Swisher shows no ill effects

That whoosh off Nick Swisher's bat in the second inning? Call it the all clear.

Despite being slotted into the seven hole and starting in rightfield in the Yankees' 4-3 loss against the Braves last night, Joe Girardi said before the game that the Yankees would very much be evaluating Swisher after sitting him for two days with a left quad contusion.

Swisher, though, didn't leave much time for lingering doubts. After taking early batting practice and suffering no ill effects, Swisher drilled a two-run double in his first at-bat after his sixth-inning collision with Washington catcher Jesus Flores on Saturday.

"It was nice to get back in there and feel like you're a part of the team, even if it was just a couple days," Swisher said. "I feel good. I know what I'm capable of doing. You just go out there and get on the field. Running out to rightfield before the game, I dig that."

The hit, which came on a full-count pitch, glanced off centerfielder Michael Bourn's glove before ricocheting off the wall. It opened the scoring for the Yankees, who led until Chipper Jones' game-tying double in the fourth.

"Just after talking to trainers, they were like 'Hey, you can't hurt it any worse, so you just gotta deal with the pain a little bit,' " Swisher said.

Swisher said he had no running restrictions and, though he felt some discomfort batting lefty, said it didn't impact his swing. He had wanted to play on Monday, but he felt off during his batting practice swings.

"I don't want to mess with that," he said. "I feel like I have a good stroke going right now, so I wanted to make sure I could do that."

Forty-four of the switch-hitting Swisher's 58 hits have come as a lefty, and he batted lefthanded in all his at-bats last night, going 2-for-3 with a walk. He also had a single in the fifth inning, but Mark Teixeira was thrown out trying to score from second.

Between the Yankees' 10-game winning streak and his return to the lineup, though, Swisher said he wasn't sweating this one too much.

"We had some opportunities," he said. "We just ran out of innings pretty much . . . I guess you could say it's a little easier to shrug this one off, but no one likes to lose."

And with Swisher's physical blocks gone, so too, he said, are any possible mental blocks that could come from having waged a losing battle with Flores' catching gear.

"[Heck] yeah," he'd do it again, Swisher said. "Absolutely, man. That's part of the game, you know."