Donaldson gets in some unexpected work

A strange sight occurred Monday afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

Josh Donaldson, two-plus weeks after suffering a tear in his calf and recently transferred to the 60-day injured list, popped out of the dugout to do some jogging in the outfield, field ground balls and then take batting practice.

Donaldson is not eligible to be activated off the IL until Sept. 15, but over six weeks away from that date, he was feeling “better than I expected to,” he said.

It begged the question of whether Donaldson tried to fight against being transferred to the 60-day IL, a move announced July 20, five days after he sustained the injury.

“No,” Donaldson said before the 5-1 loss to the Rays. “I kind of just was told I was going on the 60. But I wasn’t in the conversation for that.

“I think as a competitor, you want to be out there helping your teammates as often as you can. But

I don’t make those decisions. But I feel good where I’m at right now.”

The 38-year-old Donaldson, who was hitting .142 with a .659 OPS in 33 games, said he hopes to be back this season though it remains to be seen whether that will actually happen. If not, Donaldson may have played his last game as a Yankee with the team not expected to pick up his option for next season.

“He is doing well,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He had a pretty high-level strain there, but it was good to see him moving around like he is.” ➤ Aaron Judge returned to the lineup Monday at DH after sitting out Sunday’s loss to the Orioles. His absence from Sunday’s lineup, after returning from an almost two-month layoff Friday because of a torn ligament in his right big toe and skipping a rehab assignment, was met with criticism from the fan base. But Boone stood by that decision a day later.

“We’re going nowhere if we run Aaron Judge into the ground when he hasn’t had a rehab game,” Boone said. “If we’re going to get to the playoffs or be the team we expect to be, we gotta play really well over a 50-plus game sprint. So you gotta take a little bit of that big picture into account too.”

Boone said he hopes to have Judge in the lineup for all three games of this series against the Rays.

➤ After his best outing in over a month, tossing 2 2/₃ scoreless innings with four strikeouts Sunday against the Orioles, Ron Marinaccio’s reward was a ticket to Triple-A Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre.