The New York Yankees will open the American League Division Series without Aaron Judge.
Hours before Saturday night’s Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field, the club submitted a 26-man roster that does not include its captain, closing a short and uneasy push to get him back from a right calf strain.
Judge was hurt on September 16, when tightness in the lower leg turned into a strain of the soleus, the muscle that ties into the Achilles.
Manager Aaron Boone called the injury moderate, a description that usually points toward a recovery measured in weeks rather than days. The timing was especially harsh.
Judge had only just returned on September 8 from a rib stress fracture that had kept him out for more than three months.
In the brief window between those two setbacks. he went 4-for-23 with a home run and three RBI. He has not played since.
He has not been idle. Judge has taken live batting practice and worked out with the team, including a session on the field at Tropicana Field on Friday.
What he has not done is run the bases, the clearest public sign that the leg is not yet ready for game speed.
Boone had acknowledged that the dome’s artificial turf would weigh on the decision, and there had been talk of carrying Judge, holding him out of the early games, and activating him later in the series if the calf allowed it. New York chose not to spend a roster spot on that possibility.
The choice also simplified the lineup. A limited Judge would almost certainly have been confined to designated hitter, which would have locked Ben Rice in at first base and pushed Luis Garcia Jr. to the bench.
The Yankees were unwilling to rearrange a group that had just swept the Boston Red Sox in the wild-card round, outscoring them 18-2 over two games without Judge.
Giancarlo Stanton remains available as a pinch-hitting option. Ryan Weathers joins the pitching staff after missing the Wild Card series. Amed Rosario, who started the opener against Boston, is off the roster.
The absence is not a small one on paper. Judge, a three-time American League MVP, hit .241 with an .871 OPS, 18 home runs and 41 runs batted in in 285 plate appearances this season, his lowest OPS since a brief 2016 debut.
Those numbers already reflected a year interrupted by the rib injury. Leaving him out of the Division Series means the Yankees will try to get past Tampa Bay without the player who has defined their lineup for the better part of a decade, with the hope that a longer series, or a later round, might still give the calf enough time.
