Yankees get surprising Aaron Judge elbow injury update amid Tommy John fears

For every Yankees fan packing the season in on Saturday morning and claiming the games no longer matter because of Aaron Judge's inevitable fate, good news! Judge's season is far from over.

Bad news: The games still matter, and the Yankees got killed again on Saturday.

Judge, who was spotted grimacing after a throw on Tuesday night in Toronto, returned to the lineup the very next night to DH and played the outfield on Friday. That experiment did not go as well as the DH game, in which he homered. Judge reportedly had trouble tossing back to the infield in the opener against the Phillies, was sent for tests Saturday, and was due to meet with Dr. Chris Ahmad following the scans.

Any fan fearing the worst was not unfounded; all signs pointed to Judge requiring Tommy John surgery and a nine-month recovery window that would've bled slightly into next season.

According to Jack Curry, though, who broke the news, Judge has suffered a mere flexor strain. His UCL is intact. He will not require surgery, and will DH when he returns from the Injured List. It's not great. "Injured Judge" is a low-priority event for this team in free fall. Flexor injuries occasionally precede UCL tears (though that's of course more common for pitchers). Still, it's far from the season death sentence that seemed to be looming all day.

Yankees avoid Aaron Judge worst-case scenario with flexor strain diagnosis after elbow injury

While the severity of flexor strains can vary from case to case, Aaron Boone noted in Saturday's postgame that there's a possibility Judge could miss only the minimum 10 days. That's all well and good; the Yankees should probably be a bit more cautious than that with their face of the franchise.

Shortly thereafter, Jon Heyman mentioned that the DH stint that Judge will be relegated to after he returns would only last 10 days, too, in the Yankees' best-case scenario. Judge being forced into a designated hitter role would certainly complicate the paths of Giancarlo Stanton, Ben Rice, and Paul Goldschmidt, but trying to re-insert Judge into the lineup is a lot better problem than the Yankees anticipated they'd have when they woke up this morning.

Their trade deadline urges shouldn't change. They should still prioritize controllable pieces and live arms over rentals. The prognosis for this campaign without Judge for several weeks remains somewhere below a dream. But the bell hasn't rung quite yet on the 2025 Yankees.