SEATTLE — No matter how much you hate Alex Rodriguez, regardless of how much you blame him for the Yankees’ myriad headaches, baseball’s illegal performance-enhancing drug problems or the tropical storm that hit Tampa yesterday, you should root for him to avoid being suspended this year.
That’s because what you really want — if you’re a Yankees fan, at least — is for A-Rod to be suspended next year.
For if Major League Baseball actually can procure a 100-game suspension against the Yankees’ beleaguered third baseman in 2014 — hardly a slam dunk, but a possibility — A-Rod might just save the Yankees in the process.
Three sources familiar with baseball’s collective bargaining agreement confirmed yesterday that, when a player gets suspended and loses salary as a result of an illegal PED violation, it impacts a team’s luxury-tax commitment.
This is meaningless for most teams. For instance, the Brewers don’t sniff the luxury-tax threshold, so a suspension for Ryan Braun would carry no relevance beyond the money Milwaukee would save from his forfeited paychecks.
For the Yankees, however, it couldn’t be more meaningful. Hal Steinbrenner’s stated mandate to get the team’s 2014 payroll under $189 million would become considerably easier with a 100-game suspension for A-Rod.
Here’s how this Yankees fantasy scenario would work:
1) Anthony Bosch, having agreed to speak with MLB, turns in substantive proof of his relationship with Rodriguez — not just verbal testimony, but physical evidence like canceled checks or photos — to give MLB the ammunition it needs to impose discipline.
2) MLB takes this evidence and combines it with the answers Rodriguez provided in a 2010 meeting with league investigators (he denied using illegal PEDs beyond the 2001-03 period to which he already confessed) and decides to suspend A-Rod for 100 games, the usual penalty for a second-time offender.
3) The process, including an ardent appeal by Rodriguez’s army of attorneys and public-relations gurus, drags through the regular season, into the winter — only to end with an independent arbitration panel ruling in MLB’s favor.
4) This would cost Rodriguez, due $25 million next year, approximately $15 million in salary. And all of that would come off the Yankees’ luxury-tax calculation for 2014.
(If the resolution occurs this year, then A-Rod would serve his sentence part of this year and part of next year, and the luxury-tax relief would be pro-rated accordingly.)
Given how much salary the Yankees need to shed from this year’s payroll of approximately $230 million while intending to give Robinson Cano a significant raise, that extra $15 million would be quite significant. It would make it easy to retain Hiroki Kuroda (his exact salary this year is $15 million), if Kuroda keeps pitching well and wants to join the Yankees for a third season.
What is the likelihood of this all going down? I’ll give it a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. Bosch hardly is an ideal witness, and he already has damaged his credibility with public statements denying what he now seems eager to confirm. MLB’s concessions to Bosch, while understandable, serve as red meat to the Players Association attorneys, whose job will be to destroy the founder of Biogenesis.
And even if Bosch’s words and items hold up under scrutiny and MLB prevails, a 100-game suspension for A-Rod, as someone who has zero violations in the drug program, simply might not be viable. A 50-game suspension would give the Yankees about $7.5 million of salary relief, still meaningful.
Remember, irrespective of Rodriguez’s problems with baseball law, his greatest threat remains his health. If a doctor confirms he is no longer physically able to play baseball, that would relieve the Yankees of 80 percent of their commitment to him, with insurance companies picking up the tab.
However, in that instance, A-Rod’s salary still would be part of the luxury-tax calculation, meaning if Steinbrenner is serious about staying under the $189 million figure for principle’s sake, this wouldn’t help the Yankees’ quest. Of course, the savings from such an endeavor — A-Rod is due $86 million from next year through 2017, and 80 percent of that is $68.8 million — could be so profound that it might open Steinbrenner’s mind to surpassing the luxury-tax ceiling.
Even after hearing of Bosch’s decision to flip, we still are early in this Biogenesis game. And if you’re a Yankees fan, this is a game you don’t want to end until next year.
ken.davidoff@nypost.com