Day: June 5, 2026

NEW YORK – Aaron Judge’s pursuit of another historic season, and the Yankees’ hopes of dominating the American League, took a major hit late Thursday night when the superstar slugger was diagnosed with a stress fracture of the first rib on his right side – an injury expected to sideline him for two to three months. Few teams are built to withstand the loss of a three-time MVP for half a season. Fewer, still, can absorb the absence of a player who touches nearly every aspect of the game and clubhouse the way Judge does. The Yankee captain’s stress fracture, though not the worst-case scenario, comes at a pivotal point in the season for New York, which entered the weekend with the most wins (37) and the best offense (114 wRC+) in the AL. What’s next for the Yankees without their most feared hitter? What’s next for Judge’s recovery? How does his injury impact the rest of the league? Let’s dive in. What’s Next For Judge The 34-year-old right fielder will be re-imaged in approximately four to six weeks to determine the level of healing on his rib. Until then, he’ll rest and engage in limited activity. Learning the injury is a stress fracture – something Judge has actually dealt with earlier in his career – was a bit of good news for the Yankees after all the alarming testing and imaging he underwent this week. Judge isn’t sure when the injury occurred, according to Yankees skipper Aaron Boone, but he’d felt it for a couple of weeks and flagged it with the team sometime after the Yankees’ series finale against the Athletics last Sunday. Then, over the span of four days, multiple specialists across different states looked at his MRI, CT scan and X-rays. On Thursday, Dr. Gregory Pearl, a Dallas, Texas-based vascular surgeon who specializes in thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), examined Judge’s images. In some cases, TOS can be career-ending; Judge’s diagnosis of a stress fracture is comparatively a positive. In Sept. 2019, Judge sustained a stress fracture of his first right rib and a partially collapsed lung while attempting a diving catch in a game. He played through the injury into the 2019 postseason, but he would have been on the injured list until June 2020 had the pandemic-shortened season started on time. Judge hasn’t spoken to reporters since last weekend, during New York’s trip to West Sacramento, so it’s unclear if his current stress fracture feels more or less manageable than the last time he dealt with it. Judge’s performance started to dip around the middle of May. He batted .267 with a 1.043 OPS and 16 home runs through his first 41 games of the season. Since May 11, Judge has batted .206 with a .613 OPS and one home run in his last 18 games before landing on the IL. The last time Judge played fewer than 150 games was in 2023, when he missed two months with a fractured toe after crashing into the Dodger Stadium wall on a running catch. In a best-case scenario, Judge and the Yankees will receive the green light sometime in July for the slugger to resume baseball activities. It seems likely that the team will have to navigate the season without Judge at least until August, if not longer. What’s Next For The Yankees For the past two years, the Yankees survived injuries, slumps and roster questions because Aaron Judge remained Aaron Judge. Now — in what will be the biggest test of their season — they’ll have to find out who they are without him. We got a glimpse of what their life will look like this week, as the Yankees dropped two out of three games to the Guardians, their only win coming in a tight, 2-1 victory in the series finale on Thursday. Without Judge, the Yankees lineup combined to bat just .193 in three games against Cleveland. Top outfield prospect Spencer Jones is being called up by the Yankees on Friday, according to a person familiar with their plans. Jones was promoted to the big leagues in May after outfielder Jasson Dominguez went down with injury, but he struggled at the plate, hitting .167 (4-for-24) with 12 strikeouts in 10 games, before the Yankees sent him back down to Triple-A. It would help, of course, if Jones has improved in his return to the majors, but at least some reinforcements are on the way. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, who has been out since April 24 with a right calf strain, is making strides in his recovery. New York’s designated hitter has started to take reps in live batting practice while continuing to ramp up his running program. The Yankees expect Stanton to bypass a rehab assignment, but there’s no date for his return just yet. Perhaps Judge’s injury and absence will change his timeline. Dominguez, who has been out since May 7 after crashing into the Yankee Stadium wall and sustaining a left AC joint sprain, is scheduled to play in minor-league rehab games this weekend. It’s possible he could join the team during its series in Toronto next weekend, if not during New York’s next homestand on June 16. Beyond the immediate loss of Judge’s bat, his absence raises questions about the Yankees’ ability to maintain their position atop the AL. While New York has received significant contributions from breakout player Ben Rice, who has crushed 17 home runs and boasts a 1.030 OPS that’s ranked second-best in the major leagues, no player on the roster can replicate Judge’s combination of power, on-base ability and