Yankees activate Aaron Judge, bat him second as the DH

BALTIMORE — For Aaron Judge, it was time.

Simple as that.  

The right big toe sprain he suffered June 3 had healed about as well as it was going to, with an MRI taken earlier in the week saying as much.

And with the fading Yankees desperate for his return, the pair of simulated games he played Tuesday and Wednesday in Tampa at the club’s minor-league complex told him everything he needed to know.

“It’s feeling all right, feeling good,” Judge, activated from the injured list earlier Friday, said before batting second as the designated hitter in the start of a big series against the AL East-leading Orioles at Camden Yards. “It’s not 100%, and I don’t think it will be 100% until the end of the year. Our biggest goal was getting to a point where I could play, I could tolerate it and I could go out there and play back-to-back games, play in the field, run the bases, do all that. And we got to that point.”

Aaron Boone said a final decision on activating Judge wasn’t made until about 2 p.m. Friday, and while that technically might have been true, the organization by Wednesday was leaning strongly in that direction. The evidence? Judge packed his things and flew back to New York after  Wednesday's simulated game.

Judge did not play in any rehab games in the minor leagues, the typical step taken by a player out as long as he was. But he and the Yankees preferred the controlled environment the simulated games against some of the club’s minor-leaguers offered.

“That was my rehab assignment,” Judge said. “What better rehab assignment than getting a chance to go down there and get five, six, seven at-bats, kind of control the setting a little bit where I could say, ‘Hey, hit me some balls in the gap, hit me some line drives with some guys on base, do scenarios hitting where you’ve got guys on base and try to replicate what’s going to happen up here. Sometimes I’ve done rehab assignments where I might not see a pitch to hit all game or might not get a fly ball all game. In this situation we were able to control it a little bit and stress it [the toe] and see where we’re at.”

Reigning American League MVP Judge, who was hitting .291 with 19 homers, 40 RBIs and a 1.078 OPS in 49 games at the time of the injury, insisted he did not rush back and that he is not worried about coming back too soon and putting the toe at risk.

“That was always our biggest concern is I didn’t want to come back and make it worse and then it’s something that leads into the next year,” Judge said. “We’re at a point where, talking with a couple of doctors, the ligament’s stable. The last couple MRIs didn’t really show much healing but this one [earlier in the week] did, so we’re in a good spot right now.”

Judge’s team, on the other hand, has been in better spots.

The Yankees were 35-25 when he got hurt (30-19 when he was in the lineup). They went 19-23 without their captain and their offense was the main culprit as they had a  .220/.296/.374 slash line in that stretch. As a result, the Yankees entered Friday in last place in the division, eight games behind Baltimore and 2½ games behind the Blue Jays for the AL’s third and final wild-card spot.

“Losing him, I think everybody saw what happened,” Isiah Kiner-Falefa said after Wednesday night’s victory over the Mets when word circulated throughout the clubhouse that Judge was likely to be returning Friday. “That says it all, honestly.”

The Yankees will be prudently cautious with Judge, who Boone said likely will play in two of the three games in Baltimore. He might play the field in his second game.

“It’s Aaron Judge, so you probably always have high expectations,” Boone said before Friday’s game. “I think the biggest thing is making sure we’re circling up each night on how’s he doing, how’s he responding . . . as much as there’s urgency for us, we’ve got to be smart about that.”