 OPS+ (and Jazz, of course, has been very hot, so presumably he’ll crack 100 OPS+ soon).
Stanton was at 101 OPS+ when he went down. Rosario is at 122 OPS+, but that’s obviously almost only against lefties.
This is a MUCH better team offense than the 2023 Yankees.
Jones up. No shocker.
Yeah, it was by far their ONLY real move to make.
The only other move was The Martian who was out less than a month.
Judge will be out so long that you really shouldn’t rush Dominguez, as he’ll have plenty of time to play the next couple of months.
It’d be funny if Spencer Jones kicks so much ass that he crowds the Martian out, though. He has a one-week runway to show off his stuff.
They could try Escarra in the outfield so they can keep Wells and Escarra’s bats in the lineup.
Can Spencer catch?
Also, can he swing and not miss? Will be nice to see if he has made any adjustments in the last few weeks.
Stanton told Jon Heyman of The New York Post that he’s hoping to be back from a calf strain in about two weeks.
That matches what Meredith was saying the other day on YES.
He’ll hit a home run in his first AB then go 1-25 because he doesn’t want to play rehab games.