presence in the heart of the lineup. It helps the Yankees that the AL features a weak and largely mediocre field this year. But it will still take everyone, and then some, for the Yankees to stay afloat until he returns. What’s Next For The AL MVP Race Suddenly, the AL MVP race is wide open after Judge has all but closed the door on the possibility of a three-peat this year. Judge wasn’t having the kind of overwhelming and commanding season he had in 2024-25 before he hit the IL, and if he returns without any setbacks, he’s lucky to land in the neighborhood of 90–110 games played for the season, depending on his recovery. That doesn’t automatically disqualify him from the race, but it would require an absurdly dominant final two months and an extraordinary comeback to overcome the missed time. Even though Judge is known to separate himself from mere mortals, it would be surprising if the Yankees pushed him in the stretch run. The team is more likely to be cautious with the face of its franchise and take its time with his recovery. Now, the biggest beneficiaries of Judge’s injury and the favorites to win the AL MVP award include Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez, Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz, and even his own Yankees teammate, the slugging Ben Rice. The Yankees first baseman has struggled to get pitches to hit in Judge’s absence, as Rice is used to hitting in front of Judge in the lineup, but he remains a dark-horse candidate if he can sustain his production for four months. If Witt can keep up his strong start to the season, this might finally be his year to win the MVP. The shortstop challenged Judge for the award in 2024, when Witt finished second in AL MVP voting after hitting .332 and winning the batting title. This year, Witt leads the majors with a 3.8 fWAR through 63 games. He’s hitting .281 with a .818 OPS, and he’s likely to have a huge advantage in games played compared to other MVP favorites. The combination of Witt’s offense, defense at a premium position and durability makes him the newest frontrunner for the award.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

In Driver’s Eye with James Hinchcliffe, the six-time INDYCAR winner will bring you inside the mind of a racer while breaking down the nuts and bolts of the sport for fans. Racing is risky. There are no two ways about it. From the sport’s inception, there has been an inherent danger. That said, drivers today are incredibly lucky to race in the era they do. Safety is something INDYCAR, the tracks and the partners — not to mention the drivers! — take very seriously. Something is learned from every accident, and pushing safety forward is a never-ending endeavor. This is without doubt the safest era to be a professional racing driver. But at the end of the day, we are still driving faster than 200 miles an hour beside concrete walls, and it will never be 100 percent safe. Unfortunately, that was confirmed at the Indianapolis 500 when both Alexander Rossi and Josef Newgarden suffered separate crashes that left them with minor injuries. And crutches. Yet both drivers competed the following week in Detroit. While the specifics of each injury haven’t been shared, they seem to be similar in nature, yet completely different in the challenges they presented each driver. Rossi’s issue was with his right ankle, which is the throttle foot. At the Indy 500 — where he also competed with the injury after crashing in practice and undergoing minor surgery — the track is smooth. So the typical amount of throttle modulation over a lap is quite a bit less than the twisty street circuit in Detroit. Trying to carefully accelerate on a dirty, bumpy street circuit with 750-ish horsepower at your disposal requires a delicate finesse with that right foot. Much harder when your foot isn’t at 100 percent. Add into it the bumpy nature of the track, and the floor of the car regularly and violently bottoms out over bumps, sending shock waves through every inch of your body, including your injured foot. A challenging proposition, to say the least. Newgarden also had an issue with his foot, but it was his left foot. The braking foot. This is where the challenge is completely different. For all the finesse required for your throttle foot, you need brute force in the braking foot. INDYCAR drivers hit the brake pedal as hard as they physically can on the initial hit of a big brake zone, like Turn 3 at Detroit. Several hundred pounds of pressure on the pedal translates to several thousand pounds of pressure through the brake system. And while that strength is key, arguably more important is how you control the brake release — coming off the brake pedal as the speed bleeds off so you get closer to the corner. This technique is what drivers spend their whole career refining. It’s one of the main areas that separates a professional from an amateur: The ability to feel the grip in the tires and constantly modulate the brake pressure to maximize brake efficiency without locking up a tire. If you are battling an injury to the brake foot, it can completely change the muscle memory that comes from decades of racing with a healthy left leg. Trying to retrain your brain to undo what is essentially second nature can be massively difficult. When you consider these challenges, it makes it all the more impressive that Rossi was in podium contention