The New York Yankees have been one of the best teams in baseball over the past couple of weeks, putting together a 19-14 record despite multiple critical injuries, which has led the team to first place in the American League East.

This streak of success has been heavily influenced by superstar Aaron Judge, who has been tearing the cover off the baseball in nearly every at-bat so far this year, as many have come to expect from the slugger.

One of the injuries of note to happen early on this year was to designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton, who has been dealing with elbow epicondylitis in both arms, which has resulted in him being moved to the 60-day injured list, retroactive to the initial date of March 24.

This means, at the earliest, he could return for their series against the Colorado Rockies from May 23 to May 25.

The good news in his recovery is that things are starting to come together a bit, and in a recent report by Bryan Hoch of MLB.com, he noted that Stanton could be taking a live batting practice as soon as this week, and that the likely pitcher for it would be Jake Cousins.

This is a huge step forward for Stanton, who is coming off a solid season, and would no doubt help the Yankees improve even further as they head into the summer. The difficulty would be finding a way for him and Ben Rice to co-exist in lineups given the latter has been taking the designated hitter at-bats since Stanton went down.

Regardless, adding more power back to the lineup can never hurt, especially with how the team has already been performing anyways. It will just be a matter of when it will happen, and who has to move out of the lineup for it to work out.