Yankees activate Aaron Judge, place Oswald Peraza on injured list

He’s back!

When the Yankees’ placed Aaron Judge on the 10-day injured list back on May 1st, the move was made retroactive to April 28th, which was the first game he missed while dealing with a hip strain. The speculation in recent days was that the Yankees were set to activate him as soon as he was eligible to come off the IL, and sure enough, they did that this afternoon. However because nothing can ever be easy so far in this 2023 season, they was a player who went the other way as well.

Judge has been out since April 27th, having left that game against the Rangers after a couple innings. However, the injury dated back to the day before against the Twins, when he hurt himself on an awkward slide into third base.

While at time of writing, the Yankees’ lineup for tonight’s game against the Athletics has not been released, you would imagine that Judge will be headed right back to his normal spot in the Yankees’ batting order. The Yankees’ offense has notably really struggled while Judge has been out, averaging just 3.5 runs over the 10 games he missed. Even that number is somewhat inflated by scoring seven runs in each of their last two games, one of which was against a very bad A’s pitching staff. While Judge had slumped a bit himself before hitting the IL, he’s still by far the best hitter in the Yankees’ lineup, and having him there will at the very least lengthen the batting order.

However in Judge’s place, there was also a player going on the 10-day IL as Oswald Peraza swapped places with the captain. Peraza suffered an ankle injury in last Wednesday’s game against the Guardians when he rolled his ankle on a stolen base attempt. The Yankees had said he was available off the bench if needed in recent games, but he didn’t appear and today, the team opted to put him on the shelf for a bit.

One other move the Yankees made this afternoon was recalling reliever Greg Weissert. After using the bullpen heavily over the past couple days, the Yankees decided to get a fresh arm in Weissert, having optioned Nick Ramirez to Triple-A after he threw two innings in Monday night’s game. Weissert last pitched for the Triple-A RailRiders on Sunday, and has a 2.08 ERA this season for Scranton.

While there’s still some issues surrounding this Yankees’ team, it sure will be nice to have Judge back in the lineup.