until an ill-timed full-course caution, and Newgarden battled back from a poor starting spot to be the biggest mover of the race and secure a top-10 finish. Walking on crutches but piloting a race car at 200 miles an hour is a wild juxtaposition. But it’s important to remember that while these are impressive feats, safety is never compromised. And the decision of whether drivers are cleared to race isn’t up to them — and for good reason. As much as we drivers take safety seriously, leaving that decision up to someone who straps into a ground-based rocket ship for a living might give skewed results! That’s why medical teams utilize comprehensive tests drivers must pass before they can get back behind the wheel. Somewhat like other sports — football and hockey come to mind — if there is no risk to others and low risk of long-term damage to themselves, athletes are often willing to fight through a bit of discomfort to play the game. At the end of the day, the passion for the sport burns hotter than any pain in the body while they compete. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE FAST: WWT RACEWAY Back to the ovals! This weekend, we are at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, near St. Louis, for a race under the lights. Prime time. Sunday night. And you might be thinking everyone should be pretty up to speed turning left, considering we just spent two weeks driving around an oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But you’d be wrong. Though both ovals, the similarities between these two tracks end there. We talk about Indy’s four identical corners that you have to drive through differently in subtle but important ways. But St. Louis’ 1.25-mile track has two ends that are completely different! Turns 1 and 2 are tight radius and high-banked. Turns 3 and 4? Much flatter and a more open radius. The difference, end to end, presents some pretty big challenges for teams and drivers. As a driver, you have to approach these corners very differently. In Turns 1 and 2, you will bleed off almost 40 miles an hour of speed through lifting — and sometimes even a bit of braking in the race. Turns 3 and 4 are ideally flat-out in qualifying, so it’s all about limiting scrub, meaning grinding the front tires by turning the steering wheel too much. From a setup standpoint, it’s very difficult to navigate and all about compromise. The ideal setup at one end won’t feel good at the other. The biggest mistake drivers make here is trying to chase the perfect balance the whole way around. Even trying to get one end to feel really good, knowing it will make the other end trickier, rarely works. The key to this race track is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. It will never feel perfect at either end, so finding the most OK-ish balance at both ends usually yields good results. For me, Turns 1 and 2 are the best part of this track. You approach Turn 1 at nearly 200 miles per hour, and the banking is so steep it looks like you’re staring at a wall. You head into that turn at speed the first few times and think to yourself, “There is no way I am making it around this corner.” Between the banking helping you turn and the incredible capabilities of an Indy car, it all works out! And there is a lot you can do as a driver on that end of the track in the race. You can go in deep to try and make a pass, you can ease up the entry and focus on a mega run out to set up a pass for Turn 3. You can get creative with lines quite a bit more than in Turns 3-4, which is why we see so much action there in the race. SOUND LIKE AN INDYCAR EXPERT The fast, frantic nature of short-track racing in INDYCAR highlights something else that I think is pretty impressive about what these drivers are doing on track. Surely, if you’ve been watching our races on FOX, you’ve seen the Driver’s Eye camera that gives the most realistic sense of what it’s like inside the car. It also gives you a glimpse into how much information the drivers are digesting from the dash on the steering wheel. The wheel is really the brain of the race car. On the back, the driver has paddles to control up shifts and down shifts and the clutch for leaving pit lane, as well as hybrid controls. The front has a litany of buttons and knobs used to do everything from talk to the crew, take a drink of water, control the speed in pit lane or even change the handling of the car. The dash itself looks like a losing level of Tetris with all these different colored boxes stacked together, displaying different types of info to the driver. Things like lap time, lap count, distance to cars in front and behind, tire temps, brake temps, balance settings, engine settings… I could go on! At a track like St. Louis, where a lap time is something in the low 20-second range, you spend more than half your lap cornering. That means you have a little less than 10 seconds per lap — split between the frontstraight and backstraight — to look down, absorb and digest certain info off the dash and then make a decision based on what you saw. And, again, all while racing wheel-to-wheel with 24 other cars at crazy speeds! Needless to say, these drivers will be earning their money on Sunday night, and based on what we’ve seen of the short oval package that INDYCAR has developed, it should be a heck of a race! MORE DRIVER’S EYE:​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports