Something Isn't Adding up About Aaron Judge's Collapsed Lung
By Adam Weinrib
New York Yankees injury announcements have transcended self-parody at this point, but Aaron Judge's recent slow news day admission takes the cake.
While updating the waiting public on his latest MRI for his broken rib, Judge announced that he was healing slowly, and would have a further clarification in two more weeks. But, on the bright side, his collapsed lung was completely healed, so he was now cleared to fly anywhere. Great!
Only one problem: no one knew Judge had a pneumothorax.
Aaron Judge also revealed to reporters that he suffered a "pneumothorax", or a partial collapse of the lung, which can occur with rib fractures, and is now completely gone. Judge: "I can fly if I need to go home. The bone is still about the same. Slight... https://t.co/3GSopDX4CH
— Marly Rivera (@MarlyRiveraESPN) March 20, 2020
As horribly painful as this all sounds (how did Judge even begin workouts with a collapsed lung?!), it does raise some fairly serious unresolved issues.
Judge's injury reported occurred on Sept. 18 of last season, when he dove for a ball in right field against the Angels in a meaningless regular season contest.
This could very well be the dive that Aaron Judge sustained the rib stress fracture on. September 18, 2019 against the Angels. He sat the next day. pic.twitter.com/Z9f5kqSBdk
— Yankees Coverage?? (@theyankeejungle) March 6, 2020
If Judge indeed suffered the painful injury on that play (which is consensus at this point), he didn't miss any time, boldly playing the rest of the month, as well as October, without full range of motion. But if his recently-healed collapsed lung presented itself at that time, too, it would stand to reason that Judge was seriously risking his health on multiple airline flights throughout the regular and postseason.
If Judge was only now cleared to fly, wouldn't that mean he was defying medical advice in incredibly worrisome fashion for the entire postseason? The fact that we're only learning about this injury now feels like more Yankees malpractice, and the fans deserve to know when the pneumothorax originated.
Hopefully, we'll eventually find out this portion of the injury developed during winter workouts. We gave Judge kudos for playing through the pain last postseason, but if that involved shirking medical wisdom and flying repeatedly across the country, then we don't know what to say.