The Yankees tried their best to avoid the inevitable, but it happened this week. After Aaron Judge broke the outfield wall at Dodger Stadium, he was forced to hit the injured list with a sprained toe. It’s already Judge’s second time on the IL this season.
Now, the next question is: How long will the Yankees be without their premier slugger? That’s anyone’s guess right now, as no legitimate timetable has been given yet. People can start making guesses, though. And no — I’m not talking about you and me. I’m talking about doctors. You know… the people who would actually know the details of what could be going on.
I’ve seen opinions from two doctors on the interwebs when it comes to discussing Judge’s injury and when he could potentially be ready to return. Granted, neither of these doctors is actually treating Judge. They haven’t spoken to him, seen his X-rays, or any of that stuff. All they’re doing is discussing the injury in a general sense based on the news we’ve heard and what they’ve seen in the past with other people.
But still, it beats trying to figure things out on WebMD or from the always truthful Twitter MDs, right?
Yankees YouTuber Dan Rourke had Dr. Jesse Morse (a Sports Medicine Physician) join him to discuss Judge’s injury. What Dr. Morse essentially said is it could take the reigning AL MVP a minimum of three weeks to get ready to play again. Here’s the full video:
Chris Kirschner of The Athletic spoke to another sports surgeon to get a sense of a possible recovery timeline for Judge. He chatted with Dr. Spencer Stein, a sports orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone Health.
Like Morse, Stein isn’t treating Judge’s injury and has no inside knowledge of how things look for the outfielder. He spoke with Kirschner based on his own experience with similar injuries suffered by other people. Stein is deducing that Judge suffered a Grade 1 ligament strain. If that’s true, he told Kirschner the slugger would need 1-2 weeks of rest before 1-2 weeks of ramping himself back up to 100%.
So, both of these estimated guesses are similar. In a best-case scenario, Judge takes a week of rest before ramping up activity and getting back by the end of the month. Or, he needs an extra week and is back during the first week in July.
It could be a lot worse, but either way, this is not an ideal scenario for the Yankees moving forward. They’ll need some production from other areas of the lineup to make up for his absence. Whenever they get to play again.
You can reach Matt Musico at matt.musico@xlmedia.com. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.