Drew nearing rehab assignment; no timetable

SAN DIEGO -- Diamondbacks manager Kirk Gibson held his arms straight out in front of him and attempted to rotate them outward. The right one made it fine. The left one balked, the result of a surgery in which Gibson’s ulna was shortened, plated and sewed back into place.

Good as new? No. Good enough to play? You bet.

Gibson was illustrating a point about Stephen Drew, whose right ankle will never be the same after his season-ending fracture last July. It is something to remember as Drew takes another step toward returning to the D-backs when he plays back-to-back games for the first time this weekend.

Drew played seven innings and took four at-bats in an extended spring training game Friday and is scheduled to play nine innings Saturday, the final day of the extended spring program. At some point soon, he will take a rehab assignment in the minors.

"When you have serious injuries like that, they stick with you for a while. You kind of learn how to deal with it. You can play, and you can be pretty effective with it, but it’s not going to be what it was like before,” Gibson said.

The D-backs still have no timetable on Drew’s return to the majors. He had a slight setback last week when ankle soreness forced him out of games for a short period. It is likely something Drew will have to play through.

"Things are aligned a little differently than they have been in the past, so there is going to be some achiness and some pain on certain movements. He says it bites him occasionally on certain movements. It will grab him,” Gibson said.

"I don’t think you ever really know with what he’s going through. There is no question we want him back. When and if he comes back, he’ll play hard and he’ll look just as impressive as he always does.”

Base running may be the last test, Gibson said. It's something Giants catcher Buster Posey has dealt with in his return from a fractured ankle and ligament damage in May 2011, and his injury was not as severe as Drew’s.

"I hear that Posey’s biggest dilemma is when he runs the bases,” Gibson said. “When you are running the bases, you have to cut hard, you are hitting the base, you have to start and stop. I think that’s probably, my guess, the toughest part of it. He seems to react pretty well out in the field, from what I’ve seen.”

The D-backs also want to make sure that Drew is ready for the pace of a major league game before he returns. Extended spring training games are more relaxed -- players can lead off each inning if agreed upon, and they do not necessarily have to push an injury.

"You have to make sure that he is ready for a whole new deal,” Gibson said. "He’s pushing really hard, he’s worked really hard, but it’s nothing like what he is going to go through here, where it is pure reaction all the time. When he is hitting down there, if he hits the ball, he doesn’t have to run hard. It’s not like he’s ... got to hit and bust it out of the box.

"That’s the part we won’t really know until he gets into playing virtually every day, or two times in a row and a day off. We don’t know that."