Yankees' Aaron Judge 'not fully healed' from rib injury
Yankees' Aaron Judge looks on from the dugout against the Minnesota Twins at Yankee Stadium on July 3, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Aaron Judge characterized the results from the most recent MRI done on his fractured rib as “positive” overall, though just how positive isn’t yet clear.
Judge, who has not played since May 31 and who has been on the injured list since June 5 and unable to do baseball activities of any kind in that time, underwent additional imaging on the rib on Wednesday.
“There’s some progress, some healing going on, but not fully healed,” Judge said Friday afternoon, a few hours before the Yankees started a three-game series against the Dodgers at the Stadium. “We’re still waiting on one more doctor to take a look at it, kind of see how we progress forward the next couple of weeks. But definitely a positive sign that we’re seeing some healing.”
But not enough, as yet, to allow Judge to begin baseball activities, a significant step that would allow some kind of timeline to come into focus for when the three-time American League MVP can return to the lineup.
As of now, that timeline remains nonexistent, though Judge was adamant that he will return at some point this season.
“Yeah, definitely,” he said. “I don’t see why I wouldn’t.”
Judge wouldn’t, of course, if it were determined that not enough healing has taken place to allow him to resume baseball activities in full.
Since his diagnosis became official on June 5, Judge has spent the last six weeks relegated to conditioning work on his lower body. It is assumed that once he is cleared for baseball work, he will need the equivalent of a second spring training to get himself ready for big-league games.
Spring training lasts six weeks to allow starting pitchers to get properly stretched out for the regular season. Position players generally say they need three to four weeks to get ready for the season.
That is why, from the start, the Yankees internally felt a mid-August return was a best-case scenario, given the amount of time Judge initially would be prohibited from doing anything with his upper body.
“We’re waiting on the doctor, that’s the biggest thing,” Judge said. “We’ve got a big team of guys looking at this, just so we can get the best answer and have the right plan. Missing one guy, and once we hear back from him, hopefully here soon, we’ll have some more info.”
That “one guy” is Dr. Gregory Pearl, a Dallas-based vascular surgeon who is a specialist in rib injuries.
“He’s looked at so many different rib injuries, so I think he’s going to be the one that says, ‘Hey, no, it’s in a spot to where you can’t start upper-body stuff or baseball activities.’ Or he’s gonna say, ‘Give it a couple more days, give it another week,’” Judge said. “That’s what we’re kind of waiting on. We don’t want to just prematurely start doing some things and kind of hurting us in the long run.”
The Yankees have been hurt by Judge’s absence, going 18-20 without their captain (they were 36-23 when he was sidelined). The stretch without Judge includes a 4-14 record from June 20-July 8, though the Yankees did win their final four games heading into the All-Star break before losing to the Dodgers on Friday night. They are 54-43, the second-best record in the American League and the AL East behind the Rays.
“Obviously, we all want Aaron Judge back in the lineup, but, as I’ve said, we have a lot of capable players,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Feel like we finished the half on a high note and we just have to continue to play well and hopefully continue to win ballgames, then knowing that, at some point, he’ll join us.”
This three-game series against the Dodgers kicks off a particularly difficult stretch for the Yankees; it marks the first of seven straight series against teams that entered the All-Star break at .500 or better. After the Dodgers, the Yankees will face the Pirates, Phillies, White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals and Atlanta. And after that, it’s the semifinalists from last year’s AL playoffs, the Mariners and Blue Jays, two clubs expected to be active before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
“We’ve got a rough stretch here in front of us,” Boone said. “But hopefully we can go continue to play the way we’re capable of because we have people that are capable of going out there and setting us up to win games.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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