MINNEAPOLIS — Alex Rodriguez is not going to win the American League’s most valuable player award this year. But he’s won three of them already, and could easily have won three more. He knows what an MVP season looks like, what it feels like, up close, better than any other player currently playing the sport.
And in case his memory had grown sketchy during his six-week sabbatical, his first day back at work yesterday provided a useful refresher course.
“In my eyes,” Rodriguez said yesterday after going 0-for-5 with one splendid defensive play in the Yankees’ 3-0 blanking of the Twins, “Curtis Granderson is the MVP.”
Rodriguez’s may be the most discriminating eyes of all, since he is one of only 10 men to win as many as three MVP plaques. But it is impossible to maintain Granderson’s subtle candidacy under the radar any longer.
Boston’s Adrian Gonzalez has been the presumptive favorite since spring training, and may still be, but he has gone weeks since his last home run and may not even be the MVP of his own team as splendid as Jacoby Ellsbury has played. Jose Bautista continues to be a fine story in Toronto, but the Jays haven’t played a meaningful game all year. Or since 1993, for that matter.
Besides, Bautista is only a homer ahead of Granderson at this point. Yesterday, Granderson launched a shot against the tall wall in right-center field at Target Field, a couple of yards north of the yellow Harmon Killebrew autograph and a few feet south of the top of the fence. The ball ricocheted between center fielder Ben Revere and right fielder Jason Kubel.
“And suddenly I’m looking at [third-base coach Rob Thomson],” Granderson would say later, smiling, “and he hasn’t stopped waving his arms. And I’m like, ‘OK. Here we go.’ ”
He beat the throw — much to the delight of his teammates and the chagrin of his lungs — for the third inside-the-parker of his career, No. 35 on the year, and he added another memorable afternoon to a season already stuffed with them. It used to be that A-Rod was the one Yankee you had to make sure you watched every time he came to the plate, since you never knew where he might launch a baseball.
This year, Granderson is that Yankee. Because every day it’s possible he might dip into his bag of treats and produce something electric.
“Nothing he does surprises you any more,” Joe Girardi said.
And you know something? That goes beyond the numbers that will ultimately define his candidacy in the minds of most voters. In the bottom of the fifth inning yesterday, a lazy fly ball off the bat of Danny Valencia drifted out toward right-center. Granderson called for the ball. So did Nick Swisher. It fell behind both of them, and in a 0-0 game it set the Twins up with runners on second and third, nobody out.
Before Ivan Nova threw another pitch, Granderson put his arms around Swisher and demanded to assume responsibility. Never mind that from the beginning of time center fielders — especially a good one like Granderson — have been instructed to catch everything they can get to. After Nova snuck out of the inning unscathed, and after the game, Granderson repeatedly shouldered the liability.
“I think I went too far out of my range,” he said, as if that’s even possible.
But a day after A.J. Burnett re-defined the notion of a bad, no-account, unreliable teammate, it was helpful to see Granderson provide a polar example of what being a good one is all about. It’s one of Girardi’s most puzzling traits, in truth. Even a day later, he wouldn’t criticize Burnett, who at best was griping about umpires on a night he was clobbered by a ham-and-egg offense and at worst was showing up his manager as he left the mound.
“I’m not going to tell a person how to respond, to hold feelings or not to hold feelings,” Girardi said before the game. “I am not God. My job is to make the players better and to make sure they follow the rules. Something like that happens, he has to answer to that. I can’t control what he does.”
Luckily for Girardi, he also has a roster of players who crave accountability, and one, Granderson, whose accountability is only one of many gold stars that dot his resume right now. A-Rod’s eyes aren’t alone. This is a player most valuable, even without the plaque to prove it.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com