So Alex Rodriguez and Reggie Jackson went out to dinner the other night, and Reggie had some advice for Alex because, you know, he’s dealt with this kind of PED thing before. Coming jointly from Hank Steinbrenner, the invisible executive, Mr. October told A-Rod to “hit the baseball and hit it when it counts.” Hit the baseball. And hit it when it counts. When it counts? When is that? Seems to me like it would be, I dunno, ALL THE FREAKING TIME!!! Reggie also some other words for A-Rod, saying he’s disappointed in him and that when he retired he was one of the best of all time and is sad to see his career accomplishment tarnished. You really didn’t think Reggie could go that long without talking about himself, did you? Even Neyer agrees this is retarded.
A-Rod’s slowly decreasing home run numbers
Ben posted on Nate Silver’s A-Rod article yesterday, and I think he hit on some good points. The one line that kind of controlled the discussion: “A-rod is not an easy man to analyze.” He has not had a typical career path, and as we learned from Silver, he’ll have to continue being an anomaly if he is to break the home run record. So if you have always been an anomaly — an outlier, if you will — do you continue to be an anomaly even through your decline years?
I think Jay at Fack Youk did a good job in his criticism of Silver’s analysis. He makes three main points:
- In an large and representative sample, home run totals will decline as a player moves into his mid 30s. It’s just the typical life span of a major league baseball player. Says Jay: “The only problem is, over that ten year period it is extremely unlikely that any individual player is going to have that consistent of a downward slide.” He’s right. As a whole, numbers tend to decline at A-Rod’s age, but there are always those who defy the overall average. I think A-Rod is certainly capable of doing that. I mean, seriously, the PECOTA projection has him hitting fewer home runs in each successive year. That’s just not likely to happen, at least not in that kind of linear fashion.
- The ability to DH will help A-Rod, as it helped Hank Aaron in his later days.
- I’ll just quote him here: “The problem with being on pace to be the greatest home run hitter of all time is that you aren’t going to have too many people similar to you.”
However, I think the most important point comes at the end. Here’s Jay’s take: “For one thing, last year, A-Rod played in only 138 games. If he played 156 games, he was on pace for almost exactly 43 HRs, right in line with a 32 year old Aaron.” My elaboration is that perhaps the PECOTA system saw A-Rod’s drop from 54 homers to 35 homers and took it as a sign of decline, hence the downward projection from here on out. I wonder what the projection would have looked like if Silver extrapolated A-Rod’s season.
Then again, injury is something that hits some players as they get older. It’s just that with A-Rod, it hasn’t happened often in the past so we tend to think it won’t happen in the future. If injuries do become a problem for A-Rod, I can see Silver’s projection reflecting reality. If he continues healthy, we can count on him breaking the 40-homer barrier at least one more time.
Silver predicts a looming A-Rod decline
Nate Silver has been the man about town lately. Famous within baseball circles for his groundbreaking statistical work with Baseball Prospecuts, Silver broke out in a big way when he, on his site FiveThirtyEight, predicted a Barack Obama win to the electoral vote. When he analyzes, people listen.
Yesterday, in a Baseball Prospectus story syndicated on ESPN.com’s Insider, Silver examined the future career of Alex Rodriguez (subscription required). The outcome for Yankee fans is not a positive one.
First, Silver notes that A-Rod is not an easy man to analyze. PEDs or no PEDs, his career numbers to date have been at the top of or off the charts. As Silver notes, though, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
Yet, A-Rod has numerous factors in his favor. He’s very athletic; he is playing for $30 million in incentives; and he could end as he began his career with a bang. However, Silver notes that A-Rod also will suffer from age, an injury risk and the fact that, when push comes to shove, he might just not need that extra. His comparables through his current age include Ken Caminiti and Sammy Sosa as well.
The bad news for Yankee fans is this:
I took Rodriguez’s top 20 PECOTA-comparable players and averaged their performances over each remaining season of their careers…Comparables like Frank Robinson, who aged well, have a favorable effect on Rodriguez’s forecast, and players like Caminini just the opposite one.
PECOTA’s best guess is that Rodriguez will finish with 730 lifetime home runs, running out of steam after another three or four seasons and leaving him just shy of the marks established by Aaron and Bonds. Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty in this estimate. If Rodriguez follows the path charted by Aaron or Frank Robinson, he could finish with well in excess of 800 home runs (and possibly as many as 900). On the other hand, if he draws Albert Belle’s ping-pong ball, he might not top 600. Overall, the system puts Rodriguez’s chances of surpassing Aaron at only about four in 10 and of surpassing Bonds closer to three in 10.
