Aaron Judge set for next step in lengthy Yankees injury recovery

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Re-imaging for Aaron Judge is finally on the horizon.

The Yankees captain is set to undergo another round of imaging during the All-Star break next week, GM Brian Cashman said Thursday at Tropicana Field, to determine if there has been enough healing in his right rib stress fracture to clear him to begin working towards a return to play.

Cashman indicated that the Yankees do not expect the injury to be fully healed — Judge will be about six weeks out from the initial diagnosis — but that if there is enough improvement, the back-to-back AL MVP could start adding more activity to his workload after mostly being shut down.

Even if that is the case, Judge would then need weeks to ramp back up before he could rejoin the Yankees, with a return in August looking like the best-case scenario at this rate.

“I think we’re anticipating and hopeful that it’s showing the healing process,” Cashman said. “The timeframe, regardless of what the findings are going to show, is going to be coming from our medical team. I haven’t even bothered to ask that question, because his current condition restricts him in a lot of different ways. He can’t do a lot of things in the upper body that puts any stress on his rib cage.”

The Yankees have sorely missed Judge. They withstood his absence well for the first few weeks of June before falling into a 5-15 spiral that they brought into Thursday’s series finale against the Rays, trailing them by five games in the AL East.