Troy Tulowitzki leans on a batting cage at Toronto's spring...

Troy Tulowitzki leans on a batting cage at Toronto's spring training in Dunedin, Florida, on Feb. 20, 2018. Credit: AP/Frank Gunn

Troy Tulowitzki has made something of a career out of grappling with uncertainty.

There was the uncertainty of the last two seasons, as ankle problems and surgery on both heels limited him to 66 games — none last season — and put his baseball future in jeopardy.

And now, despite the fact that he’s slated to be the Yankees’ Opening Day shortstop, there is uncertainty of a different kind: What will happen to him when Didi Gregorius comes back from Tommy John surgery?

There also is a more timely but far more hypothetical concern: What if the Yankees really do sign Manny Machado? After all, they still are interested in him, according to a baseball source, and he is said to be interested in them.

Tulowitzki’s answer? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

All he knows is that he feels good for the first time in a very long time and thinks he can contribute. And hey, playing on a team with Machado could be kind of cool.

“I signed up to be a Yankee because I wanted to play with the best players, so if Manny is one of those guys, I think that would be awesome,” he said Monday in a conference call with reporters, adding that he pays attention to the rumors. “I definitely signed up for this to help us win, so whatever happens happens, and I’ll be ready to play when spring training comes.”

As for Gregorius: “Whenever that time comes up, then we’ll deal with it then, but there’s no sense in talking about that right now.”

In a sense, he’s right. Gregorius’ timeline has him returning at midseason, potentially as late as August. For Tulowitzki, that translates to three or so months to show that he still has high-level baseball left in him.

At 34, he’s on the waning side of his career, but for the Yankees, he’s a low-risk, high-reward type of player. They signed him to a one-year contract for the major-league minimum of $555,000, with his old team, the Blue Jays, on the hook for the rest of the $38 million he still is owed.

Tulowitzki said he started to have heel problems just as he signed with the Blue Jays in 2016, which corresponds to his declining production. Before that year, he was a five-time All-Star, a two-time Gold Glove winner and a two-time Silver Slugger. He had a slash line of .249/.300/.378 in 2017, missed all of 2018 and started to feel fully recovered only at the end of the year, he said.

Tulowitzki said he feels no pain in his heels — he had gotten to the point that before surgery, he couldn’t run down the baseline or make a play without pain — and now has “confidence in me and my body.”

After the season, he held a workout in Southern California and, he said, received plenty of interest. He chose the Yankees because he wanted a landing spot where he could play shortstop on a contender.

He also grew up idolizing the shortstops of the American League East, wearing numbers for Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and Cal Ripken Jr. He wore No. 2 throughout his major-league career, though obviously that won’t be an option in the Bronx. (For that matter, neither will No. 5 nor No. 8.)

And after the uncertainty of his role and his uniform number, there’s the biggest question of all: Can Tulowitzki, who missed the better part of two seasons, reclaim some of his past proficiency?

“I think I do need to catch up as far as reps and see pitching and being out there on the field and work with some new teammates, but at the same time, I need to be smart about it, too, and not go so crazy to where I run myself into the ground at spring training,” he said.

“It’s going to be a balancing act, but it’s something I’m looking forward to. And just for me, to be out there on the field again, it’s what I love and what I’ve always wanted to do, so being out on the field is going to be a joy again.”

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