A-Rod's two homers stop the questions for now

OAKLAND, Calif. -- As the Yankees' offense mostly came up empty the last couple of weeks, the cleanup hitter not cleaning up much of anything came under mounting scrutiny.

Alex Rodriguez's numbers have been decreasing incrementally for a few years, but this year they seemed headed off a cliff.

"For Alex to do it two at-bats in a row, people maybe stop asking where the power is," Joe Girardi said after Rodriguez homered in his first two at-bats of Wednesday night's 8-3 victory over the Royals.

Girardi can hope that's the case, but another streak of 52 at-bats without a homer -- like the one A-Rod snapped with his first-inning shot -- will bring the questions anew.

And one good night, which gave A-Rod seven home runs and 18 RBIs in 43 games, doesn't answer what only the played-out season will. He's hit 636 career home runs, but how much of the soon-to-be 37-year-old's power remains?

"I'm not going to judge anybody on the first 40 games," general manager Brian Cashman said by phone Thursday, also mentioning Mark Teixeira. "Alex, when healthy, he performs. Period. I'm not going to jump off his bandwagon. Give him a full year. If he has full health, I suspect he'll have the numbers. I think Alex is fine. Alex and Mark, if they're both healthy, they're going to have some impressive numbers by the end. That's what I expect."

Teixeira, 32, enters this nine-game, three-city trip hitting .226 with a .291 on-base percentage, a .381 slugging percentage, five homers and 21 RBIs. But he's started slowly before, making A-Rod more of a focal point, particularly because of his age.

When it comes to raw power, experts typically say that one of the first indicators of a decrease is batting practice. In that respect, A-Rod still can be among the most impressive Yankees to watch (though on a day-to-day basis, he's ceded the top spot to Robinson Cano).

"We see it every day in BP. There's not a lack of power there," Girardi said of Rodriguez. "You see him hit balls, it's pretty incredible. I don't know how many people watched his BP in Toronto [last week], but I mean he was playing pepper with people eating lunch in the centerfield [restaurant] up there. The power's there."

An opposing scout who watched the sessions agreed. "He's still got power,'' he said. "You saw it definitely in his BP."

The scout continued: "It still shows in BP. But then in the game, I don't want to say he's trying to be Derek Jeter, but you'd see him almost trying to inside-out the ball and you get some of those balls to right."

Many of which have gone for singles, something that helped Rodriguez's batting average (.281) and on-base percentage (.372) stay acceptable. But his .444 slugging percentage is more appropriate for someone batting leadoff, not a cleanup hitter.

The prodigious homers to all fields and the rocket doubles into the gaps largely had been missing before Wednesday.

"I think any time you do things that you're used to doing, it gives you confidence," Girardi said. "I think players can get frustrated if you're not getting results."

For one night, Rodriguez got them, holding off the questions for at least a little while.