Aaron Judge’s latest IL stint proves Yankees' health is key to success | The Bandwagon

Yahoo Sports MLB writers Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer discuss the New York outfielder’s most recent injury and whether it’s cause for panic in the Bronx. Hear the full conversation on “The Bandwagon” and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

HANNAH KEYSER: Aaron Judge on the IL. And again, that feeds into the kind of like whenever we are having pre-season or early season conversations-- and, in fact, people are writing entire stories that are kind of like, Aaron Judge hit so many home runs last year. Could he hit more home runs this year? It's like, well, I don't know. It depends if he's going to stay healthy, because so much of baseball seasons come down to whether or not he is going to stay healthy.

This will be the fifth game-- or he's already missed five games this year. That matches the total from last year. So again, staying healthy, big part of having an MVP campaign and hitting a record number of home runs. And dating to 2020, the Yankees are 213 and 146 to .593 record winning percentage when Judge plays and 26 and 29 to .473 when he doesn't. So pretty simply put, he's very good. And he needs to stay healthy, or else the Yankees are suddenly a very flawedly constructed team, flawedly constructed. That's a [INAUDIBLE].

ZACH CRIZER: Flawedly. The Yankees just have a lot of guys who are very good when healthy, but not often that healthy. And that includes pretty much every player they've acquired in the past two years. And it's not going great for them.

HANNAH KEYSER: I think the most surprising part of those stats that I just read off when I read them-- thanks to the MLB stat team, who sends out a packet every day-- was the fact that he hadn't missed any time last year. I was like, oh, yeah, that probably explains why he was so tremendously productive, was because he was there. He was available. He was around to be productive. So they won last night.

ZACH CRIZER: Yeah, they did.

HANNAH KEYSER: So that's preventing some level of panic here in New York.

ZACH CRIZER: But I don't know that it is, but it's better than if they lost for the panic level.

HANNAH KEYSER: It's better than if they lost. That's what the Yankees signs should say at the game tonight.

ZACH CRIZER: It's better than if they lost.

[LAUGHTER]