Aaron Judge came off the injured list this week, and the Yankees got their entire season back with him. Three months without their captain is not a rehab stint you shrug off, it is a quarter of the calendar spent hoping the rest of the roster could bluff its way through a division race, and now the bluff is over because the guy actually holding the cards walked back into the clubhouse. New York does not need Judge to be good in September. New York needs Judge to be Judge, the version who makes a pitcher's warmup throws look like a confession, and there is exactly one way to find out which version showed up: pitch to him and see who blinks first.

Here is the part that outlasts the standings. Judge is signed through 2031 on the $360 million extension he took to stay a Yankee rather than test a market that would have paid him like a small nation's sovereign fund, and every day he was hurt was a day the Yankees paid full captain money for a captain who could only watch from the dugout rail. That is the real risk in a franchise-player contract, not the size of the number but the stretch where the number keeps running and the production does not. Judge is back. The Yankees' bet on him is finally back to being graded on baseball, not on an MRI.