In a typical fact-less anti-A-Rod column, Fox Sports’ Ian O’Connor writes about the uneasy marriage between the Yankees and their expensive third baseman. O’Connor doesn’t think that A-Rod will make it through his contract as a Yankee and anticipates the team’s trading him within five years. My only questions are thus: Why would the Yankees ever trade A-Rod to a team that would be in a position to compete against them? How would the Yanks replace A-Rod’s bat? A-Rod might not be the most beloved Yankee ever, but the two of them can’t really exist without each other anymore.

For the next nine years, we’ll continue having the same debate over and over again: Is A-Rod clutch? Clearly, he’s not doing himself any favors this year. His lack of timely hitting is pretty indisputable this year, though he has brought his average with RISP up to .268, from .248 at the end of August.

Many people think that clutch is unquantifiable and/or a luck-prone stat and disregard it. That’s been a popular sentiment since Baseball Prospectus became relatively mainstream. While I’m not sure where I fall on the issue, I do know that there seems like a perfect stat to qualify clutch situations: Leverage Index.

We saw this stat last year, when we ran some WPA graphs after early-season games. I’ve linked to the definition of Leverage Index above, but the premise is that the higher the leverage index, the more critical the situation. This takes into consideration score differential, outs, runners on, and inning. Basically, it answers the question: How important is this at-bat to fate of my team?

Last week, Carl Bialik, The Wall Street Journal’s Numbers Guy, examined A-Rod’s clutchiness. He uses A-Rod’s OPS in high, medium, and low-leverage situations. He funs:

His career OPS in high-leverage situations is .975. In medium-leverage, it’s .960. And in low-leverage, it’s .972. That’s consistent with the American League as a whole during his career, when each year batters in high-leverage situations hit somewhere between 1% worse and 6% better than they did in low-leverage situations.

Since we’re talking about A-Rod’s failures this year, Bailik shows us that yes, A-Rod hasn’t been that clutch in 2008″

In 2004, he hit 19% better in high-leverage situations than in low-leverage ones. In 2005 and 2006, he hit 17% worse. Last year, he hit 15% better. And this year, he’d hit 32% worse, through Monday.

Bialik went to Jim Albert, Bowling Green State University statistician, for further findings.

The problem is small sample size: In a typical season with the Yankees, Mr. Rodriguez only gets about 130 plate appearances in clutch situations. That’s also why we can’t learn much from his 44 at bats in the last three postseasons, when his performance was abysmal.

Prof. Albert was apologetic about his findings: “Sorry for not giving you better news — no significance is generally not front-page stuff — but this illustrates the dangers of trying to make too much from this type of situational data.”

Take what you will from this. For me, it’s just more uncertainty in the perennial clutch debate.

Over the last few weeks, as the Yanks have slipped in the AL East and Wild Card standings, Yankee fans, looking for a scapegoat, have found their favorite target in Number 13. A-Rod, as everyone knows by now, isn’t hitting well with runners in scoring position this year, and for some reason, this is reason enough to blame an entire disappointing season on the $27-million-man’s shoulders. While we’ve always been on Alex’s side, David Pinto points out a trend: A-Rod’s strike out rates with runners on base are significantly higher than they are with bases empty. With no one on, A-Rod strikes out 15.4 percent of the time; with runners on, that number nearly doubles to 28.2 percent. As Pinto writes, “He’s not even giving the runners a chance to advance 1/4 of the time.”

Mike and I will be enjoying the Derby tonight from Section 31 of the Tier Reserve (fair territory!). So let’s roll with an open thread. Ostensibly this is about the derby, but use this to discuss trade rumors, the terrible state of the Yankee offense, Brian Cashman’s head on a silver platter and anything else that tickles your fancy. If you’re over 21 (of course) want to get drunk during the Derby, play the Home Run Derby drinking game.

Anyway, I’ll start the open thread fun.

This morning, Jayson Stark penned a typical A-Rod-bashing column about Alex’s decision to eschew the Home Run Derby. Stark claims that A-Rod first opted out of the “Call Your Shot” promotion that would have featured David Ortiz had he not been injured and then opted out of the Derby all together. Why? Stark posits it is because of Alex Rodriguez’s fragile psyche.

Well, I’m fairly certain that with his face plastered all over the tabloids these days, A-Rod’s fragile psyche could have handled losing the Home Run Derby. While Stark claims A-Rod may be afriad of ending up on the tabloids after the Derby, I have to wonder how that end result would be any different from, oh, the last two weeks.

Stark slams the Yankees’ hitter — and indirectly Jason Giambi as well — for opting out of the game in their home town. Giambi would have participated had he been selected to the All Star team, but heaven forbid he enjoy a four-day vacation at home for the first time since early February. Writes Stark, “It’s not important enough, apparently, for Alex Rodriguez to risk not living up to his own ego. How sad is that?”

No sadder than an ESPN columnist using the meaningless Home Run Derby as just another platform to tear down A-Rod. It’s an old trope, but would we expect anything else from Stark and ESPN?

Since coming off the disabled list, Alex Rodriguez is hitting .344/.441/.669 with 14 HR and 39 RBI in 45 games. That would put him on pace for 50 home runs and 140 RBI over 162 games. Does anyone really care what else is going on as long as he keeps that up? (And how is that 42 percent of ESPN voters believe A-Rod is least deserving of a starting spot on the All Star team? Jeez.)

