New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge is heading back to the injured list for the second time this season, and the timing could not be worse. The three-time American League MVP will miss the rest of the regular season, or close to it, with a right calf strain, the Yankees announced Friday — just as New York enters the stretch run trailing the Tampa Bay Rays by five games in the American League East, according to ESPN.

Judge exited Wednesday's 13-inning loss to the Minnesota Twins in the sixth inning after feeling tightness in his lower right leg, later saying he tried to play through it because "these games are important." An MRI on Thursday in Phoenix confirmed the strain, and New York made the 10-day injured list move official, backdated to Thursday — a technicality that keeps alive a slim chance he returns for the regular-season finale on September 27 against Baltimore, per MLB.com.

Manager Aaron Boone would not commit to anything firmer. Judge will sit out this weekend's series against Arizona and, far more painfully for the Yankees, a four-game showdown with the division-leading Rays at Yankee Stadium next week.

A brutal second blow

It's a cruel turn for a player who had only just gotten back on the field. Judge missed roughly three months, from late April through early September, with a fractured right rib suffered in Houston, and had played just seven games since his September 8 return. In that stretch he went 4 for 26 with 13 strikeouts, still visibly hunting for his timing. For the season he's hitting .241 with 18 home runs, 41 RBIs and a .511 slugging percentage in 66 games — MVP-caliber production even in a year gutted by injury, as detailed by the Boston Globe.

"I don't have a timeline on him. I'm not going to predict anything." — Yankees manager Aaron Boone, on whether Judge returns before October

Teammate Cody Bellinger was more direct about the hole left in the lineup. "It hurts. We all know he's the best hitter in the game," Bellinger said, per NBC Sports, before adding he's confident the roster has enough talent to keep competing without him.

The Yankees have leaned on Judge all year to paper over absences elsewhere on the roster, and now they must try to hold off Tampa Bay without their best hitter for what could be the rest of the schedule. New York still holds a wild card spot, but every game of next week's Rays series carries outsized weight with its captain unavailable. The earliest realistic sighting of Judge in pinstripes again is the regular-season finale — and even that looks more like a hope than a plan. For a Yankees team now watching its franchise cornerstone go down twice in one summer, the next ten days will decide whether this injury costs them a division, or just a handful of meaningless at-bats before October.