Yankees Drop a Nuke on October: Aaron Judge Left Off Wild Card Roster
Leaving Aaron Judge off a playoff roster sounds like a typo that gets a social media intern fired. But according to MLB Trade Rumors, the actually just did it.
officially submitted their Wild Card roster for the upcoming series against the , and number 99 is nowhere to be found. If you had the Yankees making a deep October run on your betting slip, it might be time to start looking for a cash-out button.
Judge was putting up absolute video game numbers before his body betrayed him. We are talking about a guy averaging a 95.5 mph exit velocity with a 25.6 percent barrel rate. He was hitting the baseball so hard it felt like a safety hazard for opposing infielders.
But that stress fracture completely changed the math. The whispers about his recovery have been loud, and leaving a guy who is a career .299 hitter after the All-Star break off the roster confirms the absolute worst-case scenario. You do not bench a healthy Aaron Judge in October unless his foot is literally falling off.
This completely nukes the betting lines for the series. The Red Sox are walking into Yankee Stadium facing a lineup missing its gravitational center. Pitching to the rest of the order gets a whole lot easier when you do not have a 6-foot-7 monster waiting on deck to ruin your afternoon.
Now the have to survive a brutal playoff scenario against their biggest rival without their captain. If they somehow advance past , the question immediately becomes whether Judge can miraculously heal for the ALDS, or if is just delaying the inevitable end to their season.