On Friday the Yankees’ manager was asked about Aaron Judge’s calf and said, in order: “I don’t have a timeline,” then “I’m not going to predict anything,” then “I don’t know.”
The internet decided this was evasion. We said at the time it was the opposite — that three ways of saying we’ll see is what honest sounds like when there is nothing to say yet.
Tuesday, there was something to say.
“We’re planning on him not being a part of that.”
That is Boone, on the Wild Card Series. The diagnosis is a moderate right calf strain. Judge went on the ten-day injured list on Saturday, took a platelet-poor plasma injection on Monday’s off-day, and is shut down for several days after that. The Yankees open against Boston. He is, in the manager’s own words, not in the plan.
We want to be careful here, because the temptation is to say we told you so, and we didn’t tell you anything. We said nobody knew. Nobody did. Now somebody does, and the answer turned out to be the one nobody wanted, and that is not a vindication of anything. That is just what waiting is like.
The whole discourse on Friday was people demanding a number from a man who did not have a number. Four days later the number showed up on its own, the way it always does, and it made everybody who was shouting look exactly as smart as everybody who was patient.
Boone gets to be right this week. The calf gets to be right every week. That has always been the arrangement.