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Aaron Judge

Aaron Judge Says He’ll Be Ready For Opening Day

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Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge appears to be a full go as Summer Camp opens. He told reporters including James Wagner of the New York Times (Twitter link) that he’s ready for action and preparing for Opening Day.

Judge’s health likely would’ve been a big storyline and major area of uncertainty for the Yanks had the season gotten underway as normal. But when the pandemic put things on ice, Judge had a chance for a lengthy respite to heal from nettlesome rib injury that originally took quite some time to diagnose.

While camp just got started, it’s just over two weeks until baseball’s bizarre 2020 season will be rolling. The quick ramp creates a bit of added concern, but Judge indicated he has already been hitting and putting himself through the paces before reporting for the second preparatory phase of the year.

If indeed Judge — and some other notable Yankees — are fully healed up, they’ll make for an immensely imposing lineup. The short season is generally disadvantageous to the most talented teams, since shorter swings of fortune will create more opportunities for other organizations. Then again, it also means the loaded Yanks roster will not have to endure as long of a grind before launching a hopeful postseason run.

Cashman: Yankees “Optimistic” Judge Will Be Ready For Opening Day

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After months of uncertainty surrounding the status of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, general manager Brian Cashman said on a conference call today that the team is optimistic he’ll be ready for the rescheduled Opening Day (Twitter links via The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler). The Yankees are also optimistic that Giancarlo Stanton will be ready to open the year in the DH slot. Lefty James Paxton is expected to be ready to go as well, and it’s possible that center fielder Aaron Hicks could be game-ready come Opening Day as well.

Judge’s entire injury saga has been bizarrely vague, but it seems an end is at last in sight. It took the club several weeks early in camp to diagnose a stress fracture in his rib, and only two weeks later did the team reveal that Judge was also found to have a collapsed lung. Near the end of March, Boone revealed that Judge’s injuries may have dated all the way back to last September. Even throughout the shutdown, updates on Judge lacked specific timelines and frequently pointed to additional imaging as the next step.

Stanton sustained a calf injury back in Spring Training, and Cashman indicated today that he’s quite specifically referencing a DH-only role with regard to the former NL MVP’s Opening Day readiness. The YES Network’s Jack Curry tweets that the club wants to evaluate Stanton in camp before making any declaration about his ability to play in the outfield.

Paxton is more than four months removed from back surgery and could be game-ready right now, according to Cashman. There’s a bit less certainty regarding Hicks, who is eight months out from last year’s Tommy John surgery. Hicks has already proclaimed himself ready to go for the season opener, though the organization is understandably taking a bit more reserved approach and will use “Summer Camp” (as the league has now termed it) to make its own evaluation.

Latest On Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton

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Had the regular season started when it was supposed to in late March, the Yankees would have had to go without the face of their franchise, right fielder Aaron Judge, for a lengthy period of time. A right rib fracture and a punctured lung slowed Judge during the first version of spring training this year, but the slugger now has a chance to be in the Yankees’ season-opening lineup in a month, Erik Boland of Newsday reports.

Judge, whose injury problems first cropped up in February, has finally returned to hitting off a tee, per Boland. While that doesn’t mean he’ll be ready for Game 1 of the Yankees’ season, it’s still a a positive development for the club, which would have opened a normal season without three of its best outfield options in Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks. Each player was shelved with injuries during the spring, though we now know Hicks expects to return from his October 2019 Tommy John procedure once the season starts.

Like Hicks, Stanton – who dealt with a calf strain during the spring – is a near certainty right now to be part of New York’s opener, according to Boland. Injuries have been a major problem dating back to last season for Stanton, whose second year as a Yankee consisted of a mere 18 games.

12 Years Later, This Trade’s Still Paying Off For Yankees

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It has been a dozen years since the Yankees swung a trade for outfielder Nick Swisher, who paid immediate dividends as part of the franchise and whose acquisition continues to benefit the organization to this day. On Nov. 13, 2008, the Yankees sent two minor league pitchers – Jeff Marquez and Jhonny Nunez – as well as veteran infielder Wilson Betemit to the White Sox for Swisher and young hurler Kanekoa Texeira. Most of the pieces in the swap – Marquez, Nunez and Texeira – failed to pan out in the majors, but the move revived the switch-hitting Swisher’s career and helped him land a sizable payday in free agency down the road.

