Yankees: Aaron Judge and Other Stars Not in Lineup for Exhibition vs Mets

The New York Yankees aren’t sending Aaron Judge across town to battle the Mets on Saturday.

Don’t freak out, Yankees fans. You have no reason to panic. But you surely will anyway.

Your New York Yankees are set to travel to Citi Field to take on the Mets on Saturday night in their first exhibition against a genuine opponent during Summer Camp.

The team just dropped their official roster for the game, and there are a few moderate surprises.

DJ LeMahieu will stay home, but that was to be expected — he just returned to the team officially from his COVID-related hiatus on Friday, and has plenty of reps to take in private before he’s ready for competition.

Also not making the trip across town? Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Luke Voit.

Based on the sheer number of Yankees starters not making the very short trek, odds are high this is just a bit of gamesmanship.

The Yanks have their roster largely set, and don’t need to do much more evaluating. Judge proved this week that he’s back and healthy after battling a stiff neck, and Sanchez and Voit have also been mainstays during intrasquad games. The lineup is a true split-squad affair.

The team would rather give El Gary a blow before the games really start to count — after all, he probably won’t get to catch more than 40 regular season games in such a short sprint anyway, right? New York also wants to get Miguel Andujar and Mike Ford some at-bats in a foreign environment — both men are red hot, homering off Gerrit Cole on Friday night.

As for the pitching side of things? Michael King takes the mound for the Yankees, while Rick Porcello will start things off for the Mets, but will eventually give way to…Dellin Betances.

2020’s been a fever dream from top to bottom, so why not add that strange hallucination to the mix?

No matter who’s in the lineup and on the mound, we can’t wait to watch something that actually resembles Yankees baseball during this topsy-turvy year.