Aaron Judge suffers ‘significant’ oblique strain, will miss time on the injured list

Someone has placed a powerful curse on the Yankees this season. At this point, that may be the most likely explanation.

The Yankees have had a slew of injuries hit them this season with Gary Sanchez, Troy Tulowitzki, Greg Bird, Jacoby Ellsbury, Miguel Andujar, Didi Gregorius, Giancarlo Stanton, Luis Severino, and others all missing significant time so far this season. A team with the talent level the Yankees have could feasibly absorb an injury or two, but the sheer number of players that have been hurt has definitely impacted the Yankees on the field. The Red Sox struggling in the early part of the season has helped, but the Yankees are sitting at .500 and 3.5 games back of the first place Rays.

Now, they will be without arguably their best power hitter for a while.

Aaron Boone and the Yankees didn’t provide a timetable for Judge’s return to the lineup, but when words like “significant strain” are used, this isn’t likely to be a short injured list trip as Sherman notes. Oblique injuries are notoriously tricky and can take quite a while to heal up.

Judge was injured during Saturday’s game against the Royal. It appears as though the injury occurred during his swing as he struggled to run to first base afterwards.

Judge has slashed .288/.404/.521 with five home runs through his first 20 games of the 2019 season. His emergence as one of the league’s top power hitters over the last couple of years has helped buoyed the Yankees into playoff contention despite playing in arguably baseball’s toughest division in the American League East.