If we go back to the start, Swisher opened his career as a rather effective member of the Athletics, who chose him 16th overall in the 2002 draft. As a member of the big club from 2004-07, Swisher batted .251/.361/.464 (118 wRC+) with 80 home runs and 10.0 fWAR over 1,924 plate appearances, aiding Oakland in three plus-.500 seasons and a playoff berth. However, almost six years after spending a high pick on him, the A’s sold the affable Swisher, dealing him to the White Sox in January 2008 for a package led by left-hander Gio Gonzalez. That worked out fine for Oakland, which received a couple terrific years from Gonzalez before trading him to the Nationals in December 2011 in yet another notable transaction.

While the A’s profited from Gonzalez’s presence, his career took a bad turn in his first year out of Oakland. The 2008 campaign was one of the worst of Swisher’s time in the game, and he was unable to win the favor of then-White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen as a result. While Swisher was seemingly a solid clubhouse presence in the majors, Guillen thought the opposite. He said in November 2008, a little while after the White Sox parted with Swisher: “To be honest with you, I was not happy with the way he was reacting at the end of the season. He wasn’t helping me either.”  Maybe the relationship would have been better had Swisher produced, though he instead struggled to a .219/.332/.410 line (93 wRC+) in 588 PA. But Swisher did pop 24 home runs, his third of nine straight seasons with 20-plus, and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman decided to buy low on him.

To this day, the Swisher pickup looks like one of the most brilliant decisions of Cashman’s lengthy tenure atop New York’s front office. Swisher was a quality contributor throughout his time as a Yankee, including in a 2009 campaign that saw the team win its most recent World Series championship. From that season through 2012, Swisher’s last as a Yankee, he hit .268/.367/.483 (128 wRC+) with 105 HRs and 14.4 fWAR across 2,501 PA, also earning his lone All-Star berth in the process. But the Yankees were not willing to commit to Swisher once he became a free agent before 2013, which, for multiple reasons, was a wise call in hindsight.

In January 2013, the Ohio-born Swisher returned to his native state on a four-year, $56MM contract with the Indians. Unfortunately for Cleveland, it didn’t get anything close to the Yankees’ version of Swisher. Owing in part to knee problems, Swisher slashed a below-average .228/.311/.377 (92 wRC+) with 32 homers and minus-0.5 fWAR in 1,146 PA in an Indians uniform. They dealt Swisher and fellow outfielder Michael Bourn to the Braves for infielder Chris Johnson in August 2015. That proved to be Swisher’s final season in MLB, though he did return to the Yankees on a minor league contract in 2016 before his career came to an end later that year.

The season after Swisher said goodbye to pro baseball, another star was born in New York. Towering right fielder Aaron Judge, a top 100 prospect in his younger days, exploded on the scene in 2017, batting .284/.422/.627 (174 wRC+), smacking 52 homers and racking up 8.3 fWAR. Judge fell short of AL MVP honors then, but he won Rookie of the Year in his league and was part of a club that took the eventual title-winning Astros to a seven-game LCS.

While injuries have somewhat limited Judge’s availability since his initial season, you can’t argue with the production he has managed when he has been able to take the field. Since his second year, Judge has recorded a line of .278/.392/.528 (good for a 146 wRC+) and amassed 54 dingers with 9.7 fWAR.

Judge is now 28 years old, a two-time All-Star and perhaps the face of the Bronx-based franchise, but he may have never gotten there if not for Swisher. Allowing Swisher to depart in free agency entitled the Yankees to a compensatory selection in the ensuing draft. They used that pick, No. 32 in 2013, on Judge – a former Fresno State Bulldog. So, not only did the Yankees benefit from Swisher’s best seasons as a pro, but stealing him from the White Sox 12 years ago is still paying off for them in a big way.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Cashman Optimistic That Judge Will Be Ready For Start Of Season

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Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge appears to be making quite a lot of progress while awaiting word on whether and when the season will occur. GM Brian Cashman says the organization is “excited to believe that he’s going to rejoin us at full capacity,” as Kristie Ackert of the New York Daily News reports.

The “very unique” rib injury suffered by Judge has been complicated to treat and largely defied clear timelines. It’s rather notable, then, to hear Cashman speak with such clarity on the matter.

Though specifics on Judge’s readiness and the 2020 season schedule aren’t yet known, it sounds as if Judge would be ready to go for a shortened Spring Training that could launch in June. With little time for all players to ramp up for a compressed season, it’ll be critical for the towering outfielder to get himself to 100% before baseball re-launches.

