Hour 4: Judge’s Scary Injury Update and Knicks’ Quest for a Finals Title

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
Carton Show, Big Mac, NBA Finals, Game 1 tonight. Just a real quick aside if you'll allow us, because I know all the attention, and rightfully so, is on the Knicks tonight, and the fact that Gowell is going to Muscles in the Morning, he's not watching the game tonight, which is an egregious error by one of our producers.
Quick take, Aaron Judge out. Again, tonight, your thoughts?

**Chris McMonigle** (0:22)
Yeah, my thoughts is, again, we're waiting on more testing from it. They sent the imaging to a specialist to take a look at it.
It's concerning enough where we've been talking about for the last month, he didn't look right to me. He didn't look right, he wasn't playing himself. He missed so many balls in the zone that he normally crushes that. At least it does explain that a little bit, and it's not just him aging out and starting to deteriorate. He's got a legitimate injury, but it's scary. Whenever he's such a big guy, he throws himself around.
He did this at the end of 2019, dove for a ball in September, broke a rib. It wasn't diagnosed correctly until spring training of the next year. And he was going to, if it wasn't for COVID, he would have missed three months. But because of COVID, he was back in time for when the season started in July. Like I'm nervous about it. I think they can live with him. I think this team is deep enough. And I think the American league is down enough where they can be okay with him, but you could forget like really dominating. You can forget winning, you know, 96, 97 games. Like it becomes a real tough goal of it. If he's gone for an extended period of time, the rotation is great, but they can only carry them so much. And this offense still, I think, is good in the middle of the order. And the emergence of Ben Rice helps a lot. But there's no other way to say it. He's the most important player on the team. He's the back to back MVP. And any long stretch of him not on the team is a major problem. So we're waiting to see how significant the injury is.

**Craig Carton** (1:47)
Yep. And obviously they lose last night. That's more about pitching than anything else.

**Chris McMonigle** (1:51)
Well, the offense could have done more, but yeah, pitching. They both had multiple leads. They gave him multiple leads. He gives up one run, they come back, score two, they're up two, one, he gives it right back, makes it three, two. They come right back and make it four, three, he gives up more runs. Like not a great night for Cain.

**Craig Carton** (2:06)
But your concern is not about one game. Your concern is about his velocity.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:09)
My concern is about his velocity last night.

**Craig Carton** (2:10)
It was down a couple miles per hour.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:12)
It was down a couple miles per hour. It clearly was. He admitted as such. He says he's not worried about it. If he comes out his next start and the velocity is down again, now I think we've got something to at least concern ourselves with and talk about, but I think you could just have a one-off bad start.
He wasn't great against Kansas City, although he only gave up one run, but his velocity was up in that game. His velocity was where it normally is.

**Craig Carton** (2:33)
Just one game.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:33)
I know he's in a panic yet.

**Craig Carton** (2:35)
The judging's more concerning to me now.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:37)
The judging is much more of a concern.

**Craig Carton** (2:38)
Because it started to smell like IL. To be fair.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:41)
I think it's fair.

**Craig Carton** (2:41)
Now they'll make it retroactive, obviously, but.

**Chris McMonigle** (2:43)
I wouldn't mind him going on the, if they think it's a day-to-day thing and the doctor comes back and the specialist comes back and says, look, he'll be fine in a couple of days, but he's dealing, like, if you told me, hey, we're going to give him two weeks, give him two weeks. He's Aaron Judge. They can live without him for two weeks. I'd rather have Aaron Judge at full strength and miss two weeks than play as 90% Aaron Judge the entire time. So I'd rather take your time. My concern is, and you know, I read too much about, you know, doctors are like, there are things that could be bad. There could be broken cartilage in between the ribs. There could be cracks in this. And like, my concern is that he's not gone long term. Now, I don't know what would be a season ender necessarily, but you could be looking at something that's a month, two months, and that would be a real, real hit to this Yankee.