Yankees’ Aaron Judge activated from DL, but limited | What it means

Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge hasn’t played since suffering a fractured wrist when he was hit by a pitch on July 26.

NEW YORK — Yankees manager Aaron Boone began his Friday pre-game news conference with a very surprising announcement.

Borderline shocking.

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Right fielder Aaron Judge is off the disabled list and will be available to play Friday night when the Yankees begin a weekend series at Yankee Stadium against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Before you get too excited about Judge finally being over a chip fracture to his right wrist that took a lot longer than expected to heal, this isn’t a full-fledged return quite yet.

Because Judge hasn’t faced any kind of pitching since July 26, he’ll only be available to pinch-run or play an inning or two of defense this weekend and perhaps into next week.

“We will not use him as a hitter yet,” Boone said. “It’s just defense, baserunning. … If the opportunity presents itself just to kind of help finish off his rehab a little bit and if we can speed up the process a little bit.

“We feel like with the roster expansion, it makes some sense to have him available if there’s a spot where we can get him in to run the bases or play some defense. He’s certainly ready to do that. He continues to do well, so we’re getting excited with where he’s at.”

Judge has been taking batting practice for a few days and looking very good doing so, but he won’t start a game or be available to pinch-hit until he goes through a couple more steps of rehabbing.’

“Right now I think it’s just building up that stamina and building up the amount of reps because if anyone is watching BP, it’s pretty electric right now,” Boone said. “It’s coming off like Aaron Judge.

“(But) it’s been a couple months almost and he hasn’t swung the bat, so getting those repeated reps where he’s able to build up the volume … then he’ll probably see some stuff off of the velocity machine and start to really see some velocity and then we’ll get some pitchers to be able to throw to him and then we go.”

Boone wouldn’t speculate when Judge could be ready to start a game, but the game plan appears to have him feeling good at the plate by the start of postseason play.

The Yankees have 16 regular season games remaining before they likely play the Oakland Athletics in the American League Wild Card Game on Tuesday, Oct. 2.

“It’s about hopefully getting him enough at-bats to where we can kind of knock off some of that rust and hopefully the timing comes back sooner rather than later and as we head into the final week and into October,” Boone said.

Meantime, No. 99 will in uniform waiting for a chance to impact the Yankees with his glove, arm or legs.

“If we can get him into a game to where he can play an inning in the field to kind of get in that game mode again a little bit, I think there’s some value in that,” Boone said.

When Judge went on the DL on July 28, the Yankees announced that they expected the recovery process would last just three weeks.

They were off by a month, as Friday marked seven weeks and a day since Judge was drilled in the wrist by Kansas City Royals pitcher Jakob Junis in the first inning of a game at Yankee Stadium on July 26.

Judge still was in pain as of late week and didn’t start hitting until last weekend in Seattle.

“He’s doing great,” Boone said. “We’ll continue to ramp up from a hitting standpoint this weekend. We’ve got a plan in place over the next few days that we’ll activate as we get closer too. He’s getting real close to being an option for us.”

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