ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — There were times on Friday, Aaron Boone admitted, when he thought that Aaron Judge was going to be on the Yankees’ ALDS roster.
In all likelihood, it would have been just as a pinch hitter, possibly with a chance to be a full player later in the best-of-five series against the Rays if his right calf allowed. That was all part of the discussion when Boone sat down with Judge and director of sports medicine and rehab Mike Schuck in his office at Tropicana Field after Friday’s workout.
The manager then asked for an hour to think it through even more before ultimately coming to the decision to leave Judge off the roster for the second straight round.
“In the end, I just feel like he’s not quite ready to do it,” Boone said Saturday in that same office before Game 1 of the ALDS. “He wanted to be on and was willing to do anything, but I just felt like for us to win a World Series – and fully acknowledging with him, and I understand this, obviously there’s no guarantees. We could be home in a week.
“But for us to potentially have a [good] version of Aaron back, I feel like he needs this week to continue to hit, continue to ramp up the running and moving and all those things. So it was very close for me … but I just felt like this was the right decision.”
Judge, who has been doing everything in his power in the 17 days since he strained the right calf to get back as soon as possible, took the news “OK.”
“I think he’s disappointed, because I think he wants to be on, but I think he understands, too,” Boone said
And so the three-time MVP was back at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring training home in Tampa, on Saturday morning to continue his buildup in hopes of joining the Yankees for the ALCS if they can get there without him.
Judge has taken multiple rounds of live batting practice over the last five days and started his outdoor running progression on Tuesday, a few hours before Game 1 of the AL wild-card series against the Red Sox, though he has still not advanced to running the bases.
So despite making progress and looking better, it was still not enough to defy the odds and return this quickly.
“The reality is he just hasn’t run a lot yet or started to move a lot,” Boone said. “It’s one thing to be able to go out there and manage. It’s another thing to do it [for] three hours. I just feel like that volume part of it would have been a real challenge. And if we kept him on [the roster] in Giancarlo [Stanton’s] role, in that pinch-hitting role, I feel like that would have stripped away the ability to have some really good days and be in a better position five, seven, nine days from now.”
The ALCS begins on October 12, nine days away from Saturday.
The Yankees considered carrying Judge on the roster with the thought of not using him until later in the series, like once they got back to New York for Game 3 or 4, but opted against it.
“I just felt like we probably needed a little more time for that to be a realistic thing,” Boone said.
Boone also indicated that the turf at Tropicana Field — which can be troublesome for players dealing with soft-tissue leg injuries — was not a major factor in leaving Judge off the roster.
“If we were at home, he wouldn’t be playing right now,” Boone said. “The turf always factors in, but it wasn’t in the immediate right now anyway. If he would have been on, it would have been in a pinch-hitting role only.”
The Yankees withstood Judge’s absence in the wild-card series without a problem, crushing the Red Sox in a two-game sweep. But trying to take down the Rays without him may prove to be a more difficult task.
“It would be a blessing to have Aaron,” Spencer Jones said Saturday. “But at the same time, there’s games ahead that we’ve got to win with or without him. I think we’re set up, in a way, in a good position to win with the guys we’ve got.”
