Aaron Judge 'still not happy' that Yankees placed him on IL
Aaron Judge #99 of the Yankees looks on from the dugout against the Cleveland Guardians at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Aaron Judge waged a battle to stay off the 10-day injured list Monday. The outcome – landing on it with a right hip strain – was not a matter of him being convinced it was the right move.
“I lost,” he said Tuesday after the Yankees’ 4-2 win over Cleveland at the Stadium. “They didn’t convince me.”
“I’m still not happy about it, but it is what it is,” Judge added. “I’ll be back here in a couple days and right back to it.”
Judge last played in Thursday’s win over the Rangers in Texas, when he was removed in the fourth inning. He has been throwing and hitting while not playing.
“It feels really good,” he said. “The toughest thing is throwing right now. Hitting feels great. Throwing, you feel it a little bit. But other than that we’re on track to be back in a couple days.”
Judge first felt discomfort after a head-first slide on Wednesday in Minnesota. He played the next day, but not since. It seemed there was a chance he might avoid the IL until Monday when the Yankees made the move and called up Franchy Cordero.
He can return to the active roster on Monday, after a three-game weekend series against the Rays in Tampa Bay, and said he will be activated that day.
“That’s why I was fighting it – I just asked for a couple days and it got outweighed,” Judge said, before motioning to his hip area. “Oblique and hip and this whole area? You don’t want to mess with it. So they kind of outweighed me on that one.”
The reason Judge had been doing baseball activities was his intention to not end up on the IL.
“The last couple days I’ve just kind of been ramping up and getting ready to play maybe (Wednesday) or the first game against Tampa (on Friday),” Judge said. “Once they put me on the IL, I kind of said ‘OK, let’s slow down and take a couple days and get ready for the next homestand.’ ”
Jude said he did his normal batting cage routine on Tuesday, but took a day off from throwing a baseball.
With no discomfort hitting, Judge was asked if he made an argument to be the designated hitter in Tampa and simply not play the field.
“They didn’t even let me get there,” he said.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
