Yankees News: Cashman Says Alex Rodriguez is Good to Go for 2015

By Arthur Greenberg | Feb 7, 2015

For all of the “what-if?” scenarios that New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez has emanated since forever, there is one that General Manager Brian Cashman himself feels no need to engage in: A-Rod’s patchwork lower half, held together by two surgically repaired hips. For the first time in a long time, according to Cashman, A-Rod’s hips are A-Okay.

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Ryan Hatch of NJ.com reports that Dr. Brian Kelly of the Hospital for Special Surgery has cleared Rodriguez to play in 2015. Brian Cashman took to WFAN to talk with Mike Francesa, a notorious A-Rod apologist.

“It’s all systems go,” Cashman said. “He’s been conditioning and going in the right direction.” Kelly has performed surgery on A-Rod in the past.

Cashman is usually a straight shooter with the media, and we should take his optimism seriously. Assuming A-Rod is fully healthy, his biggest obstacle in returning to the Yankees is rust from spending a year off awkwardly in the way of other athletes, and he must find a way to play a whole season without engaging in some sort of illicit, suspension-worthy activity.

Said Cashman to Francesa, “Expect the worst and hope for the best. [The best] is you get a middle of the lineup bat and also play third for you.”

So what numbers would a healthy Alex Rodriguez produce in 2015, given the uniqueness of his recent history, with two major hip surgeries, a full season suspension, and a precipitous decline in ability?

Yankees fans can expect the moon of Alex, and hope for a full season of .280 BA/30HR/100RBI. That would be unlikely, to say the least.

Or, they can assume that the performance enhancing-glass is half empty, and predict a Stephen Drew-esque implosion, compounded by new injuries that could end his career. A .22o BA/12HR/39RBI-type season is not out of the question.

Of course, there are smarter folks on the baseball scene than you and I, working diligently to guesstimate what only time will tell. Yanks Go Yard’s own Brendan Fitzgerald took a look at the 2015 ZiPS projections for the team, which have A-Rod posting a .229 BA, with 15HR and 57RBIs in 407 PAs. That’s… not terrible. Fingers crossed.

I am one to think that A-Rod is closer to being done than on the verge of a late-career renaissance, but at least Brian Cashman is keeping an open mind, or at the very least, channeling Homer Simpson… meh.

One would think that’s the most Alex can hope for from the Yankees’ front office, considering there’s already an above-average third baseman topping him on the depth chart.

A Marginalized Alex Rodriguez: Brought to You by Chase Headley.

Cashman also told Francesa that he and Rodriguez will meet before Spring Training begins to clear the air. You can bet that if the Yankees are picking up the tab, the meeting will take place at a Denny’s and not the Capital Grille.

Alex Rodriguez may be healthy, but he is also very much the underdog. The difference between him and the traditional underdog is, of course, that not too many folks are rooting for him.

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