Aaron Judge mentioned the possibility of offseason toe surgery before Tuesday’s win over the Orioles, and as a pro athlete who dealt with a similar big toe injury during his playing career, Tiki Barber says he is now very concerned about Judge’s future, both in the short and long term.
“They’re in trouble with Aaron Judge,” Tiki said. “When you start talking with surgery on the toe, its not gonna heal on its own or start to feel better…when the conversation turns to surgery on a toe, you worry.
“I’ve had this injury before...that toe, to this day, still bothers me. I have a big lump on the side because it calcified and became basically bone…baseball is a precision sport, and when you’re 270 pounds like Aaron Judge is, it is not easy to just push through the pain.”
Judge himself mentioned to reporters that the toe is something he could feel for the rest of his career, like he does other injuries (like his dislocated pinky, though that didn’t stop him from hitting 62 home runs last season). But the toe is a different animal, and Tiki isn’t sure if that means Judge can ever return to the level he was at in 2022, especially in the field.
“When I start hearing Aaron Judge and this Yankees organization think and start talking about surgery on a big toe, I start to worry, because you don’t heal from big toe injuries, and if you’re big like Aaron Judge, and you have this massive weight shift that goes onto his back foot, just to swing the bat, you worry that it’s never going to get right,” Tiki said. “You think that he’s going to be compromised…I think he’s still going to be a massive masher of home runs, hit 40 home runs every year…and all those things that have made him great, but this idea that he’s going to be a dynamic right fielder and baserunner is compromised, because they’re talking about surgery…it’s something that can change Aaron Judge’s career forever.”
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