Yankees GM Brian Cashman acknowledges the team's lack of injury transparency

Like many of the New York Yankees' previous seasons, 2026 was filled with injuries. Many of those injuries involved star players like Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Gerrit Cole.  

Eight of the nine batters in the Opening Day lineup, plus starter Max Fried, spent time on the IL this season. Injuries are part of sports, and it makes matters worse when they happen to the best players.

But the injuries themselves are not the issue; rather, it's how they were handled across the season. Throughout the season, injury updates were difficult to come by. 

This frustrated fans and the media and was something general manager Brian Cashman acknowledged at the 2026 GM Meetings. 

The Aaron Judge injury

On Tuesday, Cashman acknowledged the confusion that involved Judge's first injury in 2026. The three-time MVP suffered a stress fracture to one of his ribs that was believed to have happened after a diving attempt in Houston on April 26.  

It wasn't until over a month later, on June 2, that Judge was officially placed on the IL. Throughout the next three months, until Judge returned on Sept. 7, updates were few and far between. 

"Externally, how we communicate with you guys, I think we'll be better at that as we move forward than we were as this 2026 campaign went. I don't think that'll be as much of an issue as we move forward," Cashman said. 

For fans and the media, that is all they could ask for. Giving more information about the recovery time of the players doesn't affect the recovery time itself. Rather, the insight allows fans to worry less and the media to spend time asking other questions. 

But this brings another question: Why did it take the Yankees and Judge so long to address his injury? 

Playing through the pain

Most athletes will tell you they try to play through the pain and injuries. 

Despite that, Judge tried playing through his injury for 32 games. In that time, he hit .263 with a .901 OPS along with eight home runs and 21 RBI. Maybe at the time, the injury was something to play through; that was until the 11 games leading up to his IL stint. In those 11 games, Judge hit .171 with a .564 OPS and only one home run. 

If Judge was taken out of action earlier, his recovery could have looked the same, or he could have had a much faster recovery time. Hindsight can't fix the past, but this has been an issue in the past. 

In 2023, Anthony Rizzo suffered a concussion after a collision at first. After clearing concussion protocol, Rizzo continued to play despite feelings of tiredness and fogginess. 

In 2014, the Yankees opted for pitcher Masahiro Tanaka to receive a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection and six weeks off to help a partially torn UCL rather than receive surgery.

In 2019, Luis Severino was shut down for two weeks with inflammation in his right rotator cuff. When ramping up in April, he strained his lat muscle. In June, Severino was ramping up once again, but experienced more soreness that kept him out of action until mid-September because he and the team decided against a follow-up MRI, which would have revealed he wasn't fully healthy. 

Cashman stated that things will be different with how injury information is handled, but maybe the Yankees need to take a look at how the injuries themselves are handled.