Will the New York Yankees stumble without Aaron Judge?

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analysts Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman explain why they’re not worried about the New York Yankees despite Aaron Judge having to miss a significant amount of time. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

But the point is, is that Judge the last few years has been healthy.

He’s MVP, obviously, best hitter we’ve ever seen.

The last time we saw Judge miss an extended period of time was 2023, when he crashed into the Dodger Stadium outfield fence and sprained his right big toe.

And that was notable be- first of all, weird, happened almost exactly the same time.

I believe June 3rd was when that happened last year.

Now, this injury has been a little bit more slow forming.

Sounds like he’s been dealing with this for the last few weeks, and you can kind of tell his numbers have really tailed off.

But Yankees fans, when they get this news and they remember, “Oh my God, wait, this seems familiar,” 2023 was not a good year in the Bronx.

No.

They essentially, I mean, they weren’t even that good before he got hurt that year.

They were below 500 while he was out.

He returned from that toe injury at the very, very, very end of July, played the rest of the way.

They weren’t good.

They won 82 games.

It’s the worst season since 1995.

So when you think, “Oh my God, Judge is gonna be out for a long time, the team’s gonna collapse,” this is a very different situation.

This team is so much better than that team for so many other reasons.

We’ll talk about how they’re going to actually replace him in the outfield, which is an interesting conversation, and obviously the lineup is much worse without Aaron Judge in it.

But there’s a lot of oth- reasons why I don’t think Yankees fans need to panic, and part of just, not just the diagnosis that they expect to have him back at some point this season.

Although, I r- if, that could be August 1st, that could be September 1st, that could be Like, I, this is so vague that it’s really hard to say how much Judge they’re going to get for the rest of this regular season.

But that combined with the state of the American League means this is not, you know, freak out time, I think, for New York.

but it’s still a big deal for reasons beyond the Yankees, which I will get into.

But keeping the focus on the Yankees, where they go from here, what are your other takeaways?

The rotation has always been the backbone, right?

Where with the, with the pitching that is this good, the Yankees will be able to survive missing Aaron Judge.

They have the second-best starter ERA in the sport, behind only the Dodgers, and that is with Max Fried having been out.

It feels w- like, this is a great comparison to the Red Sox.

Okay?

The Red Sox, who we will laugh at later, have been missing their best hitter and their best pitcher for a long stretch of the season, and it has effectively left them in what may be an insurmountable lurch, right?

The Yankees lost Max Fried a couple of weeks ago now, and are now losing Aaron Judge, and it doesn’t meaningfully change the way that I feel about them as a team.

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