Aaron Judge Returns, and the Yankees Skip the Minors

The New York Yankees activated from the 60-day injured list captain Aaron Judge on Monday night and will start him Tuesday against the Colorado Rockies, 99 days after his last game and with no minor league stop in between. New York is 81-62, four games behind the Tampa Bay Rays, with 19 games left in the regular season.

Judge, 34, has not played since May 31 because of a stress fracture in his first right rib. He took live batting practice Monday at Yankee Stadium, then got the roster spot. Manager Aaron Boone has already said the club may pull him after five, six, or seven innings, or give him a full game and then a day off.

Judge Will Skip the Minors Again

The three-time MVP told the club in August he did not need Somerset or Scranton to get ready, and he held that line through the West Coast trip. He ran the bases and took batting practice in San Diego last weekend. On Monday, an off day, he stood in against a pitcher throwing with intent, the last box Boone wanted checked.

He will play right field, not designated hitter. Ben Rice has the DH job. Luis García Jr., acquired from Washington at the deadline, is at first base. With Trent Grisham on the 10-day injured list with a Grade 2 right hamstring strain that could end his regular season, the first-choice outfield is Judge in right, Spencer Jones in center, and Cody Bellinger in left.

Maybe it’s playing a game, having an off day. Maybe it is playing 5, 6, 7 innings in a game and get him out. Those things are on the table.

Aaron Boone, Yankees manager, to reporters

Judge put the same case in plainer words on Aug. 27. If he says he is ready, he said, they are ready, because he is a position player who can take his swings in the cage and sit in the dugout for every pitch. He later boiled the rehab question down to one line: why waste at-bats?

The club made the corresponding 40-man move in a short note that also cut a pitching prospect.

Today, the Yankees made the following roster moves:
• Reinstated OF Aaron Judge (#99) from the 60-day injured list.
• Designated RHP Chase Hampton for assignment.

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 8, 2026

Tuesday’s starter on the other side is Colorado right-hander Gabriel Hughes, who is 0-6 with a 6.19 ERA. The Rockies are 55-88. Cam Schlittler, 12-6, is listed for New York. It is a soft landing on paper. Boone is still planning to yank his captain early if the rib asks for it.

The 2023 Return Hit Homers Before Average

Judge has taken this shortcut before. In July 2023 he came off a torn ligament in his right big toe without a proper rehab assignment, using two days of simulated work in Tampa as his tune-up. He called those sessions his rehab assignment, noting that a minor league game can refuse to give a hitter a pitch to drive or a fly ball to chase.

His first night back was a 1-0 loss in Baltimore. He went 0-for-1 with three walks as the designated hitter. Power arrived faster than the batting average. In his first 31 games he hit.223 with 12 home runs and a.928 OPS. From that activation through the end of the year he slashed.245/.408/.557. The full 2023 line, in 106 games, was.267/.406/.613 with 37 homers.

TWO RETURNS, TWO DIFFERENT BODIES

He is three years older now, and the rib kept him out longer than the toe. In 2019, after a strained left oblique, he did go to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for five games. That is the path he refused this time, with the calendar this short.

New York’s Lineup Sank to 29th in Average

The Yankees were 36-23 on the night Judge last played. They went 45-39 in the 84 games he missed, a.536 clip that kept them in the wild-card seat while the bats went quiet. Through May 31 they hit.243 with 86 home runs and a.770 OPS in 59 games. Without him they hit.227 with 107 homers and a.681 OPS.

That.227 average ranked 29th among 30 clubs, ahead of only Seattle at.225. The homer rate actually held up better than the average, 1.27 per game against 1.46 when he was in the lineup, which is why the hole shows up in on-base numbers more than in the long-ball column. Boone said the offense has had long stretches of struggle and that a big part of it is not having their guy, while adding that the bats had ticked up in recent weeks.

THE SPLIT WHILE HE WAS OUT

• Record: 45-39 in 84 games after a 36-23 start through May 31.
• Average:.227 as a team, 29th in the majors, with a.681 OPS after a.770 mark with him.
• Power: 107 home runs in those 84 games, down from 1.46 per game to 1.27.
• Wild card: still first in the American League wild-card row at 81-62, two games ahead of Boston.

Boston used Monday, while the Yankees sat, to beat the Los Angeles Angels 5-2 and win a fifth straight game, pulling the Red Sox to 80-65. New York already owns the season-series tiebreaker after taking three of four from Boston on Aug. 28-30. A two-game lead with 19 to play is not the cushion it was a week ago.

The higher wild-card seed hosts every game of a best-of-three Wild Card Series, which is scheduled to start Sept. 29. That is the practical prize in this skip-rehab bet, even before anyone talks about catching Tampa Bay.

