With Judge’s Timeline Uncertain, Yankees Face A Deadline Balancing Act

Three weeks ago, the Red Sox were an afterthought. They were a last-place club, facing the possibility of selling their top assets. Then Boston ripped off 15 wins in a row, tying a franchise record that dates back to Ted Williams, and suddenly the AL East looks different. Forget the Blue Jays. They’ve been lapped, dropped from the conversation entirely. The team the Yankees actually have to worry about just climbed out of the basement in dramatic fashion and is playing the best baseball in their division. The Rays sit atop the AL East at 59-42. The Yankees, at 57-45, are hanging on to a wild-card spot rather than controlling their own destiny, and the gap behind them is closing fast. The Red Sox, at 52-49, are now seven games behind the Rays and in possession of the final AL wild card spot. That’s the environment Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is operating in with the trade deadline looming. Then, there’s the elephant in the room. The uncomfortable question hanging over every move Cashman makes between now and August 3 is whether this Yankees offense is actually good enough to hang onto a playoff spot without Aaron Judge for an indefinite amount of time. Are the Yankees operating without their best player for another month, or will Cashman be forced to spend prospect capital to patch a hole that won’t close until September or October? Judge has been out since June 2 with a stress fracture in his right rib, and things have been ugly without him. The Yankees are 19-21 without Judge this season, compared to 36-23 with him. Since June 18, they’ve scored the second-fewest runs and struck out the most among any team in the majors. Their .203 batting average with runners in scoring position is ranked 27th in MLB since Judge went on the IL. Cashman isn’t dressing that up. Asked recently about the team’s performance without Judge, he acknowledged the lack of offense and how the onus falls on the rest of the lineup to pick up the slack. “Clearly, you miss him,” Cashman told reporters in Tampa earlier this month. “That’s certainly part of it. But that’s not an answer to why we’re struggling with some consistently really good players that are going into collective slumps at the same time. That has nothing to do with Aaron Judge.” The Yankees can also stop pretending Judge’s return date is close. He underwent another round of re-imaging on his fractured rib during the All-Star break, and though it showed some healing, it wasn’t enough for Judge to begin baseball activities. The slugger has to wait an indeterminate amount of time before a team of specialists gives him and the Yankees the green light to swing a bat again. Judge, for his part, has remained steadfast that he will return at some point this season. “It’s feeling better,” he said recently at Yankee Stadium. “There were a couple of weeks that were tough, where I really couldn’t do a lot. Now we’re feeling ten times better.” So, where do the Yankees go from here? At least, if Judge was healthy, his bat would help cover up some of the glaring weaknesses in the lineup. Without him, the Yankees have no choice but to address their issues. There’s an obvious hole at catcher. There’s a need for a right-handed power bat with Giancarlo Stanton out since April 24 with a nagging calf strain. And there are reinforcements needed in the bullpen. It’s hard to imagine the Yankees moving on from this trade deadline without addressing their catching problem. Yankees catchers have combined for a .180 batting average, .270 slugging percentage, and a wRC+ of 50, all of which are ranked 29th in the majors this season. Austin Wells has cratered — he’s batting .163 with an OPS+ of 48 — and the tandem behind him hasn’t been better. Cashman, at least, has stopped soft-pedaling it. “It’s an issue, clearly,” he said of the team’s backstop situation. Their realistic targets are Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Colorado’s Hunter Goodman. Jeffers is a right-handed bat hitting close to .290 with a .950 OPS. He’ll be a free agent after this season. The biggest concern with Jeffers is how much his hamate fracture, which sidelined him for nearly two months this season, will continue to impact his power. Goodman, meanwhile, leads the National League in slugging (.563), has hit 31 home runs, and has been more consistent than Jeffers while also being a right-handed bat under team control through 2029. The bullpen is where things get expensive. New York had hoped to solve part of it for free, by sliding hard-throwing top prospect Carlos Lagrange into a high-leverage relief role. But Lagrange’s shoulder injury in his throwing arm shelved that plan. Since then, the reported appetite has grown far bigger than a depth arm. The Yankees have been connected to Padres closer Mason Miller, and multiple reports indicate the Yankees are willing to discuss virtually every prospect in the system except their untouchable No. 1 prospect, infielder George Lombard Jr., to get him. Their interest in Miller indicates that small moves won’t be enough if Judge doesn’t return to full strength. And it’s a real gamble, given Miller would likely cost MLB-ready outfield chips like Spencer Jones or Jasson Dominguez, precisely the kind of long-term value Cashman has spent years trying to protect. Or, perhaps a reunion with Mets reliever Luke Weaver is on the table. The Yankees have the prospect capital to be genuinely aggressive. Whether they should be, with Judge’s timeline still murky and a tight division race that’s heightening the pressure, is the harder question. Cashman has less than two weeks to answer it, and with the Red Sox surging, the Yankees’ margin for error is getting thinner.