NEW YORK — The diagnosis arrived this week, but the discomfort may have started a month ago. That is the unsettling thread now hanging over the Yankees as their captain steps away from the lineup. Aaron Judge has a bone bruise. The bigger question is how long he carried it before anyone did something about it.
Judge missed his first game of the season Tuesday. The timeline behind that absence, though, has become the real story, and it has put the Yankees and their handling of their best player under scrutiny.
A diagnosis weeks in the making
The Yankees confirmed the injury Tuesday before hosting the Cleveland Guardians at Yankee Stadium. Judge has a bone bruise in his right rib area that bothers him when he swings. Imaging done on Monday’s off day revealed the issue, and team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad agreed with the finding.
What stood out was manager Aaron Boone’s admission about how long this had been building. Judge had been quietly managing soreness for weeks without telling anyone.
According to MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch, Boone said Judge had been dealing with shoulder soreness for weeks before it became more than that during the recent series in Sacramento against the Athletics. The captain never volunteered the problem on his own.
“I kind of said something,” Boone said of the moment he finally raised it with Judge over the weekend. The manager noticed something wrong while watching his slugger swing.
The May catch that may have started it all
Here is the moment fans keep circling back to. Speculation has centered on May 3, when Judge made a spectacular leaping catch against the Orioles at Yankee Stadium. He raced to the warning track, used his height to make a running grab at the wall, and robbed a potential extra-base hit. He appeared in visible discomfort right after the play.
If that catch planted the seed, Judge’s injury would be roughly a month old. That possibility reframes everything that followed, including a slump that never quite made sense for a back-to-back MVP.
Not everyone agrees on the origin. Some believe the bone bruise came from simple wear and tear and awkward swings during the Sacramento road trip. Boone himself suspected it could have started on a diving play in right field at some point, though Judge was not certain when it began. The manager credited Judge for managing his body carefully in recent years.
“He picks his spots here and there, but you can’t avoid everything,” Boone said.
What the injury actually is
The medical picture helps explain the caution. Judge is believed to have a bone bruise in either the first or second rib, which refers pain up to the right shoulder. There is a possibility the damage involves the cartilage between the ribs, an area that is both very painful and slow to heal because of poor blood supply.
The range of outcomes is wide. Dr. Spencer Stein, a sports orthopedic surgeon at NYU Langone who is not involved in Judge’s care, explained the variability in a phone interview with the New York Post.
“It needs rest,” Dr. Stein said. “This injury can happen with repetitive overuse, so it could be as simple as resting for a week or two, but if it’s more like a stress fracture, that could be more like 8-10 weeks.”
That gap, from a couple of weeks to more than two months, is what makes the coming days so tense for the Yankees.
A slump that finally has an explanation
The timeline also recolors Judge’s recent numbers. He is still batting .248 with 17 home runs, 38 RBI, 10 doubles, 42 walks and a .907 OPS on the season. The surface line remains strong. The recent trend is not.
In May, Judge hit just .243 with five homers and an .805 OPS, including an 11-game stretch with no home runs. Over his last 16 games since May 13, he batted a stunning .180 with one homer and a .550 OPS. Against the Athletics over the weekend, he managed a .167 average with a .452 OPS, going 2-for-12.
Boone now believes the injury was likely behind the downturn. For a hitter who won the 2025 batting title with a .331 average and 53 homers, the slump always looked out of character. A rib bruise sapping his swing offers the clearest answer yet.
History that raises the stakes
Yankees fans have seen injuries like this spiral before, which fuels the worry. In September 2019, Judge hurt himself on a diving catch, an injury later diagnosed as a rib stress fracture and a partially collapsed right lung. He felt that pain in his right shoulder area too, and it lingered into the next season.
More recent history cuts deeper. In 2023, Judge tore a ligament in his right big toe crashing into the wall at Dodger Stadium, an injury that helped sink the Yankees out of playoff contention. Last season, a flexor strain in his right elbow nagged him through much of the second half, though New York survived it and Judge returned to form.
Those memories explain why a wait-and-see diagnosis still feels heavy. The Yankees are not ruling out an injured list stint, and Judge was set to see a specialist for a second opinion. Boone offered the most optimistic framing he could while admitting the uncertainty.
“Hopefully we avoided something serious,” Boone said, adding the team would know more as the next couple of days unfolded.
For now, the Yankees sit at 36-23, second-best in the American League, and brace for answers. Whether Judge played hurt for a month or a few days, the franchise faces the same pressing task. It must protect the most important player on its roster before a nagging bruise turns into a lost summer.
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