Aaron Judge hasn't been quite the same guy this season, and now we might know why.
Judge was out of the lineup for Tuesday's game against the Guardians, a curious sight coming off an off day Monday. And then the Yankees confirmed that Judge has been dealing with soreness in his right shoulder. Tests revealed a bone bruise in his upper right rib cage. Tuesday was the first game all season Judge has missed, and while manager Aaron Boone told reporters before the game he thinks Judge can be considered day to day right now, he is expected to see a specialist Wednesday.
It's not clear when Judge suffered the injury, but Boone acknowledged it had been bothering him for a few weeks before becoming a more noticeable issue during last weekend's series against the Athletics. At this point, we have no idea how serious the injury is for Judge, but it might help explain why he just put up an .805 OPS in May. An .805 OPS for most hitters is a pretty good month; for Judge, it represents his worst month since April of 2024.
And you can see it in his underlying numbers, with his expected wOBA over the past 100 plate appearances falling to .358. His average exit velocity, bad speed, and expected stats are all excellent – borderline elite – for the season, but they're also clearly worse than they were a year ago, as are most of his plate discipline metrics. Before we learned about the shoulder injury, it was easy enough to write off as just a bad month, especially with how good he was in April. But now that we know he's dealing with an injury, the situation is a little cloudier.
If this ends up being a relatively minor issue, Judge would still be the top player in Fantasy the rest of the way for me. But shoulder injuries are often scary, and even if this doesn't end up requiring an IL stint, you'd hate to see the issue linger and limit him. Judge can still be a must-start player even at less than 100%, but it would be a bummer if this injury kept Judge from being the best version of himself possible.
For now, we're still waiting for more details, but suddenly, assuming Judge will just be himself moving forward isn't quite as safe as it once was.
Here's what else you need to know about from Tuesday's action around MLB:
Wednesday's top waiver-wire targets
Here's who we're looking to add coming out of Tuesday's action:
Shane Baz, SP, Orioles (73%) – We're starting to see a different approach from Baz lately, who has begun to prioritize his sinker and curveball vs. right-handed hitters over the past three starts, which have also been his best starts of the season. Tuesday against the Red Sox, he struck out six over seven innings of work, giving him four quality starts in a row with 25 strikeouts in 27 innings of work in that span. You'd still like to see him missing more bats, especially with still just decent control overall. But this is clearly the best we've seen from Baz all season, and the first time he has at least looked useful. I don't expect Baz to be a must-start pitcher moving forward, but he does at least look useful here.
Gage Jump, SP, Athletics (36%) – I'd like to see Jump miss more bats, as he had just five swings and misses Tuesday against the Cubs. But I'm not going to turn my nose up at seven one-run innings in his second-ever MLB start, even against a Cubs team that has been mercurial lately. He struck out five and walked just one, and now has just two walks in 12 innings across his first two starts. Jump missed plenty of bats in the minors, and I still think he has the quality of stuff from the left side to rack up strikeouts, so I'm not too worried about that. There's plenty of upside here, and he already looks like he belongs. For a young pitcher, that's often the toughest part.
Dustin May, SP, Cardinals (43%) – May actually fell an out short of the quality start in this one, which makes it one of the worst starts he has had in the past two months. Which is mostly a sign of how well he is faring lately, with a 3.19 ERA and 1.11 WHIP over his past 10 starts. The control has improved, and while he'll never be a great strikeout pitcher, May does benefit from having a pretty strong defense behind him, an added boon for a guy who generally manages hard contact well. The lack of strikeout upside most of the time limits the upside, but with the way May is pitching, his roster rate seems too low.
Royce Lewis, 3B, Twins (26%) – I get the feeling his stint in the minors isn't going to last long. Lewis earned a demotion back to Triple-A in mid-May, and he's responded about as well as you could possibly hope since, as he hit his sixth and seventh homers in his 10th game Tuesday. He has multiple hits in five of those 10 games with a 94.1 mph average exit velocity, which is exactly what you'd expect an MLB star to do against Triple-A hitting. Lewis hasn't hit like a star in the majors since the first half of the 2024 season, and he might never do so again, but he's at least showing he might still be capable of that. I bet we see him back in the majors within the next week.
Luke Keaschall, 2B, Twins (82%) – Another guy who was supposed to be a key part of the Twins lineup this season, Keaschall looked like he might be heading for a demotion of his own for a while there. And he's still hitting just .249/.323/.322 for the season, even after his two-hit game Tuesday. But he's starting to turn things around lately, hitting .364 in his past nine games. He still isn't doing a ton else (just two doubles and no homers in that stretch), but he still makes a ton of contact and has plenty of stolen base upside, so I still think there's room for Keaschall to be a viable starting middle infielder if you're looking for some upside on the wire.
Endy Rodriguez, C, Pirates (4%) – Rodriguez was once a top prospect, but he was limited to just 36 games across the 2024 and 2025 seasons by elbow injuries and hasn't looked like an impact player in a pretty long time as a result. But injuries have forced him into the lineup for the Pirates, and he's actually starting to look like he belongs. He went 2 for 4 with a homer Tuesday, his first of the season (and he added a steal), and he now has a stunning .500 on-base percentage in 11 games with the Pirates on the season. Tuesday was the first time Rodriguez has put the ball over the fence, and it's hard to sustain the kind of walk rate Rodriguez is right now without much of a power threat backing it up. But the Pirates have gotten so little from their catchers this season that Rodriguez might actually have a chance to play his way into a real role moving forward, and maybe he's emerging as a post-hype sleeper. A name to know for very deep two-catcher leagues for now.
