I’m pretty sure that A-Rod and Scott Boras won’t be getting together for a Christmas Dinner any time soon. Kat O’Brien has the full story, and A-Rod actually comes off as apologetic and – dare I say? – sympathetic.
A-Rod’s deal finalized
Hooray, how anti-climatic. PeteAbe says there will be a press conference in a few where A-Rod will get a chance to explain why his name is in the Mitchell Report what the hell happened last month.
(The Mitchell Report crack was a joke, lighten up)
A-Rod not the best landlord around
We haven’t spoken about our favorite third baseman in a while. And as the Yankees and A-Rod wrap up their contract negotiations, let’s check in on how New York’s favorite son is doing.
Selena Roberts, soon to depart The Times, checks in on A-Rod’s properties in Florida. He is not a very good landlord, she finds. In 2004, A-Rod, flush with cash and arriving in New York, decided to he wanted to invest. So he spent $58.7 million for properties in Tampa that, while aren’t slums, are not in much better shape.
Today, those properties are worth just – just – $46.3 million, and residents are none too impressed with the A-Rod management company:
A-Rod is the face on their leaky faucets, and yet his name isn’t in the welcome kit. Rodriguez’s brother-in-law, Constantine Scurtis, is the company manager — the one whose signature is on nearly $50 million in mortgages for properties in Tampa, according to records — but some of the cashiers and cooks who live at places like Newport Riverside know who holds their house keys.
To them, he isn’t A-Rod, a regular-season crackerjack on the verge of a Yankees deal potentially worth $300 million. To them, he is Tight-Rod, an apartment tycoon, who, renters say, has jacked late fees to $100 from $50 on units that run around $600 a month.
“He’s got everything, so why take money off our backs?” ” said Roberto Santiago, standing next to his neighbor, Ruiz.
Throughout the rest of the article, Roberts looks at A-Rod’s philanthropy and notes how he doesn’t stack up too well with Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods. His donations are meager based on his salary, and his big-ticket items have resulted in scholarships and stadiums named after him at the University of Miami. Whether you want to consider Roberts’ piece a hack job looking to tear down A-Rod or an honest assessment of an absentee landlord, it’s not a very flattering look at the future Hall of Famer.
In other news, A-Rod was supposedly hitting on Rumer Willis yesterday. Rumer is the 19-year-old daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. And, um, yeah, not so much.
BP: How many years are too many?
Since no one really wants to talk about stadium construction, Hank Steinbrenner or, to a lesser extent, the Yanks’ own Action Jackson, let me pander to the commenters just go back to Johan Santana.
In a free piece at Baseball Prospectus today, Steven Goldman writes on lengthy multi-year contracts. His overall point as it relates to the Yankees and Alex Rodriguez is that 10-year contracts for position players are generally not as bad as pitchers. Of course, the scarcity of ten-year contracts makes an in-depth study of them next to impossible, and we’re really relying on the evidence from Dave Winfield as a barometer of success.
When it comes to pitchers, however, Goldman takes a look at multi-year contracts and Johan Santana. He concludes that “the odds of a pitcher surviving ten years unscathed are minuscule.”
But what about the seven years Santana is rumored to want? Let me excerpt:
Of course, many lefties have pitched well at that age [36], but the list of those who maintained their value to a degree that they would be worth the kind of length and value that Santana is apparently demanding is pretty small: Lefty Grove, Randy Johnson, and Steve Carlton comprise the top tier, after which you have to start cherry-picking the odd Jamie Moyer, Warren Spahn, Kenny Rogers, and David Wells seasons. As good as Santana is, history and human physiology are against him.
That said, it’s possible that no one cares. One of the interesting things we’ve seen this offseason—particularly in the contracts for A-Rod, Jorge Posada, and perhaps also what Santana will get—is the kind of contract where no one involved really thinks that the player will deliver value commensurate with the dollars involved throughout the term of the contract. The team does what it has to maintain its ability to win now, figuring that it will deal later with the problem of having an expensive, underperforming vet around.
I like what Goldman has to say here but with a few caveats. First, he doesn’t really control for inflation when it comes to the Posada and A-Rod deals. It’s quite possible that Jorge Posada will be a good deal in a few years as the market for catchers explodes. The same holds true for A-Rod. We just won’t know if these two players become dead weight until after the fact. So assuming that teams are willing to take on contracts that extend beyond the reasonable shelf life of a player is something of a flawed conclusion considering where baseball economics are heading.
