THE baseball operations de partment of the Yankees, headed by Brian Cashman, made a baseball decision. This was not about egomania gone wild or insecurity on parade or the fact that Alex Rodriguez was controversy’s best friend.
And it was two years before the world would learn A-Rod was a steroid cheat.
No, in the fall of 2007, Cashman’s department recommended that if A-Rod opted out of his contract for free agency that the Yankees should move on without him. This was not about hating the player. This was about hating the idea of giving even an all-time star record dollars into his 30s and, gulp, his 40s.
Cashman had witnessed – and in many cases been responsible for – larding recent Yankee teams with declining veterans who clogged the roster and overinflated the payroll. So his department reasoned that what might feel good today by having Rodriguez as the cleanup-hitting third baseman would feel miserable someday during a long contract when even A-Rod’s seemingly indestructible body began to deteriorate, turning him into a 19-homer DH or first baseman.
The advice was ignored for reasons having to do as much with future TV ratings on the team-owned YES Network as winning.
And now the worst fears of the baseball ops department might be coming true way ahead of schedule. It already might be the Day After Tomorrow.
Rodriguez has a labrum tear and a cyst in his right hip. The cyst has been drained and the Yanks hope that will alleviate the persistent stiffness and allow Rodriguez to return as close to elite form as possible through the end of the season.
Or it is possible that Rodriguez will need surgery and not even re-appear on the radar until August.
But even under the best-case scenario, we now see all the worst, long-term possibilities clearer. Remember Rodriguez has not even begun Year 2 of that 10-year, $275 million contract. He is due $32 million in an already imperiled 2009, the largest amount ever given to a baseball player in a season. He is contractually tied to the Yankees through 2017, longer than any other player in the majors is contractually tied to his team.
This is occurring to A-Rod’s body at age 33. What will he look like at 38 or 40 or 42, when the contract finally ends?
Hip injuries turned Albert Belle and Bo Jackson from freaks of nature into, eventually, ex-baseball players. We will see what they do to Chase Utley and Mike Lowell now, and also to A-Rod.
Rodriguez is not around for his winning personality or his clubhouse leadership. His self-absorbed antics are barely tolerated because of 40-120. Once he is not producing 40-120, his value to any organization falls worse than the Dow.
So if hip problems sap his power at the plate or agility in the field, what do the Yanks have? They already might have to hide two of those aging, deteriorating players they have signed for too much and for too long – Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada – at the DH spot.
What happens to the Yankees’ roster construction and season if Rodriguez cannot play a position ably?
We assumed A-Rod’s mind would go before his body, and we just might be wrong.
In fact, all assumptions are off, including the idea that A-Rod will one day be the all-time homer champ. He is holding at 553 now, waiting for his body to tell him when he can continue.
This merely makes greater folly of the reason Yankee ownership, in tandem with YES officials, decided to retain Rodriguez. They imagined ratings magic as A-Rod stalked Mays and Ruth, Aaron and Bonds. They were willing to pay big dollars for a long time to see Rodriguez hunt down history.
Now the steroid revelations taint the chase, and this hip injury provides a window into how the next nine years might play out. It is a long way until 2017.