Yankees captain Aaron Judge, his teammates and New York\u2019s fan base exhaled Saturday when the two-time AL MVP learned he has a flexor strain in his right elbow but no acute damage to his ulnar collateral ligament that might cause a long-term layoff.<\/p>\n
Judge was sent for an MRI on Saturday and missed just his second game this season, a 9-4 loss to Philadelphia. He had a platelet-rich plasma injection and will go on the injured list but hopes to return to action in 10 days to two weeks, initially as a designated hitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never want to go in the tube. It\u2019s never fun. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to show up,\u201d Judge said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I kind of pushed off a lot of that imaging and stuff like that because if I don\u2019t what\u2019s going on, it can\u2019t hurt you, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judge leads the major leagues with a .342 batting average and 1.160 OPS. He has 37 home runs and 85 RBIs for a New York team that opened a seven-game AL East lead by late May but started Saturday a season-high 5 1\/2 games back of first-place Toronto.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll in all, we got good news today,\u201d Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. \u201cI think all of us kind of feared the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowing how tough Judge is, Boone had been worried. Judge told Boone of throwing difficulty during Friday\u2019s 12-5 loss to Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t throw past 60 feet,\u201d Judge said. \u201cWe\u2019re going up against a Phillies team, they can hit the ball over the park. I just didn\u2019t want to put our pitchers in jeopardy, just not be able to come up and make a play for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boone received results of the scan just before the start of Saturday\u2019s game, when team officials were getting some more evaluation. Because pain impacted his throwing but not hitting, Judge fought going on the IL.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith that strain, then if you go out there and play with it you put the UCL in jeopardy, so we got to get that healed up,\u201d Boone said.<\/p>\n
Boone said it was too soon to determine whether highly regarded prospect Spencer Jones will be brought up from Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre.<\/p>\n
Judge likely won\u2019t throw for 10 to 14 days, then will need a few days throwing to build back arm strength before returning to the outfield.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really was reluctant about going on any IL or anything like that,\u201d Judge said. \u201cI was like, \u2018If I can hit, let me hit.\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll start DHing, I think, once this 10th day is up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giancarlo Stanton, the team\u2019s primary DH, will start to work out in the outfield next week in order to help fill in for Judge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never a relief knowing he\u2019s going to be out at all, but for what it is, I guess you could say best case,\u201d Stanton said.<\/p>\n
Judge said he first felt the pain in the sixth inning of Tuesday\u2019s game at Toronto, when George Springer singled to right in the sixth inning off Jonathan Lo\u00e1isiga. Judge made a strong throw home in an attempt to prevent the tying run, but Davis Schneider just beat catcher Austin Wells\u2019 tag.<\/p>\n
An inning later, Judge winced after catching Alejandro Kirk\u2019s seventh-inning fly in the right-field corner and throwing to second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr as Dante Bichette tagged up and went from second to third. Judge was seen by a Yes Network camera clenching his right hand in a fist.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s about as tough as they come and for him to even show any vulnerability or pain or whatever,\u201d Boone said. \u201cI knew we had an issue probably. And so any time you can fear the worst with that, but that\u2019s why you wait to react, though. … We got the MRI and got a clear diagnosis with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yankees captain Aaron Judge, his teammates and New York\u2019s fan base exhaled Saturday when the two-time AL MVP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-40404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}