Cashman indicated that Judge isn’t fully out of the woods yet. Imaging “shows the healing” and has left the team hopeful of “expected healing moving forward,” says Cashman, so it sounds as if there’s a lot of progress but also some ground left to be covered.

Quick Hits: Judge, Team Finances, Tsutsugo

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Should the Yankees sign Aaron Judge to a long-term extension?  Joel Sherman of the New York Post isn’t sure, noting that Judge already has a significant injury history, is already under team control through his age-30 season, and how the Yankees’ financial situation will be impacted in the post-coronavirus baseball world.  There’s also the fact that the Yankees have generally shied away from contract extensions since Hal Steinbrenner took over the team, and the two players whose deals were most recently extended (Aaron Hicks and Luis Severino) have battled injuries since inking those new contracts.  Judge is in the first of his three arbitration-eligible seasons, and back in January agreed to an $8.5MM deal for the 2020 season.

More from around baseball….

  • Most of the 30 teams have already arranged to pay non-baseball employees through the end of May, with such clubs as the Phillies, Tigers, Rockies, and Padres already committed to avoiding job cuts or furloughs beyond May 31.  However, there is concern and, “among front-office officials there is an expectation,” ESPN.com’s Buster Olney writes, that there could be major job losses within baseball operations departments after the draft in June.  Scouts could be in particular danger, as some clubs have already made moves in recent years towards relying on video analysis rather than in-person reports for scouting purposes.  As one team executive tells Olney, “it just doesn’t make any sense to me that these [teams] need to dump people making $40K, $50K.  Those savings are not difference-making,” even for franchises that will be taking a big revenue hit this season.  Such actions are likely to hurt a team’s reputation around the sport, and could impact future chances of hiring or keeping front office personnel in the future.
  • Yoshitomo Tsutsugo has been in Japan since late March, and Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times writes that the newly-acquired Rays slugger is continuing to work out in preparation for his first Major League season.  Keeping in touch with Rays staff throughout, Tsutsugo has been involved in various workout, hitting, and throwing routines.  As to when Tsutsugo will be able to return to North America, nothing will be determined until (or if) a plan to launch the 2020 season is underway, and Tsutsugo be further delayed given travel restrictions between Japan and the U.S.  For instance, Tsutsugo could face a mandatory 14-day self-quarantine upon arriving in America, regardless of any COVID-19 symptoms he may or may not show.

Latest On Aaron Judge, Other Injured Yankees

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May 6: In light of Boone’s comments yesterday, the New York Post’s Dan Martin reports that the club has privately been expecting a June or July recovery date for Judge. The slugger hasn’t experienced any setbacks along the way, per Martin, but it seems the organization has simply anticipated that his recovery process will be a fairly lengthy one.

May 5: Yankees skipper Aaron Boone provided updates on several injured Yankees in an appearance on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM earlier this morning (Twitter link, with audio).

Center fielder Aaron Hicks, on the mend from 2019 Tommy John surgery, is throwing from 90-plus feet and is taking soft toss from both sides of the plate as he continues his rehab. Hicks went under the knife about six and a half months ago and was initially slated for a timeline of eight to ten months. He’s “trending in a really good direction,” per Boone.

The outlook appears even brighter for lefty James Paxton and slugger Giancarlo Stanton. The former is now three months (to the day) removed from back surgery and is expected to be recovered by “mid-May,” per Boone. Paxton has tossed five bullpen sessions already and pitched a simulated game just yesterday. Stanton, meanwhile, is “doing really well and should be good to go whenever we get ready to go back.”

On Aaron Judge, the projection is a bit murkier. He’s slated to undergo another CT scan in “a couple more weeks,” which suggests that the right fielder’s fractured rib has not yet fully healed. Judge’s entire injury scenario has been shrouded in varying degrees of uncertainty. It took the club several weeks early in camp to diagnose the stress fracture in his rib, and only two weeks later did the team reveal that Judge was also found to have a collapsed lung. Near the end of March, Boone revealed that Judge’s injuries may have dated all the way back to last September. It’s been a frustrating saga for Yankees fans, and it seems there’s still no definitive timetable in place for the 28-year-old’s recovery — or at least not one they’re comfortable sharing publicly just yet.

