A-Rod finally understands 'less is more'
TAMPA, Fla. -- This was quite a contrast.
A year ago at this time, Alex Rodriguez looked at the media crowd in front of him and declared, "This is the best I've felt in three years.''
A few weeks later, as he continued to crush the ball in exhibition games, A-Rod called appearing in 150 games something "not out of the question.''
Saturday afternoon, in his first news conference since the end of an injury-riddled 2011 in which he appeared in only 99 games, there were no superlatives and nothing portending overly optimistic predictions to come. Confidence in his health, yes, but plenty of sentences with the word "recovery'' and phrases such as "corrective exercises'' and "less is more.''
Rodriguez first heard the latter thought from the surgeon who operated on his hip in March 2009, Dr. Marc Philippon, but it wasn't a message he was ready to heed then. "That's the one thing Philippon told me a few years ago is less is more,'' A-Rod said, "but I didn't listen to him then. I went back to see him this winter. He's very happy with the range of motion and how it looks. And, again, he reiterated the importance of less is more. I'm on board now.''
That's because although the hip wasn't a problem last season for A-Rod, his right knee, left shoulder and left thumb were, and he played fewer than 100 games for the first time since 1995. Even in 2009, after missing the first month-plus while recovering from surgery, he played in 124 games.
"My entire career I've been a workhorse,'' the 36-year-old said of both his in-season and out-of-season workload. "I've always felt more is better. It's been a hard lesson to learn, but over the last two or three years, I understand that doing my corrective exercises, focusing a lot more on recovery . . . When you're in your 20s, you think about training and then recovery. At this point in your career, it's the exact opposite. I've learned that lesson.''
Part of his winter recovery included a trip overseas. Rodriguez, at the behest of Kobe Bryant and with the permission of the Yankees and MLB, visited Dr. Peter Wehling, a specialist in an experimental plasma-rich platelet therapy, in Germany. There, in December, he had a series of injections in his right knee and left shoulder.
"I just saw him [Bryant] a month ago and basically thanked him because my knee does feel a lot better,'' Rodriguez said. "It feels healthy. Much better than prior to going to Germany.''
Rodriguez had 30 homers and 125 RBIs in 2010 -- the 13th straight season in which he had at least 30 and 100 -- but fell to 16 and 62 last season as injuries took hold. The most constraining -- or, to use his word, "annoying'' -- was the left thumb sprain he suffered Aug. 21 in Minneapolis, his first game back after missing 1½ months because of knee surgery.
"Any time you have a player, you take his hands away or one finger, it can be annoying,'' he said. "I don't think I was myself, but make no mistake, we're in a no-excuse business and a results-oriented business. If I'm on that field, whether I'm 50, 80 or 100 percent, I have to produce and help the team win. Last year for me was a disappointing year.''
But although he'll make some concessions to age, that doesn't extend to envisioning a major increase in DH starts.
"I don't train and prepare to be a DH. I'm definitely not a DH,'' Rodriguez said. "I think one of the things that I actually did that was above average last year was play very good defense. Does that mean I'm going to play 145 games at third base? Obviously, I'll defer to Joe [Girardi] and I'll do what he wants me to do. But it's definitely important for me to throw a very, very big number up there.''
And he intends to do it from the cleanup spot, something Girardi has said is his intent.
"Winning trumps everything, and whatever the manager wants to do is exactly what I'll do,'' A-Rod said. "But I take enormous pride in hitting fourth. I'm going to make it as difficult as possible for Joe to take me out of that position.''
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