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By Jackson Roberts
Contributing Sports Writer
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The Toronto Blue Jays were not shy about testing Aaron Judge's arm in right field on Friday night.
Judge was playing his first game in the field since July 25, after which he went on the 10-day injured list with a flexor strain in his throwing elbow. It would have been a major victory for the Yankees for their superstar to solidify their outfield defense, but first, he'd have to prove he was healthy.
In the very first inning, Nathan Lukes looped a single to right field with the bases loaded and two outs. Judge came charging at the ball as Daulton Varsho rounded third base. But rather than throwing a signature laser toward the plate, Judge merely flipped the ball to second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr.
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It was an utterly perplexing moment, and manager Aaron Boone's comments after the game did nothing to assuage the concerns of Yankees fans who were worried about the team rushing Judge back to the outfield too quickly.
The Athletic's Chris Kirschner reported having the following exchange with Boone after the Yankees' eventual 7-1 loss in the series opener.
Kirschner**:** "In the first inning, on the Lukes single, Judge got the ball before Varsho touched third base. Is he not able to make that throw? What happened there?"
Boone**:** "He just got to it and he scored."
Kirschner**:** "So, is he not able to make that throw?"
Boone**:** "He's in position to make the throw."
Kirschner**:** "So, why didn't he?"
Boone**:** "We're handling it how we handle it, OK?"
For the second game of the series, the Yankees evidently decided "handling it" meant putting Judge back at designated hitter, where he'd been for the previous 27 games. Cody Bellinger will play right field.
Meanwhile, Boone tried a different tack on Saturday morning, seemingly telling the media before the game that Judge's throw to Chisholm wasn't an indicator that he couldn't cut it loose yet,
"The last couple of weeks — if you guys have been paying attention — we worked on different creative cuts and things like that," Boone said, per Kirschner. "We'll continue to do that and hopefully kind of continue to evolve it as we go."
Boone can try to pull the wool over our eyes all he wants, but it was painfully obvious that Judge either didn't trust himself to throw anywhere near maximum effort, or had explicitly been told not to. Because a fully healthy right fielder would have come up gunning on that play 10 times out of 10.
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