Aaron Judge went 1-for-4 on Monday to stay at .311 for the season, still four points behind Luis Arraez of the Twins in the race for the AL Batting Title – although he’s not getting much help from Arraez.
Not because he’s hitting, but because the Twins slugger is not playing, missing three of the Twins’ last four games through Monday with a hamstring issue that has hampered him for almost three months now – and while he’s tried to play through it until the last week or so, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli is doing what’s best for his health, not his stats.
“I’m judging this based on how he’s doing physically. This is baseball history. This is a batting title race. These things are important to all of us. Very important to Luis and every other player involved," Baldelli told MLB.com. "I know that. But if our guy, who’s a gamer and who takes the field every day for us can’t swing without hopping on one leg and can’t run to first base or score on a base hit, then I think it’s hard to put him out there."
As for Arraez, well, he’d prefer to be out there knowing the circumstances, but understands.
“I want to win the batting title fighting," Arraez said. “Everybody knows I’m competing to win the batting title. Everybody knows I want to play every day, I work hard in my offseason for that. But 100 percent, I don’t feel good today."
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The Yankees proper aren’t playing for anything but the sake of the schedule right now, but Judge remains in the lineup as he looks to hit his 62nd home run and chases a batting title that would give him a potential Triple Crown.
The Twins, meanwhile, will clean out their lockers on Thursday and go home for the winter, and if someone isn’t 100 percent, Baldelli isn’t going to push things.
"Right now, he's physically not in as even as good of shape as he's been much of the last month or so," Baldelli said.
"We're just kind of boiling it down to simple things: Can he score on a base hit right now if he's on second base? The answer is, I don't think so. I don't think he could go hard and score on a base hit. I think he's pretty close to having to go base to base, which I don't think is reasonable to kind of force him into dealing with."
Baldelli continued by saying that “if I could reasonably think he could go out and play first or DH today, he would be in the lineup,” so don’t expect Arraez to play much if at all over the Twins’ last two games against the White Sox.
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Given the Yankees’ days off after Wednesday, Judge was likely to play two if not all three of the remaining games in Texas – he was the DH for Game 1 of Tuesday’s doubleheader – and to catch Arraez (who is technically at .315498 with a 171-for-542 line), Judge would have to hit above .500 over his final three games – for example, the math of him going 7-for-12 gets him to .3165, assuming he plays all three games.
Rangers GM Chris Young did say Monday he instructed Texas pitchers to go right after Judge, which they did on Monday; that continued on Tuesday, as Judge grounded out on a first-pitch fastball in the zone, making it even harder for him to get to that 7-for-12 mark.
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