AL East Notes: Red Sox, Judge, Cobb

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Here’s the latest chatter from the AL East …

  • So, that whole Red Sox sign-stealing saga is over with now … right? Not entirely, as Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic write (subscription link). The determinations of commissioner Rob Manfred create quite a few questions — not least of which involving his decision to focus the brunt of his punitive power on one Red Sox employee (replay operator J.T. Watkins). Manfred’s actions haven’t sated MLBTR readers, at least, according to the early results of our poll on the punishments. Perhaps the most interesting issue, from a broader perspective, involves the league’s responsibility for managing all this. As Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom puts it: “I also think structurally we ought to do everything we can to make sure that confusion can’t occur and that these aspects of our game are beyond reproach.” Another way to frame the matter: the rules and enforcement regime needs to be set up to ensure results rather than dealing with fallout on an ad hoc basis.
  • It seemed the Yankees were going to spend the early part of the 2020 season dealing with another odd slate of injuries before the season went on pause. Now that star outfielder Aaron Judge has had plenty of time to figure out what was bothering him (rib stress fracture) and to recuperate … might that be avoided? MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch writes that Judge is working out at the Yankees’ spring complex and taking his time to avoid any unnecessary complications. Judge says he expects to be ready for “doing a little more here in about a week or two,” at which point he can hopefully begin building towards baseball readiness. There’s still nothing close to a clear starting point for the 2020 season, so there’s obviously no rush.
  • Alex Cobb’s signing is one of several big-contract misfires that have hamstrung the Orioles over the years. But he had seemingly fully recovered from the hip problem that plagued him last year, MLB.com’s Joe Trezza writes. Cobb had a rough 2018 season and made only three starts last year, but there’s still time for the 32-year-old to provide at least some value. The best-case scenario probably would’ve been a bounce back during the first half of the 2020 season, potentially setting the stage for a mid-summer deal. Perhaps now the O’s will end up attempting to move Cobb — who’s owed $14MM in 2020 and $15MM in 2021 — over the ensuing offseason, depending upon what (if anything) he’s able to show this year.

Aaron Hicks Begins Throwing Program

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Yankees center fielder Aaron Hicks has been cleared to begin a throwing program, manager Aaron Boone told reporters Wednesday (Twitter links via Bryan Hoch of MLB.com). Boone didn’t provide a further timetable on Hicks, but it’s a notable step in the 30-year-old’s recovery from last October’s Tommy John surgery.

As MLBTR’s Connor Byrne noted when looking at how the postponing of Opening Day impacts the Yankees, Hicks’ recovery timetable was expected to be eight to 10 months, which would put him in line for a return anywhere from June until August. Depending on when (or if) the season is able to commence, it’s possible that Hicks could return to the lineup without having missed much time at all.

That’d be a notable boost for the Yankees; while many have lamented the seven-year, $70MM contract signed by Hicks immediately before back injuries caused him to begin the 2019 season on the IL (and before his elbow required surgery), it’s worth remembering just how strong Hicks’ 2017-18 seasons were. During that time, he slashed .255/.368/.470 with 42 home runs, 36 doubles, three triples and 21 steals through 942 plate appearances. In the field, he totaled 4 Defensive Runs Saved, a 5.7 Ultimate Zone Rating and was at least average, per Statcast’s OAA metric.

Boone also noted that lefty James Paxton, on the mend from back surgery, is continuing a throwing program at his Wisconsin home. All appears to be well on that front — or, at least, no setback or negative updates were provided — which bodes well for an on-target return to the mound. The Yankees announced he’d be sidelined three to four months when he underwent back surgery in February.

As for right fielder Aaron Judge, Boone offered little in terms of timeline but gave what’s sure to be a frustrating update for fans when he revealed that the slugger’s collapsed lung could date all the way back to a diving attempt in the outfield last September. “It’s probably something that’s impossible to know for sure, but I would believe that it’s all interrelated,” said Boone. Judge will be re-evaluated in a “few weeks” after his cracked rib has had more time to heal, tweets Brendan Kuty of the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Yankees Provide Update On Aaron Judge Injury

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Yankees star Aaron Judge was limited this spring by a mysterious upper body ailment that was ultimately diagnosed as a stress fracture in his rib. Today, the team updated his outlook, as MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reports (Twitter link).

It turns out that Judge was not only suffering from the rib issue but also pneumothorax (collapsed lung). Fortunately, that latter issue is now fully resolved.

Today’s CT scan revealed “slight improvement” in the rib. No doubt the team will continue to take a cautious approach befitting the unusual injury and unusual broader situation. Judge is due to be checked again in a few weeks’ time.

For the time being, Judge is continuing to work out and receive treatment at the team’s spring facilities. With the lung issue no longer a concern, Judge has been cleared to fly, though his immediate plans aren’t clear.

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