The New York Yankees finally have star outfielder Aaron Judge back from injury, but he's being carefully deployed by Aaron Boone as he makes his return back from his toe injury to full strength.

New York's cautious approach with Judge, who sat out Sunday night's historically ugly loss to the Baltimore Orioles, has been met with criticism as the Yankees badly need to make up ground in the AL Wild Card standings.

Boone has defended his decision to rest Judge, as he recently told Bryan Hoch.

“Hopefully he can play this entire series, but we’re going to take it day by day,” Boone said. “We’re going nowhere if we run Aaron Judge into the ground because he hasn’t had a rehab game.”

It's been a frustrating season for Boone, Judge, and the Yankees as a team. Coming off last year's AL MVP performance, Judge has been able to appear in just 51 games due to a toe injury.

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Judge has been plenty productive when he's been able to take the field, hitting .298/.414/.685 on the season. His frequent absences, however, have been tough for Yankees fans to swallow.

Boone recently shut down the suggestion that Judge could play DH instead of only being available as a pinch hitter, as he explained to Bryan Hoch.

“Your premise there would suggest they're the same,” Aaron Boone said, via Hoch. “I would disagree with that. I think we would disagree with that. Getting ready to play a major league game right now and going through all your pregame to be prepared at 7:00, you would hope there's baserunning that follows that. While it's not playing right field, it is still playing. Again, we're talking about him not being 100% with the toe, but just as much as that, he just hasn't worked up a lot of volume of stuff.”

The Yankees begin a three-game series with Tampa Bay on Monday. Whether the Yankees will continue to be cautious with Aaron Judge during his return and give him rest days remains to be seen.