Aaron Judge will see a specialist on Wednesday for another opinion on the bone bruise on his upper right rib that kept him out of Tuesday’s 9-4 loss to the Cleveland Guardians at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees are still calling him day to day, but they want one more look before saying the injury is limited to a bruise.
That matters now because Judge’s availability shapes the middle of the Yankees’ lineup every night, and Tuesday’s absence left José Caballero in right field instead. Judge had been playing through nagging soreness in the area for a couple of weeks, but the pain got worse over the weekend against the Athletics in Sacramento, when he went 2-for-12 in the Yankees’ three-game set.
Judge’s numbers had already started to slide before he sat out. Since May 17, he has hit.163 with one home run and eight RBIs over 13 games, a stretch that has gone alongside the rib issue. Going into Tuesday, his.908 OPS still ranked 13th in the majors and his 17 home runs were tied for the fourth most, but his.248 batting average was far below last season’s MLB-best.331 mark and his.322 average in 2024.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad examined Judge on Tuesday night and that the findings matched what the imaging showed. Boone described the result as “overall good news” because the team believes it is only a bone bruise, but he also said the club wants a specialist to look at it to rule out anything else or see whether there is anything else to see. That leaves Judge in the same place he has been since the pain first built up: active enough to avoid the injured list for now, but not stable enough for the Yankees to assume the issue is settled.
The uncertainty is familiar. Neither Judge nor the Yankees have been able to point to one play or one game that caused the injury, though Boone said it could have happened when Judge dove trying to make a catch. That is the part that makes the Wednesday visit important. If the specialist agrees with the club’s first read, the Yankees can keep treating Judge as a day-to-day player. If not, the decision tree changes quickly, and the team’s replacement options become the next problem to solve.
Judge has played through serious rib pain before. In March 2020, doctors found a stress fracture in his right first rib and a partially collapsed lung after a dive in a game the previous September. For the Yankees, the immediate question is simpler this time: whether the specialist confirms the bruise and nothing more, or whether the club has to brace for a longer absence from its best hitter.
