Baseball’s most dangerous hitter, Aaron Judge, made his return to the New York Yankees lineup on Tuesday night after missing more than three months with a stress fracture in his rib.

The injury has derailed the vast majority of the superstar outfielder’s 2026 regular season, though if it were up to Judge himself, he would have attempted to return and play months earlier.

Judge revealed as much during his postgame interview:

“I wanted to come back a couple months ago, but I’m not a trainer, I’m not doing that, so I gotta check whatever boxes they got. A box they wanted me to check was live hitting, so I said, ‘Perfect, we’ll do that on the off day so I can play… I get paid to do this, so I gotta go do it. That’s the end of it. I get paid to go out there and give my best to the New York Yankees and these fans, so we get paid to win games, so we’ve got to keep going out there and winning games,”

The 34-year-old Judge has hit .244 with 17 home runs and 38 RBI across just 60 games played so far this season. He went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts and a flyout to right-center field in his first game back in action.

While Judge may believe he could have and wanted to return much sooner than he did, it’s probably in the best interest of both him and the Yankees that he took more time off to truly heal the injury.

New York managed to stay afloat, going 45-39 during his absence, and they now have a month to get Judge back up to speed while they look to track down the AL East-leading Tampa Bay Rays as they push for the postseason.

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