One needs to remember the ways Aaron and Bonds finished out their careers were far from typical. At least as common are folks like Jimmie Foxx (before Rodriguez, the fastest player to 500 home runs), who hit just 34 home runs after turning 33. Only about a dozen players have hit 200 or more home runs from their age-33 seasons onward; Bonds and Aaron are the only two to have hit at least 300.
The worse news is Silver’s home run projection for A-Rod.
[TABLE=10]
A-Rod is committed to the Yanks until 2017. Based on Silver’s projections, A-Rod and his contract will be dead weight by the start of 2013, and he’ll still have four more overvalued years left in the Bronx.
Of course, as we all know, baseball isn’t played on computers. Chemically aided or not, A-Rod will have his fair share of opportunities to prove the projections wrong, but history isn’t on his side.
Damon puts it all in perspective
As Friday night turns into Saturday morning, the Yankees are one day closer to Opening Day. Hopefully by April, A-Rod won’t dominate the headlines. I’m sure that’s naive wishful thinking on my part, but a man can dream.
Anyway, here’s something to chew on overnight. iYankees directs us to an apt Johnny Damon quote from the ProJo Sox Blog:
Damon: “Yeah he did some bad things, he took a steroid. I definitely do not condone that at all, but there could be a lot worse things he could have been doing. He hasn’t done a crime … so, there’s worse things he could have done, but I’ve known Alex since he was 15 and he’s always been super-nice to me, so I’m going to support him and try to help him through this time.”
Reporter: Johnny, what would have been worse?
Damon: “Murdering someone. There’s plenty of things that could have been worse than what he did.”
That basically sums up this whole thing in a nutshell. Many members of the media act as though A-Rod has committed high treason while the players seem to see it as a bad mistake he made a few years ago. He certainly never killed anyone, as Damon noted, and there are far, far worse things he couldn’t do.
Meanwhile, A-Rod seems to recognize that if he and the Yanks win, all will be forgiven. That’s life in the Bronx.
A-Rod tied to disgraced trainer Presinal
Update 1:45 p.m.: Chris directs us to a 2007 ESPN.com article in which the reporter notes that A-Rod had trained with Angel Presinal. So now it appears as though the Daily News is simply re-reporting old news while intimated a steroid/PED connection. This may very well be much ado about nothing for A-Rod, and I’m inclined to believe that this may not be a very compelling story after all.
* * *
I desperately wish we could all buy into Murry Chass’ call to move on with this whole A-Rod thing already. I wish we could be confident that A-Rod put the story to bed earlier this week with a mostly heartfelt and mostly accurate apology.
We can’t however quite put this behind us yet because this story is still developing in ways that could impact A-Rod and the Yankees this season, and it’s quite possible that the S word — suspension — could be back on the table.
The fun started when ESPN Deportes discovered that primobolan is not available over the counter in the DR as A-Rod claimed. That aspect of this story is hardly news. The Dominican is not famous for its exacting pharmacological standards, and from all accounts, it has been as easy to secure steroids and supplements in the DR as it is to by Advil and Claritin at Duane Reade. So fine. Big deal.
What is actually a big deal though is the latest development from the Daily News: A-Rod has reportedly been linked to Angel Presinal, the one-time MLB trainer who, along with Juan Gonzalez, was linked to a bag of steroids in 2001. According to the Daily News’ sources, A-Rod has been involved with Presinal as recently as 2007. If true, this revelation would cast some serious doubt on Rodriguez’s claim that he has been clean since
In fact, according to Andrew Marchand, the Commissioner’s Office could suspend A-Rod as they investigate his link to Presinal. According to the Daily News, A-Rod was warned that his association with Presinal could be trouble for him. (The article also notes that MLB monitors Presinal’s whereabouts. If true, wouldn’t MLB have known that he was associating himself with A-Rod? As poorly as Selig handled this steroid scandal, the league’s investigative unit is nothing but thorough.)
I want to be able to believe that A-Rod was just seeing Presinal to work out with a trainer. But considering that Presinal and A-Rod’s now-infamous cousin are linked by the Daily News, this cat isn’t going back into the bag any time soon. It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.