What His Last Two Weeks Before the IL Looked Like

The wager is not only about rust from 99 idle days. Judge was already fading when the club shut him down. His slash line of.248/.375/.533 in 59 games, with 17 home runs and 38 RBIs, is a 150 OPS+ season that would look fine on most rosters and looks thin on his. A year ago he hit.331 with 53 homers and 114 RBIs in 152 games and won the batting title. He is a three-time MVP, in 2022, 2024, and 2025, on a nine-year, $360 million deal that runs through 2031.

Over his last 15 games he hit.193/.288/.298 with one home run in 57 at-bats. The only homer in his final 18 games was a two-run, game-ending drive against Tampa Bay on May 24 that snapped an 11-game stretch without an RBI, the longest of his career. He traced the rib to a diving catch in Houston on April 26, when he tried to avoid second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. He then played 31 more games, batting.263 with seven homers, before the club stopped him.

HOW THE RIB TOOK THE SEASON

1. April 26, 2026: Dives on a catch in Houston and later says that is when the first right rib broke.
2. May 24, 2026: Hits a walk-off two-run homer to beat Tampa Bay 2-0, his last long ball before the injured list.
3. May 31, 2026: Plays his last game, a 13-8 win at the Athletics, going 1-for-4 with an RBI.
4. June 5, 2026: Hits the 10-day injured list, retroactive to June 2, then moves to the 60-day list on July 18 with a right rib stress fracture.
5. Sept. 7, 2026: Faces live pitching at Yankee Stadium in the afternoon and is activated that night.

He said over the weekend that he wanted to be back June 1, and that did not happen. He will now try to face live pitching at Yankee Stadium in games that count, with Boone talking about an innings cap. Left-hander Max Fried called him the best player in baseball and said the club is a better team when he is in the lineup, which is the entire case for skipping Somerset.

A 25-Year-Old Pitcher Comes Off the 40-Man

To open the 40-man roster, New York designated right-hander Chase Hampton for assignment. Hampton, 25, was a sixth-round pick out of Texas Tech in 2022, 190th overall, signed for $497,500, and ranked No. 18 in the system on the MLB Pipeline list. He missed all of 2025 after Tommy John surgery. This year he has a 9.59 ERA in 11 Double-A starts for Somerset, 35.2 innings, 37 strikeouts, and a 2.13 WHIP. Across 17 minor league games he is 0-6 with an 8.18 ERA in 55 innings.

Sunday’s 4-3 loss in San Diego had already sent right-hander Elmer Rodríguez to Triple-A, clearing the active roster. Clarke Schmidt is on a rehab assignment at Scranton. Giancarlo Stanton is still working back from a left calf strain and has not been ruled out for the year. The 40-man squeeze is real even after a lost Hampton season, because Judge’s return is only the first of the September additions the club still wants to make.

Hampton can be claimed in the next few days. A club that likes a mid-90s fastball and a 25-year-old arm after a second elbow chapter might take the shot. For the Yankees, the calculation was simple: 19 games, a four-game hole, and the captain saying he does not need the minors.

Nineteen Games Left, Four of Them Against Tampa Bay

The Rays sit at 85-58 and own a 6-3 edge in the season series, with four games still to play. Those four are a doubleheader on Sept. 22 in the Bronx, then games on Sept. 23 and 24. Tampa Bay holds the tiebreaker unless New York sweeps that set. The Wild Card Series begins Sept. 29. The regular season ends Sept. 27.

THE STRETCH ON THE BOARD

• Sept. 8-10: Home against the Rockies (55-88), three night games starting Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. ET.
• Sept. 11-13: Home against the Mets, a three-game Subway set with two afternoon games on the weekend.
• Sept. 14-16: At the Minnesota Twins, who sit well outside the last wild-card slot.
• Sept. 18-20: At the Arizona Diamondbacks, then four against the Rays in the Bronx and three against Baltimore to close.

That is 12 games against clubs under.500 before the Rays arrive, which is why the club is willing to let a 34-year-old find his timing in the majors instead of in Pennsylvania. Boston still has the Angels and then Kansas City at Fenway this week. The Red Sox are 34-17 since the All-Star break. New York’s pitching has carried a mediocre lineup this far. Judge’s job, in the plan Boone sketched, is to take what the rib will give him for two and a half weeks and be closer to the 2025 version by the time the bracket is set.

He was at the U.S. Open on Monday night when the transaction posted, watching Coco Gauff. Tuesday he is due in right field in the Bronx, 99 days after the last box score, with no Triple-A at-bats on the ledger and a four-game climb staring at him from Tampa Bay.