A-Rod's thumb, knee seem to pass test

Alex Rodriguez made it back into the Yankees' lineup Saturday for the first time in six days. He then made his manager tense up a bit on his first fielding chance, when the third baseman dived to his left for a grounder in the hole and tested the sprained left thumb that kept him out of the previous six games.

"I think [he came through] good," Joe Girardi said after Rodriguez went 1-for-3 with a walk and scored the go-ahead run in the Yankees' 6-4 win over the Blue Jays. "I don't think you really know until tomorrow, when the adrenaline goes away. But he made no mention of his thumb today to me, or to anyone else."

Rodriguez didn't say much else, period, declining to speak to reporters after the game. Before the game, he said only "I don't know" when asked how the thumb felt. He was headed to the field to take grounders, and that went well enough for Girardi to put Rodriguez -- who injured the thumb in his first game back from knee surgery -- in the No. 3 spot and back at third base.

He lined a single to right off Ricky Romero in the first and then got to test the heavily taped thumb when he dived to stop Edwin Encarnacion's grounder in the second. Encarnacion beat the throw for a single, but Rodriguez seemed fine.

After getting ahead 3-and-0, he struck out on a diving slider with a runner on in the fifth, dropping him to 4-for-20 with one RBI since he came off the disabled list Aug. 21. But Romero still pitched carefully to Rodriguez with two outs and a man on first in the seventh, issuing A-Rod a four-pitch walk before Robinson Cano turned a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 lead with a double off Casey Janssen.

Rodriguez scored from first on the double, so his repaired knee got a workout, as well.

"We got to see Alex run, too, and that was no issue," Girardi said.

Rodriguez's frustrating year has him on pace for his lowest totals in games, hits, home runs and RBIs since he became a regular for the Mariners in 1996. His knee may be fine now, nearly two months after his surgery, but his thumb still could be a problem in the final 25 games of the season and into the postseason.

"I'm sure there are a lot of days where he'll be able to go through and he may not feel anything," Girardi said. "And then there could be that day where he jams his thumb a little bit that it bothers him. That's the thing when you're dealing with hand injuries -- they come back. So it's just something that we have to check with him pretty regularly, see how he feels, and then we'll go from there."