Late Thursday night, the New York Yankees announced that Aaron Judge has been diagnosed with a stress fracture in the first rib on his right side. He will need rest and will be checked again in four to six weeks.

After the injury, the Yankees Captain revealed the one thing he had been hoping to avoid had come true after he spent nearly six weeks trying to play through growing pain.

“I’m very disappointed,” Judge told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch. “That’s why we went through every measure we could to get every expert to take a look and see what was going on in there. It’s definitely not what you want to hear, a fracture or anything like that.”

Judge believes the whole problem started with one awkward play on April 26 in Houston, when he and Jazz Chisholm Jr. went after a shallow fly ball hit by Dustin Harris. He said he put his body in a bad spot trying to avoid his teammate.

The pain kept building after that. A hard crash into the wall on May 3 against Baltimore did not help either. He also revealed that the problem worsened later in the team's trip to West Sacramento.

“I was feeling the symptoms the past month, and we kind of did everything we could to make sure we could be out there,” Judge told MLB.com.

“In Sacramento, it just got a little worse. I fought as long as I could. … The biggest thing was that I just couldn’t swing the way I wanted to. And Sacramento was the worst.”

The numbers back it up. Until the middle of May, Judge was hitting .267 with 16 home runs and 30 RBIs. But since May 15, Judge went 11-for-57(.193 batting average) with only one homerun while striking out 17 times.

He went through an MRI, a CT scan, and X-rays on back-to-back days after the A's series. He then saw Dr Gregory Pearl in Dallas, specializes in 'thoracic outlet syndrome management'.

But Judge said that was never the issue for him. His real fear was the rib fracture that he got.

“I don’t think thoracic was ever involved in this at all. I don’t know where that came from,” Judge said. “The worst thing that I had in my eyes was a fractured rib, which is what we got.”

Who Steps Into Aaron Judge's Role in Right Field

With Aaron Judge sidelined, the Yankees moved utility players José Caballero and Max Schuemann to right field during the Cleveland series.

On Friday, the Yankees recalled Spencer Jones, their top outfield prospect, from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. It is Jones' second major league stint of the season.

During his first call-up from May 8 to May 21, when he was called up to temporarily replace Jasson Domínguez, Jones struggled. He had a slash line of .167/.259/.167 (.426 OPS) with no home runs and two RBIs over 10 games.

The Yankees will get some reinforcement in the coming weeks from the injured list, too.

Domínguez took live batting practice on Wednesday and began a minor-league rehab assignment on Friday. And veteran Giancarlo Stanton, who was sidelined with a strained right calf, has progressed to jogging and other agility drills.

Stanton was batting .256 with three home runs and 14 RBIs before the injury.

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Written by

Md Saife Fida

Edited by

Koushik Biswas