Yankees: Brian Cashman's updates on Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres are troubling

Yankees slugger Aaron Judge’s return is over before it really started.

New York Yankees fans got a shred of good news this week when general manager Brian Cashman said DJ LeMahieu could return before the end of the week after he hit the shelf with a sprained thumb.

But as everyone is accustomed to at this point, the good news is followed by a tidal wave of bad news, and that’s what we have on Friday.

In speaking with reporters on a Zoom call, Cashman revealed that Aaron Judge is indeed back on the injured list and Gleyber Torres could be out for up to SIX weeks.

You thought the near future looked grim? How about the postseason? It looks like we won’t have a majority of our top players back to full strength or fully in the swing of things come October. And don’t forget, this team still has to get through playing their current stretch of 35 games in 33 days. It’s not looking good.

Gleyber’s timeline being extended is kind of weird too, given we were provided with this update mere days ago.

Gleyber Torres (strained quadriceps and hamstring) said that he was able to walk/run on the field today. He's hoping to resume swinging a bat in about a week.
— Bryan Hoch (@BryanHoch) August 23, 2020

Great.

While we have some solid updates on Giancarlo Stanton and Zack Britton, that’s just not enough to quell anyone’s concerns. Stanton looks like he’s on track with the original timetable to return in a month’s time and Britton’s case seems to be as expected.

James Paxton’s flexor strain still has him on the shelf, and to be honest we wouldn’t be surprised if his stint on the IL ends up being longer than expected. He’s heading into a contract year, and after dealing with lower back surgery he simply cannot risk further injury, especially a significant/nagging one to his forearm/elbow.

The Yankees are enduring their worst stretch of the 2020 season in terms of losing (five straight games) and injuries, so they’ll need to really bounce back in this five-game set against the Mets. Now, we just have to figure out the rotation without Gerrit Cole and Masahiro Tanaka this weekend.

Should be easy!