Yankees: Aaron Judge Takes Big Step in Recovery From Rib Injury

Rejoice, Yankee fans! Aaron Judge was finally seen swinging a bat.

Never did we think anybody would be this elated to hear a baseball player doing the most basic baseball activity, but such is the case with Aaron Judge and all of the injury issues he’s dealt with since the start for the 2018 season.

If not for the coronavirus pandemic, Judge still wouldn’t have taken the field in 2020, meaning he would’ve had yet another significantly shortened campaign. The star slugger has played in just 214 games over the past two years due to a slew of ailments, and this time fans were beyond frustrated when he had a collapsed lung and fractured rib go undiagnosed.

But we recently touched upon the fact Judge is expected to be ready for Opening Day on July 23 or 24, though we didn’t know much about his progress. Well, apparently he was swinging a bat as early as last week — something he’s been notably held back from as the Yankees remain cautious with his recovery.

According to this new report from Erik Boland, Judge “didn’t seem to hold anything back,” which couldn’t be better timing. The season is now slated to start within a month and the Yankees will need all of their slugging power with just 60 games on the docket.

The Bombers endured a nightmare injury-filled season in 2019 that certainly kept them from reaching the World Series despite the fact they managed to win 103 games thanks to admirable performances from backups. While that was nothing short of amazing, the team cannot afford such problems this time around.

But now, with Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks on track to be ready for Opening Day, the stars seem to be aligning for the Yankees. They’ll be without some key players like Luis Severino and Domingo German, but at this point that’s just a drop in the bucket for what this team has dealt with the for the past two years.