Yankees: Luke Voit getting closer as Aaron Judge update stays strange

The New York Yankees’ inspiration shouldn’t be the 2009 team or the 1997 slow-starters anymore.

If they could choose one champion to emulate, it’s apparently going to be the 2018-19 Toronto Raptors.

Snicker all you want about load management, but it’s become an effective strategy for keeping unique bodies like Kawhi Leonard’s fresh over the course of an entire NBA season.

The Yankees seem content to say the same about Aaron Judge, which resulted in his second consecutive day off on Thursday.

The reason? General soreness, but he’s doing well and could pinch-hit.

We understand fans grumbling about this, but keeping Judge off the IL for extended stretches should be the goal, not forcing him to betray his body against the Orioles in April.

That being said, the roster and offense are supposed to be powerful enough that Judge’s presence isn’t essential everyday. Will they be? Who knows.

Yankees OF Aaron Judge is out Tuesday, but Luke Voit soon come.

We understand the aggravation on both sides of this issue. On one hand, of course players used to play more often back in the day, as recently as 2009. But is Judge’s “toughness” really what’s on trial here?

His desire to play all-out has gotten him in trouble far more often than his hesitancy has. His broken rib stemmed from a diving play in a mid-September game in the Yankees’ 2019 season, with the division already decided. His sprint to third base in Monday’s loss didn’t happen because he was checked out. It occurred because he was pressing.

We’d rather Judge miss two straight days for maintenance than 10+ straight days for organizational incompetence. Who is he, Michael King? Half-kidding.

If you’re angry and want to be distracted from the Judge news, though, we recommend thinking about Luke Voit, who’s taking live at-bats already for the first time since his surgery one month ago.

Boone further clarified that Voit will need some real game action under his belt before he officially joins the Yankees, but lucky for them, the minor-league season begins extremely soon, and the “Alternate Site” is about to be replaced by the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.

Even the most optimistic Voit estimates had him back “by the end of May” when he went under the knife, but now that we’re approaching the end of April, his arrival could genuinely come sooner than that.

Stay patient, Yankees fans, even though it’s difficult. The long run is starting to look better by the day.

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