Brian Cashman called himself “still very optimistic” about Aaron Judge minutes after the Yankees’ trade deadline closed Monday. I need everyone to stop treating that sentence like a medical update.
It isn’t one.
Judge hasn’t swung a bat. He hasn’t thrown a ball. Nobody in the organization has given a date for when his rib gets re-imaged, and per CBS Sports’ injury timeline, he’s currently limited to lower-body work and neck exercises.
That’s not optimism. That’s a front office hoping nobody does the math out loud.
Judge first hurt the rib diving for a ball back in late April and played through it for a month before the pain got bad enough to stop him on May 31. He landed on the injured list five days later. The medical window the Yankees floated was four to six weeks.
It is now August 5, more than nine weeks since Judge last played, and that original window closed weeks ago. The word from the man running the team is still “optimistic,” the same word he’s used since the injury happened.
Cashman’s actual quotes from Monday are worse than the vibe suggests once you sit with them. “We currently are still very optimistic that he’s going to return, but there’s challenges with all that too,” he told reporters. Then, almost in the same breath: “There’s a very high likelihood that he fits the time frame to come back and join us. That’s what I’m hoping and holding onto.”
Hoping and holding onto.
Doctors don’t talk that way. Publicists do.
Cashman’s exact words, for anyone who wants receipts:
https://twitter.com/BryanHoch/status/2084412951318974973
To his credit, ESPN reported Cashman also admitted the Yankees “can’t rule out” Judge missing the rest of the season, which is more candor than most executives offer in a scrum. Judge himself struck a similar tone recently, describing “some progress, some healing going on, but not fully healed,” while still insisting he’s coming back: “I don’t see why I wouldn’t.” Nobody’s accusing either guy of lying.
Cashman probably believes the timeline. Judge probably believes his own rib.
The problem is what the Yankees did with their hands while Cashman was talking with his mouth. On the same day as that presser, ESPN detailed real trades for infielder Luis Garcia Jr. from Washington and outfielder Heliot Ramos, and the Yankees separately shipped Camilo Doval to Pittsburgh. Those are the moves of a front office reshaping the Yankees around whoever’s actually available to play right now, not a front office parking a hole in right field and waiting on baseball’s best hitter to fill it back in. It’s the same instinct driving the trade deadline fallout across the league this week — teams build for the roster in front of them, not the one they’re crossing their fingers about.
You can’t be quietly building a roster for a Judge-less second half and publicly optimistic about a Judge-ful one at the same time. Pick one.
My grandmother, who has stronger opinions about the Yankees’ lineup construction than most people paid to hold them, put it to me over the phone Sunday: if the guy’s ready, tell everyone when. If he’s not, stop making the fans do the arithmetic themselves. She doesn’t know what a stress fracture is. She’s still not wrong.
None of this means Judge is done for the year, and I want to be honest about that before I wrap this up. He missed the All-Star Game in Philly with this same injury, and people said “a few weeks” back then too. Ribs heal on their own schedule regardless of what a beat reporter’s deadline needs, and it’s entirely possible Judge is back in September mashing like nothing happened.
But “possible” and “optimistic” aren’t the same word, and the Yankees front office knows the difference even if they’d rather you didn’t notice it.
Cashman’s going to keep saying “optimistic” until somebody makes him stop. At this point it’s less a status update and more a load-bearing wall holding up the entire month of August.