A double standard for A-Rod (and his cousin)
Update (2:30 a.m.): Who had 36 hours in the “find A-Rod’s cousin” pool? Intrepid ESPN.com reporter Amy K. Nelson along with a producer from ESPN Deporters discovered the identity of A-Rod’s anonymous cousin and respectfully left him alone dug up his story. Basically, Yuri Sucart, a Miami resident is indeed the cousin to whom A-Rod referred on Tuesday. According to ESPN’s sources, Sucart has long “lived his life vicariously” through A-Rod and would do the superstar’s bidding.
Now that this once-suspect version of A-Rod’s story has been proven to be true, the media witch hunt continues to look more and more biased against A-Rod.
* * *
I don’t particularly envy Derek Jeter right now. For the last 13 seasons, Derek Jeter has been the face of the New York Yankees, and over the last 15 months, he’s watched as some of the key players who have surrounded him have succumbed to the steroid scandal.
In Dec. 2007, George Mitchell’s incomplete trainwreck of a steroid investigation revealed numerous drug users on the Yanks’ teams from 2000, and Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens took the their fair share of criticism. Three years before that, Jason Giambi apologized to, well, something that we all took to mean steroid use. Meanwhile, Jeter has supposedly led a clean career in an era filled with PED-enhanced ballplayers.
This week, when finally given the chance to speak to the media yet again, the Yankee Captain issued something more than the vanilla statements for which he has become famous. While expressing his support for A-Rod, he also voiced his disappointment.
Beyond this rare showing of an opinion from Jeter, though, was his statement on the way the steroid scandal — and the so-called Steroid Era — has been covered in retrospect. “Everybody wasn’t doing it,” he said to a gaggle of reporters at Steinbrenner Field yesterday afternoon. “That’s the thing that gets irritating. I think it sends the wrong message to baseball fans and kids, saying that everybody was doing it. That’s just not the truth.”
In a way, Jeter’s criticism is one the fans have been leveling at the media this week. The reporters have seemingly gone overboard in their zealous glee surrounding the A-Rod story. For example, take Daily News reporter Mark Feinsand’s lengthy pieces slamming A-Rod here and here.
As with many who cover the Yanks, Feinsand feels that A-Rod’s apologies have been more scripted than real. He feels that the Yanks’ third baseman should, for the good of the game, just take responsibility for what he did without blaming his cousin, his youth, the pressure of fame or anything else. In all fairness to Mark, he has some good points. After all, how sorry can A-Rod really be when he will exit this game having made well over $400 million in salary alone?
It’s not, however, just this reaction to A-Rod that seems so off. Rather, it’s the reaction to A-Rod coupled with the reaction to Andy Pettitte’s HGH admission from last December. Take a read through Feindsand’s piece on Pettitte. “Good for him,” Feinsand wrote, commending Pettitte for owning up to his mistakes and attempting to put the past behind him. Talk about a double standard.
Of course, this may not be an unfair double standard. After all, Andy Pettitte didn’t go live on national TV to tell Katie Couric he never used steroids. But while A-Rod has been just as forthcoming as Pettitte, the media has been ruthless. Maybe they expected A-Rod to be a bigger figure in the game. Maybe everyone is collectively disappointed that A-Rod, when he eclipses Bonds’ home run totals in a few years, will hold a still-tainted record. Whatever the reason, A-Rod is being far more scrutinized than anyone who has so far admitted to drug use.
Meanwhile, over at the Worldwide Leader, Gene Wojchiechowski is ready to start A-Rod’s clock anew beginning today. Sounds good to me.
Cashman really doesn’t like A-Rod right now
Check out this quote from Brian Cashman following yesterday’s A-Rod press conference (via PeteAbe): “We’ve invested in him as an asset. And because of that, this is an asset that is going through a crisis. So we’ll do everything we can to protect that asset and support that asset and try to salvage that asset.” Salvage that asset? Sheesh, he makes it sound like Alex is an unproductive player with a franchise crippling albatross contract. That’s straight up cold blooded, yo.
Update by Ben (11:14 a.m.): The Artist Formerly Known as Steve sends us this Reuters article with more less-than-glowing quotes from Cashman. “The one thing he could have said was the fact he chose to do this to make himself better … at what he does on the baseball field,” Cashman said. “That’s the truth. I don’t think Alex is very good at communicating … whether it’s about talking about your game and the impact you had on it after hitting a home run or if he had a tough game at the park, let the team down. Anybody that’s been in that clubhouse when he’s trying to talk about success or failure on the baseball diamond knows that is something he is not very good at.” Ouch.
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