Lost in all the talk about Chien-Ming Wang’s injury yesterday was the outcome of Sunday’s game. In it, the Yankee offense erupted for 13 runs, and the Yanks’ team MVP Alex Rodriguez was right there in the thick of things.

On the day, A-Rod was 3 for 5 with a home run, three RBIs and a walk. That performance, his second three-hit game in two days, raised his season totals to .326/.411/.603. By the end of the week, A-Rod will have enough plate appearances to qualify for the AL leaderboards, and when he does, he’ll be in top five in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging. His 12 home runs has him just outside the top 10.

Even more amazing are A-Rod’s numbers since coming off the DL. In 26 games, the Yanks are 17-9, and A-Rod — along with Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon — has led the way. Rodriguez is hitting .366/.470/.710 with 8 home runs — and a ninth that went over the fence but was incorrectly ruled in play — over 93 at bats. He’s even stolen five bases in six tries.

At this point, it’s hard to overstate Alex Rodriguez’s importance to the Yankees. Since coming back, he’s changed the dynamic of the lineup, and that quad injury was just as damning to the Yanks’ early goings as the struggles of Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy. Meanwhile, with A-Rod hitting ahead of him, Jason Giambi is just as hot, hitting .364/.467/.701 since Alex’s return for the DL. What a powerhouse combination.

Yesterday, ESPN.com published an eTicket story by Tom Friend about A-Rod’s close friendship with Pete Rose. Baseball’s all-time hits leader has been coaching A-Rod both mentally and physically as he’s continued to mash the ball in New York City, and I can’t say I mind having Rose, one of the game’s best hitters ever, help A-Rod, one of the game’s best hitters and most tortured souls, keep his head in the game.

In the end, as A-Rod mashes, I keep coming back to October and November when we were ready to move on without Alex. Where would the Yankees be today if Alex Rodriguez had truly jumped the ship? The answer is not a pretty one.

So A-Rod comes off the DL tomorrow. Praise Jebus. The question is now what to do to clear a 25-man roster spot for him. With Betemit out, Alberto has to stay. So the team is essentially left with three options. One, send Britton packing (not that I want to, but he’s clearly the first to go). With the day off today, the bullpen should be completely rested, and we don’t need 13 pitchers. Two, send Shelley back to Scranton. Three, DFA Ensberg. I guess option one seems the most likely. But I wonder how much more time Shelley and Ensberg have on this team.

PeteAbe brings the good news. A-Rod mashed in a simulate game today (?), but more importantly he took 54 grounders of varying degrees of difficulty at the hot corner, and ran in the outfield without incident. “It’s the best I’ve felt since the injury,” Rodriguez said. Yes, A-Rod wasn’t exactly tearing the cover off the ball before the injury, but the Yanks have scored 2 or fewer runs in 6 of 14 games this month. Getting the cleanup hitter back and healthy is better than any trade acquisition could ever be.

When Alex Rodriguez went down with a quad injury that will keep him on the shelf for a few weeks this year, he hadn’t been off to the same start he enjoyed last year. Admittedly, that’s not a fair comparison. How often does any player hit 14 home runs in a month while single-handedly carrying a team?

But despite a slower start, he still had a vital role in the lineup. As the cleanup hitter, he was hitting .272./330/.506 with 4 HR and 10 RBI in 81 at-bats. Those are poor numbers by A-Rod’s standards, but to suggest that the team doesn’t miss him is wishful thinking at best.

In his absence, the Yankees’ replacement third basemen have been downright awful. The three replacements — Wilson Betemit, Alberto Gonzalez and Morgan Ensberg — have now enjoyed 70 plate appearances as third basemen this year. Collectively, they are hitting .239 with a .271 OBP and a .269 slugging percentage. That is utterly woeful.

Things don’t look much better behind the dish either. As a catcher, Jorge Posada hit .321/.345/.429 this year in 29 plate appearances. The other three catchers have put together 114 plate appearances and are hitting .224/.263/.348.

While it’s easy to say that the Yankees were a .500 team without A-Rod and, hey, wouldn’t they still be a .500 team now, that ignores the reality offered by those who have tried to replace Jorge. The Yankees are missing a ton of offense right now, and it’s showing in the product on the field. The middle of their lineup is weak; Shelley Duncan had to hit cleanup against lefties, and even Derek Jeter found himself penciled into the four hole for one game. The bottom of their lineup — drawing well below league-average production from the C and 3B spots — has become a terrible liability. It’s a cascade issue.

The Yankees probably could have withstood an injury to either A-Rod or Jorge. They probably would be two games behind Boston had just one of them gone down. But with both out, this team’s offensive production slides off the table. Get well soon, guys.

According to PeteAbe, A-Rod could be a week away from rejoining the Yankees. Right now, the Yanks hope to ship A-Rod and his strained quad down to Tampa tomorrow. He’ll workout at the Yankees’ complex over the weekend and test his leg in games on Monday and Tuesday before hopefully rejoining the Yankees in Tampa on Wednesday. Sounds good to me.