Yankees center fielder and leadoff hitter Jacoby Ellsbury will be activated from the disabled list on Wednesday, according to Brian Cashman.

“We scratched him because the fields were wet,’’ the GM said of the playing surface Monday in Tampa, where Ellsbury was on a rehab assignment with the Single-A club. “He did some simulated stuff [Monday] and will do it again Tuesday and be activated Wednesday.’’

Ellsbury has been out since May 19 with a sprained right knee. Before going down, Ellsbury was hitting .324 (48-for-148) with a .412 on-base percentage. In four games for the Tampa Yankees, Ellsbury was 2-for-13. On Sunday he went 1-for-4 in seven innings and scored from second on a single.

His return will shift Brett Gardner from the leadoff spot to second in the order.

In a rare assessment of the Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner admitted the obvious Monday at a charity golf outing benefiting Hank’s Yanks.

“We need to be more consistent, we do. By the end of the season, we need to up our winning percentage. We need to hit more consistently, and we need to pitch more. We need to do everything more,’’ Steinbrenner said of his 44-37 club that led the AL East by a game going into Monday night’s action. “So far, you can’t be unhappy at this point. And every year, we’re going to keep improving and improving and improving. Try to get back to where we were in the ’90s.

Steinbrenner isn’t shocked the Yankees are on top of the AL East.

“I’m not surprised. I expected us to be good this year. Last year, I wasn’t so sure. This year, I expected us to be good, maybe even a better record than we have right now. We’ll see what happens,’’ Steinbrenner said. “We’ve just been up and down. A lot of teams in baseball have been up and down. The interesting thing is, we’ve got the third-best record in the league. So there are a lot of teams that are hovering, even the good teams, that are hovering right around .500. There’s a few standout teams and that’s it, record-wise.”

Larry Rothschild will cringe if he reads this, but several baseball minds are crediting the Yankees’ pitching coach with the progress Nathan Eovaldi has made in the first half of the season.

“Larry is one of those guys who can get success out of guys who haven’t had it but have the stuff,’’ an AL scout said of the hard-throwing right-hander, who came to the Yankees with a career 15-35 big league record but brings an 8-2 record and 4.52 ERA into Tuesday night’s game against the A’s at Yankee Stadium. “He works well with guys like Eovaldi who need something else.’’

Toward the end of last season with the Marlins, Eovaldi added a split-fingered fastball to keep hitters off the conventional fastball that pushes speed guns into the high-90s but had been very straight and located poorly.

By no means is the 25-year-old Eovaldi a finished product, as 110 hits in 87 2/3 innings demonstrates, opposing hitters batting .307 and only three times in 15 starts has he reached the seventh inning.

However, across Eovaldi’s past three outings, he has made a case to be considered the Yankees’ best starter, or second to Michael Pineda.

Masahiro Tanaka and Ivan Nova have been inconsistent since coming off the DL and CC Sabathia is 3-8 with a 5.59 ERA in 16 starts. He was pushed back from Sunday’s start to Wednesday against the A’s.

Eovaldi is 3-0 with a 2.08 ERA in those three outings, having allowed 13 hits in 17 1/3 innings, whiffed 13 and walked six. Of course, those three starts followed the beating he absorbed from the Marlins in Miami on June 6, when his former club battered him for eight runs and nine hits in two-thirds of an inning.

When the Yankees shipped Martin Prado and David Phelps to the Marlins for Eovaldi, Garrett Jones and pitching prospect Domingo German, the deal was greeted with skepticism because Prado was a versatile and productive player and Phelps a more than serviceable big league pitcher.

Yet, from a scouts perch, the Yankees were wise to make the move despite Eovaldi’s career record and surrendering 223 hits last year in 199 2/3 innings.

“That trade, I was all in. That stuff doesn’t come along very often. With his stuff you are expected to win games,’’ the scout said. “What it comes back to is consistency and command.’’

Andrew Miller threw an inning of relief, allowing two hits and striking out one, for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Monday night in his first minor league rehab stint. Depending on how the Yankees’ closer comes through the exercise, there is a chance he will be activated Tuesday.

Miller, who is 17-for-17 in save chances, has been on the shelf since June 11 with a strained flexor muscle in his left forearm.

Yankee pitchers can’t be much better in the clutch than they have been in the previous nine games entering Tuesday night’s action. During that stretch the pitchers have held opponents to a .127 (7-for-55) average with runners in scoring position.