Tuesday's standouts
Cam Schlittler, Yankees vs. CLE: 4.1 IP, 5 H, 4 ER, 0 BB, 3 K – Schlittler has been so good this season that it doesn't make much sense to worry about one start. So I'll just note that he did see a somewhat alarming drop in fastball velocity late in this start, sitting around 95-96 mph in the fifth inning, down 2-3 mph from where he has been for the season. It's a small sample size, so I don't want to alarm anyone, but it's the kind of thing that could be important for Schlittler if it ends up proving sustainable, given how much more fastball-reliant he is than most pitchers, throwing one of his three variants 85% of the time on the season.
Kevin Gausman, Blue Jays @ATL: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 8 K – It's kind of been all downhill for Gausman ever since he struck out 11 and 10 in his first two starts of the season. Take those two out, and he's down to 7.6 K/9 with a 3.86 ERA in 11 starts since. That isn't a terrible outcome, but it's more of a mid-rotation arm for Fantasy than a high-end one. The underlying metrics for Gausman are still pretty strong, and his whiff rate hasn't really fallen much from last season, so there's still plenty of reason to think he can still be effective moving forward, but it's been a bit underwhelming since that fast start.
Kyle Harrison, Brewers vs. SF: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 12 K – There have been some pretty big breakouts among starting pitchers this season, and Harrison is up there with the best of them. This was his third start of at least 11 strikeouts on the season, matching Jacob Misiorowski for the most such starts of any pitcher. Harrison just continues to dominate with his fastball, which was good for 13 whiffs and a 39% CSW rate in this start, elite numbers. The slurve was also good for six whiffs, and that's pretty much all he needs most days – his new-ish changeup is still more of a show-me pitch than something he really leans on heavily. But with his four-seamer coming in around 95 mph with 15 inches of induced vertical break and 13 inches of horizontal break to the arm side, he has one of the most unique fastballs in baseball, and he's overpowering hitters with it. It's still a limited arsenal and a relatively small sample size, but Harrison is doing everything you want to see right now. I don't see any reason he shouldn't be at least ranked as a top-30 pitcher, and you can make the case he doesn't belong much behind the likes of Chase Burns and Nolan McLean among young pitchers.
Bryce Elder, Braves vs. TOR: 6.2 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 6 K – I'm still not quite sure how Elder is getting away with this. He did throw his slider more in this one after weirdly fading it in his previous start (where he struggled), and that's usually a good idea. Of course, why his slider has gone from a .317 xwOBA allowed last season to a .254 mark this season continues to be tough to make sense of, and he's seen similar improvements across the entire arsenal. Maybe his new cutter is helping everything else play up despite middling results on its own, but that's just a theory. All told, you have Elder putting up largely similar strikeout and walk rates as last season, but with dramatic improvements in quality of contact allowed, and quality of contact takes a lot longer to stabilize for pitchers, which makes it harder to trust. He keeps getting away with it, but I still view Elder as a pretty clear sell-high candidate right now.
Davis Martin, White Sox @MIN: 4.2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 2 K – A big part of Martin's unexpected success this season has been the growth of his slider, which entered this start with a 52% whiff rate, one of the best marks in baseball. That has been disproportionately responsible for the rise in his strikeout rate, and for a second start in a row, he barely missed any bats with it. It didn't really limit him in his previous outing, but it was an issue in this start, and that definitely raises some alarm bells here. Martin has a two-month track record of being anything more than a streamer for Fantasy, so any regression is going to put him under a microscope. His numbers are still excellent, with the peripherals to match it, but like Elder, Martin still strikes me as someone you should be trying to trade before the bubble bursts.
Bubba Chandler, Pirates @HOU: 5 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 3 K – Here's what I still don't understand: Chandler has just a 40% strikeout rate after he gets to two strikes, which is actually a below-average rate among all pitchers. How is that possible for a pitcher with stuff like Chandler's? He's still a work in progress with his command and pitch selection, and at some point, I have to believe that's going to get better. The walk rate has at least been a bit better over the past five starts, though it's still pretty bad and remains an issue. I continue to believe Chandler will figure it out and turn into a must-start pitcher, but I wish there was any forward momentum I could point to here.
Noah Cameron, Royals @CIN: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K – Excellent start here for Cameron … who is still probably over-rostered at 76% right now. This is a two-start week for him, so that'll inflate the roster rate, but even then, Cameron just doesn't look like someone who needs to be treated as much more than a streamer. His 2.99 ERA last season came with an xERA north of 4.00, and with everything regressing across the board, I just don't see much reason to keep him outside of deeper leagues unless he builds on this start with another great one against the Twins later this week.
Aaron Nola, Phillies vs. SD: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 8 K – Nola's curveball remains a phenomenal pitch, and he used it a bunch in this one and got 11 whiffs with it. The problem is, well, the rest of the arsenal, at least typically – Tuesday, his velocity was up 1.7 mph on his sinker, and it works well for him to steal called strikes. If he can sustain the velocity jump, maybe Nola can continue to succeed, but I'm not overly optimistic about it at this point in his career. He still looks like a streamer despite a couple of good starts in a row here. I need to see a lot more than that to recommend adding Nola in the 28% of CBS Fantasy leagues where he isn't currently rostered.
Grayson Rodriguez, Angels vs. COL: 3.2 IP, 8 H, 8 ER, 3 BB, 3 K – I was willing to give Rodriguez a look when he returned from his elbow injury, and the good news is that the stuff still looks pretty good. But that's three pretty abysmal starts in four tries, this one against arguably the best matchup a pitcher can hope for. The defense didn't help him much, but that's likely to remain an issue moving forward for Rodriguez, so it's not like it makes much sense to give him a pass for that here. I can envision a world where Rodriguez makes some tweaks to his arsenal – maybe either or tweaking a pitch so his secondaries aren't all in the 81-84 mph range would be my suggestion – and finds a way to be effective. But he's a long way away from that right now.
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