This much seems clear after Tuesday afternoon’s football long toss along the first-base line at Yankee Stadium: Alex Rodriguez is Joe Girardi’s man if the Yankees’ manager wants to install the Wildcat as part of his package for September and the postseason.
Rodriguez, sidelined since July 24 with the broken left hand he suffered when he was hit by a Felix Hernandez pitch in the eighth inning of that night’s game in Seattle, went through his routine of on-field stretching followed by throwing a football and later a baseball before the Yankees’ 3-0 victory over the Rangers behind Hiroki Kuroda’s two-hit masterpiece.
“So far, so good,” Rodriguez, a high school quarterback of renown, told a handful of reporters on his way off the field, and on his way to undergo the latest in a series of X-rays to measure his progress toward a return to the lineup.
The prognosis following the X-ray was positive, with Girardi reporting that though Rodriguez was not yet ready to begin swinging a bat, the brace on his left hand would come off and thus allow him to do strengthening exercises.
“Definitely better,” Girardi said. “That’s a good sign for us.”
The original estimate was for Rodriguez to miss between four and six weeks. That remains to be seen. The original estimate also was that the injury would hurt the Yankees as much as it would hurt the athlete. That has not proved accurate across the 19 games the team has played in Rodriguez’s absence.
Before Rodriguez went on the disabled list, the Yankees had averaged 4.8 runs per game. In his absence, the team had averaged 5.9 runs a game, with Eric Chavez getting most of the time at the third with occasional starts from Jayson Nix and Casey McGehee, who went 2-for-4 last night. The subs at third are batting .382 (26-for-68) with seven homers and 18 RBI.
Chavez has been a revelation, a throwback to the player he was over the first seven full seasons of his career in Oakland when he batted .273 with an average of 28 homers and 94 RBIs a year. That was before a succession of injuries beat him down.
Since Rodriguez went down, Chavez had gone 16-for-42 (.381) with five homers, 10 RBIs, a .447 on-base percentage., a .786 slugging percentage. and an OPS of 1.233 in 11 starts. Yes, a small sample size but very large numbers. Overall, Chavez is batting .293 with 13 homers and 30 RBIs and an .890 OPS in 198 at-bats.
Fact is, Chavez is hitting a home run every 15.23 at-bats while Rodriguez, once believed the heir to the all-time home run throne, legitimate or not, has 15 homers in 352 ups, one every 23.46 at-bats.
Do the Yankees miss Rodriguez? For the short-term, they have not. Through most of the season, he was not the A-Rod of old, but rather the old A-Rod, who was batting .224 with a .324 on-base percentage and .775 OPS as a cleanup hitter.
The cruelest cut was not merely that the 37-year-old Rodriguez was forced onto the DL for the third time in the last four seasons; it was that it happened when A-Rod appeared to finally have regained his equilibrium, having hit .349 (15-for-43) with two homers, four doubles and six RBI in his last 11 games in the lineup.
History instructs that it invariably takes Rodriguez some time to regain his timing after being sidelined. It’s not as if he has even been able to take batting practice while wearing a splint on his left hand. Though the Yankees have been humming without him, the effect of Rodriguez’s return is impossible to predict.
Nobody for a moment is suggesting that Rodriguez shouldn’t go back into the everyday lineup the minute he is physically capable of doing so, though Girardi likely will have to consider slotting him fifth or perhaps even sixth in the order, at least at the outset.
And nobody for a moment is suggesting that on paper, the lineup is more threatening with Rodrigue out of it. No opposing pitcher, no opposing manager, would choose to face Alex Rodriguez rather than Casey McGehee; not today, not tomorrow, not next month or the month after that.
No opposing lefty would rather face a Yankees lineup absent that right-handed power bat.
Nevertheless, the fact remains the Yankees have not missed a beat without Rodriguez, who for the most part has been out of sight, out of mind, except when running the Wildcat.
larry.brooks@nypost.com