Yankees' trade plans after Aaron Judge injury revealed by ESPN

yankees/news/yankees-trade-plans-after-aaron-judge-injury-revealed-espn/c53262a102d6cc9bd062bdd4?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=appeared_on">Yankees’ trade plans after Aaron Judge injury revealed by ESPN originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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The New York Yankees still have time to figure things out.

That’s the main takeaway as they lose Aaron Judge to a potentially extended injury absence — the trade deadline is still nearly two months away, and the American League likely isn’t going to get away from them.

ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle took a look at the potential changes the Yankees might need to make because of the injury in a new article on Wednesday — and he appears to have decided there aren’t any immediate shifts needed.

“For the Yankees, this is probably the time it hurts the least to endure an extended absence from the game’s most devastating offensive force,” Doolittle writes. “The American League landscape is just so forgiving right now. The Yankees still have a decent offense and a stellar starting rotation to get them by. Their buffer is huge — New York has underperformed compared to its run differential, but that differential is more than three times larger than any other team in the Junior Circuit. The task, then, is to just hold down the fort, because the Yankees still have more than enough with which to win.”

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The Yankees will be helped if the young Spencer Jones can hit his stride, and he might be doing that — he crushed his first MLB home run on Tuesday night.

Jasson Dominguez will also be back from injury soon, which certainly gives the Yankees plenty of outfield depth.

So in Doolittle’s breakdown, he concludes that Judge’s injury isn’t actually going to impact the trade market.

The Yanks still have needs, but they don’t have to do with Judge.

“If they do (make trades), then it’s still about October, and for that part of the calendar, they might look at adding another righty bat, perhaps a third baseman and, certainly, some bullpen help,” Doolittle writes.

And when the Yankees get Judge back, it’ll almost feel like a big-time deadline acquisition. If they’re on a roll at that point, Judge will only make things better.

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