Aaron Judges imminent return is everything the Yankees have been waiting for

The week the Yankees hoped would one day come — without any guarantees — after three months has finally arrived. The only question now is which day the Yankees will fill the 6-foot-7, 282-pound presence that has been sorely missing since the beginning of June.  Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.Aaron Judge is primed to return to the Yankees as early as Tuesday against the Rockies in The Bronx — Aaron Boone did not rule it out — though it could be Wednesday or Thursday if they choose to give him a few more days of ramping up with facing live pitching and the Trajekt machine.

Neither of those was available to him over the last week as he joined the team on its West Coast road trip to check some of the final boxes in his rehab. But the long-awaited day is nearly here. “Best player in the world,” manager Aaron Boone said over the weekend, summing up the potential impact of his captain’s imminent return. The back-to-back AL MVP will jump right back into a playoff race.The Yankees trail the Rays by four games for the division — and are two games clear of the Red Sox for the top AL wild card — and survived his absence, entering Tuesday 45-39 since he last played despite dealing with other injuries during that span. “We’re still in it,” Max Fried said Sunday.

“Obviously we’d love to be playing better, [and] we’re motivated to keep going and fight to try to win the division.But anytime you get your best player back, it’s obviously a huge boost.” On Monday’s off-day, Judge was set to face live pitching for the first time in his ramp-up, after spending the last week taking on-field batting practice, hitting off high-velocity pitching machines and standing in on bullpen sessions to track pitches. All of that, plus having the Trajekt machine at his disposal back at Yankee Stadium, is likely to allow Judge to skip a rehab assign...