The New York Yankees can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to injuries. Already down a handful of players for the start of the season, including pitcher Luis Severino after he underwent Tommy John surgery, the Bronx Bombers will be without a big piece of their artillery for even longer than expected. Aaron Judge had been dealing with what was diagnosed as shoulder and pectoral problems before a new cause of woe was discovered: a fractured rib.
The injury will keep Judge out of spring training for at least two weeks, and the team isn’t ruling out surgery to remove the broken bone, according to Yankees manager Aaron Boone:
Hopefully we’ll reassess in two weeks where he’s at, and then hopefully have an idea of what that looks like. You could do surgery at some point to remove the rib, so I wouldn’t say that’s off the table but you wouldn’t want to go do that right now especially if the bone is healing.
The fractured first rib has been bothering Judge since January, when he took batting practice and felt a new pain. The team believes he fractured the rib during an awkward fall last September, nearly six months ago; Judge continued to play the rest of the regular season and in the playoffs with the injury.
Now that it has been properly diagnosed, however, the team is playing it safe with their 27-year-old slugger, particularly due to his history of injuries. He’s missed 110 games over the last two years with a fractured right wrist in 2018 and a severe oblique strain in 2019.
Judge joins Severino, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, and James Paxton on the list of Yankees that will likely miss at least Opening Day, if not more of the season.
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