But more germane to the Santana discussion is something we’ve mentioned before. The Yanks would be giving up lots of young potential and around $150 million for a player who probably won’t be able to live up to the demands of a $20-$25 million a year contract after the fourth or fifth season. Considering that Santana’s stats put him more in the mold of Johnson or Carlton but physically, he doesn’t profile to be as durable as those lefties, his long-term outlook doesn’t look at rosy as those two pitchers. Wells and Rogers have relied more on pinpoint control and slow, slower, slowest breaking ball approaches to pitching and have managed to stay effective by honing their craft. In other words, it’s unlikely that Santana 2008 and Santana 2012 will be anywhere near the same pitcher.
For A-Rod, a deal of this magnitude makes sense, and the marketing bonuses seem to support the belief that the Yanks will recoup this investment and then some. But for Santana, a lefty hurler at his peak now at nearly 29, it’s buyer beware.
Yanks, A-Rod settle on 30 million reasons to break the HR record
Because it’s been five whole days since we last heard from Alex Rodriguez, let’s check in on how everyone’s favorite third baseman is doing. Courtesy of The New York Times and Murray Chass comes the news that the Yanks and A-Rod have cleared that last hurdle: The two sides have figured out the home run incentive clauses of A-Rod’s new contract.
Chass details how A-Rod could earn up to $30 million more if he tops various home run milestones:
Rodriguez will make $275 million over 10 years in his Yankees contract, which becomes the biggest baseball contract ever. Terms of the contract are expected to be confirmed early this week.
The nonguaranteed part of the contract will be the marketing agreement, which the commissioner’s office and the players union have approved. The Yankees and Rodriguez had to keep changing the nature of the agreement to gain approval because players cannot receive bonuses for achievements like home run totals.
In the approved agreement, Rodriguez will share in revenue the Yankees generate by marketing his home run milestones…Under the agreement, Rodriguez will receive $6 million when he reaches each of five milestones: the career home run totals of Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Henry Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762), and when he breaks the record…
He will get the marketing money in exchange for making certain appearances linked to his home run milestones over and above what players are required by their contracts to do.
Those are some pretty lofty numbers both in terms of home run and salary, and of course, we won’t know how much of this non-guaranteed $30 million A-Rod will see until he actually reaches — or fails to reach — those home run plateaus.
With these new performance/marketing bonuses in place, A-Rod is sacrificing certain other incentive clauses. Gone are the monetary rewards for All Star Game appearances and MVP awards. For $27.5 million, A-Rod better be making the All Star team.
So in the end, A-Rod gets his deal potentially worth over $30 million. If all of these bonuses kick in, he’ll earn $305 million over 10 years. It’s what the Yanks were willing to give him in October before he opted out, and it is seemingly what he and Boras thought he would be getting anyway. But, as we’ve said before, the Yanks turned this deal on their terms. Hank Steinbrenner, the new face behind the game’s most powerful franchise, faced down the game’s most powerful agent and player and won. We get A-Rod; the Yanks get their win. Sounds good to me.
MVP for A-Rod
Nothing surprising here, but how in the world was it not unanimous? I guess the 2 voters that gave their first place nod to Magglio Ordonez felt the Tigers would have missed the playoffs without him. Oh, wait a second…
Update: PeteAbe says the two writers that gave their first place votes to Mags were from Michigan. Seriously. Wow.
Rivera, the Godfather, worked his wonders on A-rod
Remember when Mariano Rivera went all Godfather on the Yanks’ bullpen? He called out Brian Bruney, Scott Proctor and Kyle Farnsworth for sucking. A week later, Proctor had been sent to the Dodgers, Bruney to AAA and Farnsworth to the sixth inning of 11-2 games.
Now, reports are emerging that Mariano Rivera, the Yanks’ own Vito Corleone, was at it again. This time, though, his target was A-Rod. Newsday’s Jim Baumbach reports:
Rivera is believed to have been one of A-Rod’s major sounding boards during the craziness of Rodriguez’s past three weeks. Rivera, according to his friend, told Rodriguez as far back as days after A-Rod opted out Oct. 28 that he should approach the Yankees to tell them how he truly felt.
Hey, if Rivera truly did help convince A-Rod to stay in New York, maybe his own $45-million deal should include some negotiating clauses as well.
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