Big Mac: Aaron Judge Injury Ends the Yankees' Division Chase

Craig Carton (0:00)

Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir! 6.32, straight up! It's the right into the last stop of The Carton Show. Big Mac here with you. Craig doesn't work after 6 So this disgusting, lousy, gut-wrenching afternoon for the Yankees and their fan base kicked Craig right the hell out the show. So I got you for a half hour until Lugauer comes your way. And that was as disheartening a loss for Yankees and their fans as one could have. One, I mean, there's so many different levels. One, it's the Minnesota Twins, that they find ways to beat every which way over the last 20 some-odd years, right? Found ways to win in both games early or in the series, scored a bunch of runs in the eighth inning in the first game.

And they lose in a gut-wrenching fashion after Anthony Volpe comes through with, down to their last out, a two-run double that ties the game. They take the lead in the tenth. They take the lead in the eleventh. They give it back both times. They head to the thirteenth. And we're not going to have time to get into all the different angles of this game.

But obviously, the loss, to me, while they're chasing down the Tampa Bay Rays, and now it's in the five for the loss column, five. If the Tampa Bay Rays win tonight and beat the A's, and it's now five in the loss column, that's it for the New York Yankees. That's it. The division is, at that point, not only is the division over, the Yankees should act as such. That should be the last time we see David Bednar, who pitched two innings in this game, he should never pitch two innings in a game again. They should make sure Hedrick is on cruise control, they should make sure Bednar, anybody else who's important to them gets their rest, is on cruise control. It'll give you an opportunity to see guys like Clark Schmitt, who we saw today, maybe Weathers works his way back into the bullpen. LeGranhe, who everyone was exciting for three months ago, back pitching throwing 102 miles an hour in the minors. Maybe you give him a look. It is no longer chasing down the Rays if they lose tonight. But that's all secondary to whether or not they even have a season after what we just saw today as the big news of the day, Aaron Judge leaves the game pinch hit four in the sixth inning with Ramos, who is really the signature moment of the game. Bases loaded, nobody out, and the Yankees do what they do. He hits into a ground ball, back to the pitcher, one, two, three, double play. Yankees don't score with the bases loaded, nobody out. That was the end of the game, and that at bat officially ended the chase for the division. It feels that way. It feels like that at bat in a game where you've already lost your captain to a lower leg injury. And if you're just listening now, if you didn't listen to Emmanuel in the post game, if you haven't heard Aaron Judge back from his broken rib for a week, today was pulled out of the game because in the first inning out in the outfield, he felt lower body tightness. And we don't know where on the lower body. Apparently, the Yankees when it comes to Aaron Judge are NHL teams and Bill Belichick, where they don't tell you exactly where anybody's hurt. So I don't know if it's his calf, we're all assuming it's his calf, or his hamstring, or his knee, or his toe, or his achilles, or his groin, or his inner thigh, or I don't know, wherever else it could possibly be. But there is tightness on Aaron Judge. He left the game, and we sit here now, pretty much as Yankee fans, waiting to hear if Aaron Judge will come back, waiting to hear if he is any longer a factor moving forward the rest of this season and into the playoffs. And we stand here pretty much at the end of the rope of a dream that was chasing the American League East. And that happened at the hands of the Minnesota Twins in extra innings where the Yankees are the worst team in baseball. The one saving grace about this disaster and the way this team plays in extra innings is that they won't face extra innings like this in the post season. There will be no Manfred Mann, there will be no runner at second, and all the crying we do about how bad they are in extra inning games on the road doesn't matter because they don't play this style of baseball in the post season. There will be no runner at second base. And that's the kind of thing you talk yourself into after what was a despicable loss where they rally back and you assume they're going to find a way to beat the Minnesota Twins their captain went down the entire season goes down. Volpe comes through with a double off the wall that he pimps and thinks is a home run. They get that big hit, they score in the 10th, they score in the 11th, and then they have in the 12th bases loaded nobody out and Ramos, who's get used to seeing him because if Judge isn't playing, he's in the outfield every day against left handed pitching, against right handed pitching, against ambidextrous pitching. It doesn't matter. Ramos is going to be out there and he hits the ball right back to the pitcher to blow an inning where they should have scored multiple runs and get a win. But even if they had won the game, let's be honest. I mean, is the season over? No. Can they beat the Red Sox two games out of three without Aaron Judge? Yes. They beat the Red Sox three out of four without Aaron Judge less than like a month ago.