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Bob DiCesare: A-Rod’s exit leaves Yanks better off
By Bob DiCesare
Updated: 10/29/07 8:28 AM


So, Alex Rodriguez has elected to opt out of his contract with the New York Yankees.

Leave behind $72 million in guaranteed salary.

And all because he’s uncertain about the Yankees’ commitment.

That’s a good one, wouldn’t you say? A-Rod questioning how serious the Yankees are about winning? Isn’t that like questioning whether England’s serious about soccer?

Speaking about commitment to winning, has anyone forgotten that A-Rod is 7 for 44 with one homer and one RBI in his last three postseason series with New York? Has it slipped anyone’s memory that baseball’s highest-paid player has been one of its bigger postseason busts since the mega-deal was signed?

Agent Scott Boras said late Sunday night that his client is opting out of baseball’s richest contract because the Yankees are entering an offseason fraught with uncertainty. ARod wonders whether Mariano Rivera will be back, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte. He makes it sound as if the Yankees might not make a strong enough effort to win a World Series, forgetting, apparently, that New York took on his 10-year, $252 million deal when no one else would or could, and that they annually outspend Belgium.

Why doesn’t A-Rod just own up? He wants nothing to do with the playoff pressure that comes with being a Yank. The franchise shouldn’t have been courting his return to begin with. Granted, his presence boosts attendance and local broadcast revenues and further fortifies the Yanks’ image as baseball’s financial bully. Doubtless he just produced one of the finer seasons in big league history, batting .314 with 54 homers and 156 RBIs. But as October arrives and the pressures heighten, A-Rod’s been the ball at the end of the chain, a burdensome weight to tow.

One number echoes within the mountains of glorious statistics compiled by Rodriguez throughout his career: zero, his number of accrued World Series at-bats.

The trade that made him a Yankee bolstered his supporting cast, placed him at the heart of a fearsome lineup, yet has translated into postseason progress no more substantial than what he achieved during his tenure with Seattle. Rodriguez appeared in the American League Championship Series twice with the Mariners, once with the Yanks, and distinguished himself in none of the three. What you get for $25 million a season, or whatever upgraded salary eventually emerges from this latest round of fiscal absurdity, is a third baseman capable of leading a team into October but one who shrinks into irrelevance once it arrives.

The roster restructuring overseen by General Manager Brian Cashman has distanced the Yanks from their glory days of not all that long ago. Once baseball’s ultimate gamers, the Yanks have ceded that distinction to the Red Sox. It’s Boston, not New York, that strings together quality at-bats and pushes opposing pitchers to the point of exhaustion. Fact is, the Yankees are in far greater need of a Scott Brosius, a Bernie Williams, a Paul O’Neill than an uninspired (and uninspiring) A-Rod.

Yes, A-Rod’s extraordinary regular seasons enhance his team’s chances of making the postseason. And if that’s the extent of the franchise’s ambitions, bringing him back would have made perfect sense.

But the Yankees always have been about more than just making it to the postseason. They’ve been about winning world championships. In that regard, ARod wasn’t much of a return on their investment.