Aaron Judge gets real about DJ LeMahieu’s ‘tough’ Yankees release
From an on-field performance standpoint, the Yankees designating DJ LeMahieu for assignment on Wednesday had become inevitable.
But for the captain who knew LeMahieu better than anyone else in the clubhouse, and was around for his best moments in pinstripes, the transaction carried some more weight than just the $22 million the Yankees decided to eat to let the veteran infielder go.
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“It wasn’t great, especially what DJ’s meant to this team and what he’s meant to me also as a player,” Judge said Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. “I’ve hit behind him for so many years. A lot of those playoff runs we went on from ’19 on, we’re not getting there without DJ. Kind of seeing how this played out, it’s tough. But I’m wishing him the best. He’s meant a lot to this team, a lot to us in this clubhouse, the fanbase.”
LeMahieu’s last few years were derailed by a series of injuries, sapping the former two-time batting champion of his production and robbing him of the opportunity to take the field on a daily basis like he had for most of his career.
The soon-to-be 37-year-old was soft-spoken, but he made it known this spring just how much it was killing him to not be able to be out there with his teammates as his body betrayed him.
Judge could sense it, too.
“Baseball is DJ’s life,” Judge said. “That’s all he talked about, that’s all he wanted to talk about, that’s all he knew. All the way back from his days playing at LSU, he’s a gamer. He wore it on his jersey. The amount of times I’d see him come in here and his jersey’s completely dirty from diving, sliding all over the field.
“The injuries definitely bothered him, just because he wanted to be out there and he wanted to perform. He wanted to be there for the team, be there for all of us. When he couldn’t physically do that, that definitely hurt him. Because he cared about the team. He hated missing games, hated not being there for us.
“It’s just tough how it ended, but we’re definitely going to miss him here.”
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