ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Alex Rodriguez is leading the Yankees in batting (.344). He is tied for third in MLB in home runs (4), tied for second in RBI (11), and his 1.214 OPS is better than all but four other major-leaguers, three of whom are more than a decade younger than him. Friday night, he hit the longest home run in the majors so far this season, a shot measured at 477 feet.
Rodriguez is hitting so well that for Saturday night's game against the Tampa Bay Rays, manager Joe Girardi has him hitting third in the lineup, the spot usually reserved for a team's best all-around hitter.
And yet, he continues to describe himself as a work in progress. "I'm starting to get more comfortable," he said the day after he drove in four of the Yankees' five runs in their 5-4 victory Friday night with a pair of home runs and a game-winning single. "I’m just trying to grind it out and get better every day."
Asked when he would finally begin to consider himself officially "back," as opposed to "coming back," Rodriguez said, "Let's see you do this for six months. Anybody can do it for 10 games. Let's just see what happens."
Girardi, too, has exercised caution when asked to assess Rodriguez's early performance in his first season back after an absence of 19 months because of a 162-game drug suspension. But when A-Rod's words were relayed to him, even the manager had to admit he has been impressed so far.
"I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that," Girardi said. “I don’t know if you can swing the bat much better than he’s swinging it. He looks like he’s back to me.”
And Girardi seems to be beginning to believe that the A-Rod we have seen so far is, in fact, the A-Rod we will continue to see. "There's a sense that he's going to be productive all year, absolutely," Girardi said.
Still, the manager has been reluctant to move Rodriguez into the middle of his offensively-challenged lineup; he was only batting third Saturday night, Girardi said, because Carlos Beltran, who has hit third in nine of the Yankees 10 games, is out tonight with a chest cold.
"If Carlos was playing today, I would have hit Carlos third,” Girardi said. “You have to be careful when you start trying to move hitters around and changing your lineup because a guy is hot. It’s hard to predict every day what will happen. We’ve tried to keep our lineup similar, but I’m not afraid to move Alex up.”
Rodriguez hit both his home runs, the long blast leading off the second inning off starter Nathan Karns and the second, only slightly-less-impressive sixth-inning shot off reliever Ernesto Frieri, on fastballs. But it was the RBI single in his final at-bat that was most impressive to Rodriguez, because it came at the expense of a pitcher (Kevin Jepsen) whom he had never gotten a hit off in 10 lifetime at-bats, and because it came on a 3-2 slider that Jepsen apparently hoped would fool A-Rod after he barely got away with a 95 mph fastball on the previous pitch.
"I really can't believe he threw me two strikes in a row [on 3-2]," said Rodriguez, who half expected Jepsen and Rays manager Kevin Cash would opt to walk him after Brett Gardner stole second during the at-bat, leaving first base open. A-Rod was also surprised that Jepsen threw him a fastball on the first 3-2 pitch, as he has shown no problem catching up with the heat in his first 10 games.
"That was my best at-bat of the night," he said.
In fact, if there is any real area of concern, it is with how many games in a row Rodriguez's 40-year-old body can stand up to; in less than two months, he has gone from a part-time designated hitter to the one player Girardi really can't afford to give a night off, and the Yankees are two games into a stretch of 30 games in a 31-day period.
“I think you have to look at your days off and how much he’s DH-ing," Girardi said. "If he’s DH-ing, I think you can play him more than if you’re playing him in the field.”
Rodriguez said he is adjusting to the lighter workload of being a DH -- "The key is making sure I stay activated, making sure I have some kind of sweat working, because sometimes it’s 45 minutes between at-bats," he said -- but he admits that he isn't sure how long his body will hold up.
"I really didn’t know what to expect from my body," he said. "It’s been 18 months. We were trying to think about who’s done this before, not just me, but any other athlete. It's uncharted territory, really."
Territory that Rodriguez knows will take months to fully explore.
