Aaron Judge injury concerns mount after bizarre throw, postgame Yankees comments

The New York Yankees have a troubling history of position players undergoing Tommy John surgery, and that's where every fan's mind went when Aaron Judge suffered a flexor strain back in late July. He hit the injured list, returned after the minimum time off, but was kept from playing the outfield up until Friday.

And his return? Not great! In the first inning, Cam Schlittler got himself into a ton of trouble, which ended up setting the stage for a tough Yankees loss. With the bases loaded and two outs, Schlittler surrendered a single to Nathan Lukes, who dumped the ball into right field.

Judge fielded it fairly quickly, and the natural play would have been to throw the ball home to prevent the runner on second base from scoring. Instead? Judge made a limp and awkward throw to Jazz Chisholm Jr., who wasn't even serving as the cutoff man. He was standing on the infield dirt as if he was still in position to field a grounder at second base.

Chisholm seemingly caught the ball in an unexpected manner, and by the time he turned around the second runner had scored. It appeared as if didn't really know what to do with the ball. When Judge fielded the single, the runner on second base didn't even touch third base yet, making it all the more puzzling that he would throw to the "cutoff man" 30 feet away.

One hundred times out of 100, Judge is throwing that ball home, using his elite arm strength to keep runners at bay and prevent them from being aggressive. We all know this.

Aaron Judge injury concerns mount after bizarre throw, postgame Yankees comments

The Yankees ended up losing 7-1 and fell four games behind Toronto in the AL East. Judge was approached in the postgame about this incident, and denied that anything was unusual about the play. He kept dodging questions about his ability to make a hypothetical throw home, responding "I wouldn't be out there if I wasn't" ready to throw the ball to the best of his abilities.

In Judge's defense, he was asked 17 times if he was healthy enough to play outfield at a 100% effort, just in different contexts from different reporters. So we can understand how that type of bombardment would get frustrating for a player.

But as you can see right at the start of the interview, Judge wasted no time batting away concerns and being vague in his responses. It was the typical Yankees Speak so many fans take issue with when the team is making it obvious that they're hiding something.

Not to mention, manager Aaron Boone gave away some hidden element of the situation with his contentious response to a reporter.

Judge's return to the outfield on Friday was a complete surprise. It came out of nowhere and after weeks of Boone saying "soon, we'll see, not sure yet" over and over again in regard to when his star player would begin playing defense again. For whatever reason, they had no desire to reveal a concrete table for return, and then they weren't ready to face the heat when everybody said, "Hm, this is weird, Judge returned on a whim with absolutely no notice and didn't look great, so what gives?"

We'll see if Judge is in the outfield on Saturday afternoon. If he's not, we'll probably have our answer in regard to the team's level of concern with the situation. If he is? He better make some throws home to avoid further pressure from the media.