Why can’t they stay healthy?
Oft-injured Judge and Stanton will start season on Yank shelf
TAMPA — The Yankees’ big guys are hurt, out for the foreseeable future again. In the brave new world of legalized gambling, the best bet Yankee fans could have made last week was that neither Aaron Judge nor Giancarlo Stanton would be in the Opening Day lineup come March 26 in Baltimore. Or, for that matter, Opening Month.
By now, they have become resigned to the two big men being hurt and missing substantial parts of the season. The great Yankee hype of teaming up these two giants of power in the middle of the order after Stanton was acquired from Miami in 2017 has become a pipe dream.
You can’t make this stuff up: After his umpteenth MRI, it was found Friday that the nagging pain Judge was feeling in his shoulder all spring was actually a broken rib! Supposedly incurred making a diving catch in the outfield way back in September! And after missing almost all of last season with an assortment of injuries — left biceps, left shoulder, left knee, left calf — Stanton played in one spring training game in February, promptly reported soreness in his right calf during defensive drills on Feb. 26, and hasn’t been on the field since.
What’s rather amazing is the Yankees as a team have functioned almost as well without Stanton and/or Judge in the lineup as they have with them. Over the last two seasons, Judge and Stanton were in the lineup together a total of 117 games, and the Yankees were 76-41 for a .650 winning percentage, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. When only one of them was in the lineup, the Yankees were 89-59 (.601) and when neither was in the lineup, they were 38-21 (.644). With DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres and Gio Urshela leading the offense, the Yankees were still able to lead the majors with 943 runs last year.
Nevertheless, the preponderance of injuries to the two big guys is troubling. In Stanton’s case, the Yankees owe him $244 million through 2027. His acquisition could end up as the worst deal in team history, by far. As for Judge, who missed 54 games last season with the second substantial oblique injury of his career (the other being in 2016), the Yankees would love for him to be the face of the franchise for the next decade. But until he can prove he can consistently stay on the field, giving him a long-term contract would be as insane as it was to pick up Stanton’s bloated contract.
At the same time, however, you have to wonder why these two guys are hurt so much. Is it because they’re just too big for baseball players and thus more susceptible to these kind of injuries — calf, oblique, pec, biceps, ribs etc. — that take so long to heal?
For a little perspective on that, I decided to put a call in to Frank Howard, the consummate baseball “big man” who, at 6-7, 255 pounds, was the most fearsome slugger in the game in the ’60s. Back then, nobody was as big as the man they called “Hondo”, who was National League Rookie of the Year with the Dodgers in 1960 and won two American League home run titles for the old Washington Nationals in ’68 and ’70, finishing with 382 in a 16-year career. From 1965-71, Hondo averaged 150 games a year. “It wasn’t any injuries that got me out of the lineup,” he said from his home in Aldie, VA. “It was those 2-for-20s!”
So why, I asked him, did he never incur any of these muscle tissue injuries that are rampant in the game today, especially with the bigger players?
“I was lucky,” Howard said. “I didn’t run fast enough to sustain any leg injuries, hamstrings and the like. I know there’s been a lot of talk about today’s players doing too much weight lifting. I can’t speak for that. I can only say that I did lift weights in the off-season, but they were light weights and I did it to have a toned baseball body, not for bulk. Football players need bulk and those big strong muscular bodies to help them endure all that contact. I read somewhere that so many of today’s baseball players have body fat counts of like 8 ½ or 9 (percent). They’re built like concrete walls. I think mine was more like 10, but I didn’t think it was a bad thing to have a little extra body fat.”
I couldn’t help but ask Howard, however, about a longstanding rumor that he once experimented with ankle weights. “Aw, you had to bring that up,” he said. “Yeah, I tried tying these two-pound weights to my ankles in spring training with the Nationals one year. I hoped it would help me with my agility and my foot speed in the outfield. All it got me was a bunch of ridicule from my teammates who thought I was crazy.”