It's been a long, quiet summer in the Bronx without the captain in the lineup. Judge has been out since May 31 with a stress fracture in his rib, and for a stretch there was no real timeline attached to any of it — just vague updates about progress and workload. That's starting to change.
Aaron Judge is nearing a return... 👀 "It seems that he's going to be back on the next homestand if everything goes smoothly," says @Ken_Rosenthal.
Rosenthal's report lines up with what's been trickling out of Yankees camp. The team's next homestand runs Sept. 8-13 against the Rockies and Mets, and manager Aaron Boone has already floated that date publicly, saying of a possible Sept. 8 return, "I think it's possible," while stopping short of locking anything in.
Judge was placed on the 60-day IL last week, which is as much paperwork as anything at this point — he's been dealing with rib pain for over a month before actually shutting it down in May. He's traveled with the team on its West Coast trip through the Angels and Padres series to keep ramping up baseball activities, and Boone has said the club feels good about where he's at physically.
The bigger question isn't health, it's rust. Judge was hitting.248 with 17 homers and 38 RBIs before the injury derailed his season, numbers that look pedestrian by his own absurd standard but still would've had him in the middle of the AL MVP conversation had he stayed on the field. Boone's been careful to frame this as a workload build-up rather than a countdown, which tracks — nobody wants a repeat scan revealing the fracture isn't fully healed.
Still, if he does trot out at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 8, it's a massive jolt for a lineup that's had to survive without its best hitter for over 3 months heading into a playoff push. The Yankees have quietly held up, but adding Judge back for the stretch run changes the entire complexion of the lineup — and gives them a version of themselves they haven't had since May.
For now it's still "in play," not confirmed. But between Rosenthal's report and Boone's own comments, the pieces are lining up toward a real return date for the first time all summer.