ANAHEIM, Calif. — Aaron Judge added another step to his rehab process on Wednesday afternoon when he ran the bases at Angel Stadium.

It was Judge’s first time doing so since tearing a ligament in his right big toe on June 3.

He continues to build his workload in the hope of returning to the Yankees at some point in the near future.

“I think when you’ve been down as long as he has, it is an important part of it,” manager Aaron Boone said before the Yankees lost, 7-3, on Wednesday. “But I think now, whether it’s the bases or more how he’s able to cut and move and stop and start, they’re all kind of tied together, especially when we’re dealing with the kind of injury he’s had.”

Judge, who had been just running in straight lines in the outfield before Wednesday, also continued to take batting practice before the game against the Angels.

While the Yankees are hopeful to get Judge back as soon as possible, they also want to make sure he is not pushing to complete each step faster than he should be.

“That’s the biggest thing,” Boone said. “With the injury, they don’t want him to — it’s gotta be a low threshold of pain ultimately. So it’s doing things that he can tolerate. The fact that he’s able to run the bases and do these different things is important. If it gets to be where it’s too painful, that’s when you get into that danger zone of hurting yourself more.

“I know the doctors don’t want him — if it’s real painful, that’s probably not a good thing to push through.”

Shortly after becoming the Yankees’ first-round draft pick last week, George Lombard Jr. got a text from Anthony Volpe. Four years ago, Volpe was in the same spot as Lombard, a high school shortstop who passed up a scholarship to Vanderbilt to sign with the Yankees as a first-rounder.

“It was really awesome,” Lombard said on a Zoom call from Tampa, in his first days as part of the organization. “[Volpe] just reached out to me congratulating me. Basically he was in the same shoes I am now, a couple years back. So he’s got that experience under his belt. So just letting me know if there’s anything I ever needed, just to hit him up and he would be there. I was super grateful for him. That was pretty special of him to do and I won’t forget about that.”

Lombard, who said he models his game after the Rangers’ Corey Seager, indicated that signing with the Yankees was “a little bit of a no-brainer.”

“The Yankees, with the organization and how special the organization is, just lined up perfectly,” Lombard said.

Anthony Rizzo was out of the lineup Wednesday, with Boone wanting to give him a day off during what has been a tough stretch. The veteran first baseman had not hit a home run since May 20 (a span of 43 games) and was batting just .156 with a .471 OPS over his last 36 games.

But Boone did not expect Rizzo’s absence to be longer than a day.

“We’ll talk, but I would expect him probably back in there Friday,” Boone said.

Nestor Cortes (rotator cuff strain) is scheduled to begin a rehab assignment on Sunday, likely with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. It will be the first of likely three rehab starts before he could return to the Yankees.