Yankees' Aaron Judge Suffers Hand Injury After Getting Hit by Pitch; X-Rays Negative

New York Yankees superstar slugger Aaron Judge was struck in the left hand by a pitch during the third inning of Wednesday's game against the Baltimore Orioles and had to leave the contest.

The Yankees announced that Judge "will undergo imaging at NewYork-Presbyterian this evening and is expected to be seen by Yankees head team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad."

Judge later said that X-rays and CT scans came back negative, according to The Athletic's Brendan Kuty.

Any injury to the 32-year-old—the early front-runner for the AL MVP award—would be an enormous blow for a Yankees team that sits atop the MLB standings this season.

There isn't a position player in baseball having a better season than Judge, who leads all of baseball in home runs (26), RBI (64) and OPS (1.110). He's tied for third in runs (56) and is tied for 12th in batting average (.299).

He has an absolutely absurd 1.439 OPS in his past 40 games.

The Yankees are an MLB-best 50-24 this season, in large part due to the epic seasons from Judge and Juan Soto and the surprising brilliance of a starting pitching staff that has been without Gerrit Cole up to this point.

"I'm trying not to take that for granted," manager Aaron Boone told reporters regarding Judge's epic hot streak, "but I mean, it's a lot of fun to witness and to watch what he's doing on a nightly basis. It's pretty special."

Baseball has seen some of its top stars deal with major injuries this year. Defending NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. is out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Mookie Betts is out for up to two months with a fractured left hand, the potential timetable Judge would be facing if he suffered a similar injury.

And a number of star pitchers, including Cole, have been sidelined.

Judge, at this point, may be the biggest star of them all. Yankees fans will be waiting nervously for the results of his imaging.