|
A friend of mine was recently shocked at my blasé attitude about Barry Bonds breaking Babe Ruth’s home run total. “Don’t you want to see something that’s not going to happen again in your lifetime?” he asked. I replied, “I’m not going to live another 7 years?” Because that’s when Alex Rodriguez is likely to blow past 714 on his way to 800 home runs.
By D. W. O'Dell
A friend of mine was recently shocked at my blasé attitude about Barry Bonds breaking Babe Ruth’s home run total. “Don’t you want to see something that’s not going to happen again in your lifetime?” he asked. I replied, “I’m not going to live another 7 years?” Because that’s when Alex Rodriguez is likely to blow past 714 on his way to 800 home runs.
A-Rod had 429 career homers before the age of 30, and he’s averaging 44 per year. He still has a couple of prime years left before his career numbers start to decline (as they do for all batters after the age of 36, absent magic or steroids). Moving to cavernous Yankee Stadium may ultimately depress his home run totals, but he is still capable of reaching 714 by age 37 and then continuing on for a couple of more seasons.
Of course it’s not a done deal. A-Rod could acquire Ken Griffey’s health problems. The effect of playing in New York could distract him (although it hasn’t seemed to so far). Using a statistical tool called The Favorite Toy, invented by stat guru Bill James, the odds that A-Rod will reach 714 is estimated to be around 42.3%. That’s better odds than you’ll get betting on the Tigers to win the World Series this year.
At this point the odds of A-Rod passing Aaron for 756 (around 30%) look better than the odds of Bonds and his hobbling knees catching Hammerin’ Hank. So why is A-Rod hated in New York? Recent headlines in the New York tabloids have alternatively mocked A-Rod for not hitting game winning home runs in Yankee losses, and then said “Thanks for Nothin’” when he homered*1 during a Yankee rout. Fans in Yankee Stadium have taken to booing him.
Of course the main knock against A-Rod is that before he arrived in New York they won lots of World Series, but none since he came. But baseball is not like basketball, where one great player can turn a mediocre team into a contender and make a good team invincible. And unlike football, post-season success in baseball is much more iffy (last year’s success by the Pittsburgh Steelers not withstanding). If the Yankee’s rotation starts showing its age, especially in October, there’s not much A-Rod can do.
The other knock on A-Rod is, of course, his price tag. Even winning last season’s MVP award doesn’t erase the perception that Rodriguez is overpaid. The recent book Baseball Behind the Numbers examined A-Rod’s “value” to his team’s owner (we’re talking monetary value, from additional ticket sales, concession sales, and broadcast rights). The author developed three different economic models and concluded that in no season did Alex Rodriguez earn his paycheck. From 2001-2005 A-Rod was paid $122 million; he contributed between $69 to $91 million in added revenue.
Of course the owner of the Yankees doesn’t measure success in terms of dollars (the structure of baseball guarantees that the Yankees will make tons of money even though their payroll is nearly twice that of any other team, and A-Rod alone makes slightly less than the entire Tampa Bay Devil Rays roster). George Steinbrenner acquired A-Rod despite already having a pretty good shortstop because he wanted to win more world championships.
That’s an odd thing about Rodriguez--he’s a great player, but whenever he goes, his old team gets better. The Mariners won 109 games after he departed for Texas, and Texas won 18 more games the season after he left them after winning an MVP award.
[Let me take this opportunity to say how stupid it is to give a player on a last place team an MVP award. When Ralph Kiner asked for a raise after leading the league in home runs in 1952, supposedly he was told, “We finished in last place with you, we can finish in last without you.” A-Rod may have been the best player in the league, but if he was so valuable why did the Rangers finish in last place? If A-Rod hadn’t played for the Rangers, would they have done worse, like be put on “double secret probation”?]
A-Rod is no more responsible for single-handedly denying the Yankees a world championship than Derek Jeter is single-handedly responsible for them winning four world championships (Jeter lovers, don’t send me hate mail--he’s a great shortstop and an instant Hall-of-Famer five years after he retires; all I‘m saying is that he had a little bit of help).
But the fact is that he’s done everything expected of him when he came to the Yankees. He’s been good enough on offense to win an MVP award. While he hasn’t won a Gold Glove with the Yankees (he won two at shortstop but had to learn a new position), the guy to his left, Derek Jeter, has. Jeter’s fielding has improved significantly over the past two years; is it a coincidence that Jeter became a better shortstop after A-Rod joined the Yankees? Some statisticians have suggested it’s not.
When A-Rod left the Mariners he said he wanted to play for a contender in a big market—then he chose to go to doormat Texas for $250 million. Now he is on a perennial contender in the biggest market of all, and he still makes the same $25 million a year. So the Yankee fans boo him; so the tabloids take cheap shots; so his boss says bad things about him. I’m sure that when he cries himself to sleep, he wipes his tears away with $100 bills.
But that doesn’t make it fair. |
