JUDGE HAS BROKEN RIB
FUHGEDDABOUD OPENING DAY
TAMPA — Aaron Judge knows what is hurting him, but not exactly how they are going to fix it.
After a dozen tests, the Yankees slugger was diagnosed with a stress fracture in his right first rib from a diving catch attempt last September. He’s shut down from swinging for at least the next two weeks to see if it continues to heal. If not, he could be facing surgery that would have about a four-month rehabilitation time, according to doctors.
The 27-year-old outfielder admitted this will rule him out for Opening Day.
“Still frustrated, especially with an injury that happened at the end of last year and still didn’t heal up,” Judge said. “Just frustrated, that’s about it. At least we have an answer so now we can start working on a solution is the biggest thing, but overall I’m just mad.
“I want to be out there with my team, especially in spring training, fighting. We have a good team here, a good club, we have a lot of goals here in 2020 and I want to be out there,” Judge continued. “But the first thing is you’ve got to get this healed, get it right and then we can move forward.”
If the CT scan in two weeks does not show the healing progressing, Judge would be look
ing at surgery to have the rib removed. That is the same rib that doctors remove to relieve the symptoms of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. There is a four to six month recovery time on those surgeries, which have been almost exclusively done on pitchers in baseball.
Judge believes the test results indicate that he won’t have to face surgery, though.
“Yeah, just hearing how it’s healing, I’m happy with that,” Judge said. “That’s why it’s two weeks away, then I see how far away it is and then hopefully in three weeks, four weeks I’ll start getting back into moving the thing.”
Even without surgery, Judge is facing a recovery of weeks to months.
Judge has yet to hit on the field this spring dealing with then-mysterious pain that traveled from his shoulder to chest area. He underwent multiple MRIs, a dye-contrast MRI, CT scans and examinations by doctors. Until Friday, the Yankees did not indicate that this was anything that related to Judge crashing on his shoulder last September trying to catch a ball.
Judge dove in an attempt to catch Albert Pujols’ fifth-inning single on Sept. 18, 2019. He spent the rest of the inning trying to stretch the shoulder out, but remained in the game. He sat out one game, but played seven games to end the season going 8-for-25 with three homers, two doubles and a triple in 25 atbats.
When asked about the shoulder last year, Judge said “All’s good.” Friday, he admitted that he had an MRI in September and shots for pain in his shoulder, chest and neck.
“MRIs really don’t show it so that’s probably why it’s been missed for so long,” Judge said. “But going into the postseason, I didn’t want to miss that, so it was kind of, get a shot and let’s get rolling basically.”
He hit .264 (9-for-34) in the playoffs with one home run.
Judge is the third player who the Yankees had trouble diagnosing with injuries from the end of last season. James Paxton had back surgery Feb. 5 to repair a disk leakage, or cyst, on his spine which dated back to his last regular-season start. Luis Severino experienced forearm pain after his start in the American League Championship Series, but the doctors did not find the partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament until last month.
And Judge has been run through what GM Brian Cashman called a “carwash” of tests since feeling the discomfort again trying to ramp up this spring. Judge believes with his offseason work and not knowing the true injury, he never gave the rib enough down time to recover.
“I think the consistent swinging and weightlifting throughout the whole offseason really didn’t give it the chance to” heal, Judge said. “If somebody breaks their leg and they’re In a cast, they’re immobilized for a couple weeks or months … You give the bone a chance to heal.
But me, pissed about how the season ended last year, and the changes I wanted to make, I went right back to it. We’ve all been through pain, bumps and bruises. In my head, I felt like it was something that I could fight through and I think that kind of cost me a little bit there.”
Judge is too familiar with the cost of dealing with injuries.
After hitting .329 with 30 homers in 84 games in the first half of 2017, Judge went to the AllStar Game and won the Home Run Derby, then admitted a shoulder injury that ultimately needed offseason surgery had affected him in the second half.
Judge lost most of the 2018 second half to a fractured wrist. After hitting 25 homers and driving in 60 runs in the first 93 games of the season, he only played in 19 in the second half. He hit two homers and drove in seven runs.
In 2019, Judge missed 54 games after straining his oblique in April.