Yanks’ Judge heads right back to the IL

New York — Aaron Judge was back on the injured list Friday after playing just one game. The Yankees slugger was diagnosed with a strained right calf for the second time in two weeks.

“It's just a reoccurrence of the (calf) strain that he had suffered before. Similar in that it's low grade and pretty minor, but enough that he had to go back on the IL,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said before Friday's doubleheader against the Mets. “Hopefully it's not something that keeps him down too long, but definitely something that we got to continue to work to get right.”

Judge missed 10 days when he first had the issue, but Yankees GM Brian Cashman told fans on a Zoom call that the slugger would be on the IL “twice as long,” this time.

Judge spent much of that time trying to rehab quickly to get back as soon as he was eligible. He was playing in his first game coming off the IL when he felt the calf tighten up running to second in the Yankees loss to the Braves Wednesday. While Judge tried to play through it, Boone and his coaches in the dugout were quick to pull him out of the game, concerned about it getting worse.

Judge was reluctant to go on the IL when he initially felt the tightness in the calf, attributing it to the wear and tear of a four-day series on the artificial turf — with concrete under it — at Tropicana Field.

Judge has a long history of injuries and this is a sensitive subject with him. Boone said that made it all the more difficult to talk to him about it.

“It's always hard anytime a player has to go down or on (the) IL or can't play because of an injury. And then you couple the fact with Aaron, somebody who obviously is such a great player and is so important to our team,” Boone said. “But the way he competes, the way he prepares, the way he goes about playing this game, I have so much respect for.

“I just hurt for him because obviously there's a lot of conversations around it, and I know how much he wants to be out there and how much he does to be out there, so it's another one of those cases where I just hurt for the individual.”

Judge was powering the offense before he went down. He was slashing .292/.343/.738 with nine home runs in 71 plate appearances when the Yankees put him on the IL.