REHAB BUDDIES: Temporary teammates with the Charleston RiverDogs, Eduardo Nunez (right) chats with Alex Rodriguez before Tuesday night’s game. (Zumapress.com)
REHAB BUDDIES: Temporary teammates with the Charleston RiverDogs, Eduardo Nunez (right) chats with Alex Rodriguez before Tuesday night’s game. (ZUMAPRESS.com)
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Smooth and athletic, he walked and stole a base and displayed impressive range on defense last night at Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park. For sure, he played like a guy who can help the battered and bruised Yankees very soon.
I am referring, of course, to Eduardo Nunez.
We don’t know yet whether Alex Rodriguez, Nunez’s fellow rehabilitating Yankee here the prior two days, will ever be able to aid the big-league team again. A-Rod, trying to come back from left hip surgery in January, went 0-for-2 with a pair of bounce outs and turned a 5-4-3 double play on defense, and afterward, asked if he felt any better than Tuesday’s debut, he responded, “Not really.”
Watching Nunez play, though, it was clear both he and the Yankees missed the chance to turn Derek Jeter’s broken left ankle into an opportunity this season. Nunez, who said he’ll play for Double-A Trenton tonight and professed a hope to join the Yankees before the All-Star break, has been on the disabled list since May 6 with a strained left oblique.
“It was tough. It was tough,” Nunez said yesterday. “But sometimes you have to turn the page. I don’t have control of that, when I got hurt. Very soon, I’ll come to New York.”
He played for six innings last night, going 0-for-2 with the walk and stolen base; one out was a bullet at Rome right fielder Joey Meneses. On defense, he went into the hole to get a grounder by Casey Kalenkosky and threw out the slow runner in the third inning. In the first inning, he took an error when a Kalenkosky bullet went under his legs and off his glove.
Nunez, who turned 26 during his disabled-list stay, still gets people’s attention because his relative youth and athleticism stand out on a Yankees roster in need of both.
“I think he’s got tools,” said Charleston manager Al Pedrique, who briefly played for the 1987 Mets and was an interim manager for the 2004 Diamondbacks. “He’s fast. Got a good arm. He’s got the instincts to play short. I think he has a good chance to be a good player.”
He never has delivered outstanding numbers, not in the minors or the majors. Yet if he could stay on the field, play the improved defense he showed off at the outset of this season — infield coach Mick Kelleher worked with him on the accuracy of his throws during spring training — and maintain his career major-league OPS of .681, then he absolutely would provide value to the Yankees. Consider that Yankees shortstops entered last night’s game in Minnesota with a cumulative OPS of .549.
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I’m trying to get 100 percent, do my best,” he said. “[I have] speed. I think I can help with the offense, too.”
The Yankees are desperate enough to have signed Luis Cruz, just released by the Dodgers, and started him last night at shortstop. Jayson Nix — now on the DL — has used his starts to show that, grit and all, he shouldn’t be starting every day. Reid Brignac fielded brilliantly but was so inept offensively he offended Yankees higher-ups. Alberto Gonzalez helped the Yankees win Tuesday night, and that has been about it.
This could have been Nunez’s time. The Yankees could have tried to figure out life without Jeter and whether Nunez — whom Yankees general manager Brian Cashman declined to include in a 2010 trade for Seattle’s Cliff Lee — could be the replacement.
That door is closing now, as Jeter is expected to begin his own rehabilitation assignment very shortly and could rejoin the Yankees by the end of this month. The only information the Yankees gleaned about Nunez is that he struggles to stay on the field and therefore is not yet a safe bet as an everyday player.
While he has drawn the wrath of Yankees fans for his defensive (and occasional base-running) sloppiness, those same folks should hope he keeps it together and returns to the big-league club as shortly as he thinks.
Though he obviously lacks the buzz surrounding A-Rod and Jeter, at least you have a better sense of what Nunez can give you. And what he can give you boosts the Yankees’ chances of a playoff berth.