Baumbach: Feels like 2006 again for A-Rod

Alex Rodriguez was the only player absent from the team photo Tuesday afternoon, but he joked that digitally imposing him into the shot shouldn't be too much of a problem. The Yankees, he pointed out, have plenty of images of him from previous years' group shots.

While it's wild to think about how this is already Rodriguez's seventh season with the Yankees - only Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada have longer continuous tenures - what's even more mind-boggling is that Rodriguez is technically not even halfway through his time in pinstripes.

There's still seven more years remaining on his massive $275-million contract, meaning the official halfway point of Rodriguez's Yankees career won't come until after this season ends (assuming, of course, that Rodriguez plays out all seven of those remaining years).

Forget about spending any brain cells worrying what kind of player Rodriguez will be in 2017. What's of more concern right now for the Yankees is getting Rodriguez through what's become a wicked slump and finally getting that milestone 600th home run so that the Yankees can resume their season.

With Yankee Stadium completely focused on each at-bat by Rodriguez each night, doesn't it feel as if we've gone back in time? All we need are the nightly booing and this would feel exactly like 2006 all over again, when Rodriguez's at-bats were a nightly topic of conversation along with how the Yankees fared in the game.

But that was the old A-Rod, the man who craved the attention. Ever since Rodriguez returned from his hip surgery in the spring of 2009, he finally figured out how to blend his big persona into the Yankees' clubhouse. No longer was he the center of attention, rather just another high-priced piece in a clubhouse filled with many others.

Rodriguez played that role well again this season, so well in fact that it was rather easy for everyone to overlook his subpar (by his high standards) offensive season.

The Yankees were cruising and he was driving in runs because of his success with runners in scoring position (34-for-113), and those factors helped overshadow his surprisingly low on-base (.335) and slugging (.467) percentages.

But now the Yankees have lost four of five and fallen out of first place. It's not Rodriguez's fault, obviously. But the focus is all on him and his impending milestone, and Rodriguez clearly is pressing. This was not what the Yankees had in mind after Rodriguez hit home run No. 599 back on July 22.

"Right now he's in a little funk and he's not getting any hits," manager Joe Girardi said. "The biggest thing about milestones is sometimes they get in the way a little bit. You hope guys don't think about it too much but this is a pretty big milestone. And we've got to get through it."

Mired in an 0-for-17 slump, Rodriguez did not appear in the clubhouse after going hitless in three at-bats. Surely he was looking for a breather from the now daily exercise of explaining his failure to hit No. 600. But with each day, the spotlight on him only grows brighter.

Asked before the game whether he thinks he'll feel more euphoria or relief when he finally hits his 600th home run, Rodriguez smiled and said, "Ahh, I don't know. I'll tell you when I do it."

Rodriguez is handling this well, smiling, saying all the right things, like saying the real focus is on winning. The only thing he's not doing, of course, is hitting that home run.

"It's going to happen," Girardi said. "We all know that."

But for Rodriguez and the Yankees, it couldn't happen soon enough.