Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 937: A Requiem for A-Rod

Episode Date: August 8, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about an odd ad, a Terry Collins quote, Andrew Miller, and more, then discuss the lessons we can learn from the legacy and career of Alex Rodriguez.

Well, it's all right, even if you're old and gray. Well, it's all right, you still got something to say. Well, it's all right, remember to live and live, live well. It's all right, best you can do is forgive. Good morning and welcome to episode 937 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by The Play Index, BaseballReference.com, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hi, Ben.

Hi. How are you? Doing all right. Okay. In an enthusiastic answer, do you have a reason for that or are you just doing all right? No, I'm just doing all right. All right. You excited for the weekend? Next weekend?

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Have you been mentioning this at the end of the show after I hang up? Have you been mentioning this or is this going to Saber Seminar next weekend, which is now sold out. But the Baseball Nerd Conference in Boston every year, it's always great. But this year we are both attending. And the plan tentatively is to do the first ever live episode of Effectively Wild. Yeah. I don't know.

Have we figured out what that means, though? We have not. It's live for the people who are there. Right. It's not live for the people who are there right it's not live people listening it will be recorded as always right okay so this will be like a second tier olympic sport where if you're in the stadium yeah you get to see it otherwise you have to wait until nbc loads it take delay yeah okay and what are we do? We have not discussed that. No, we haven't, have we? No, I don't know. All right, great.

Yeah. So let's see here. War Road, Minnesota. Got a couple of follow-ups. Yeah, not only is it in Minnesota in February, but War Road is the very, very, very, very tip-top of Minnesota. As far as you could go, it is basically right on the border of Canada. So, you know, like if you're thinking about Fargo, for instance. Mm-hmm. Wait, Fargo's in a different state. Fargo's in North Dakota?

Yeah. Well, it's much colder than that. Yeah. So somebody read the rules of the contest that we talked about, and it is only open to architects and contractors. Yeah. That spoils things a little bit. and contractors. Yeah, that spoils things a little bit.

Well, it is, although it fits into what we suspected of it, which is that it is a perfectly reasonable ad that applies to upwards of 30 listeners. They paid for some thousands of listeners who have zero possible interest in this promotion or this ad. Should I play the ad again for people who didn't listen to the last wednesday show sure all right and for people who did they probably won't mind hearing this ad again so this is uh an ad that sam has overheard on giants radio broadcast this season what does it take to win strength endurance durability you've got to be tough and integrity

tough windows are just that. They outlast and outperform the competition. Learn more at IntegrityToughWindows.com and enter for a chance to win a VIP trip to Marvin's Manufacturing Facility in War Road, Minnesota. A guided factory tour, free airfare, hotel, and meals. Only at IntegrityToughWindows.com So that's the ad, and it could not possibly be geared toward a smaller number of listeners. And that's why I love baseball broadcasts. That is about my fourth or fifth favorite thing about baseball on the radio.

Yeah. So we got two responses to that that I wanted to mention. And the great thing about this podcast is that it just seems like whatever we bring up, there's someone who is listening or in the Facebook group or emails us and knows something about that thing or has some personal experience about that thing. There's probably some number of listeners you have to reach for that to be true in most cases. And we have reached it. So Matt Trueblood, longtime time listener Baseball prospectus author Has some personal experience of War Road

And he emailed us to say You wouldn't believe how uninhabitable That place is in February Three winters ago there was a week where the wind chills Here in the Twin Cities metro area Were negative 30 or lower for a week During that week it was at least That cold without the wind chill

The whole time in War Road. They didn't have a day, not an hour or a minute above zero degrees Fahrenheit for something like six weeks. If this thing is really scheduled for February, that's, I can't even, that's not happening. There are plenty of Minnesotans who can't handle

War Road in February. And we also had, we got a message from somebody who went on the factory tour yes jeffrey goldstone facebook group member says i made the trip to war road in 2015 as a guest of marvin and one of their regional distributors the 6 000 square foot welcome center was on our agenda but it was the trips to the manufacturing plant that was the highlight okay it may be something that only those of us who spend our time wondering and worrying about whole unit U-values, leakage rates, expansion coefficients, and SHGCs, look it up, I didn't, would enjoy, but our little group of

Vermont architects loved every minute. The trip from the Twin Cities to War Road in one of Marvin's three private planes, yep, they have three, Was far better than would have been the long drive. And in February, this could only be more the case. So don't diss the prize. It's a fun trip. Ironically, the integrity line isn't manufactured in War Road at all. To see them in production, you'd have to go to Fargo. So there you go.

Yeah. I have a question for you, and then we can put War Road behind us for a while. If someone entered your name and you won, would you go? No, I would not. I don't think I would go. I think I would go. If I could get my family to sign off on me going away for a couple days for no reason. I just like being on a plane alone. I like reading. So I might do it just for that. But yeah, I think I'd go.

Yeah, if I could get an article out of it, I might go. But I don't know if I could. Yeah, I don't think you could. I could get a podcast banter out of it. That's about it. All right. John Lackey was mad at d gordon for bunting in i think the third inning of a normal game uh and i just wanted to bring that up because uh we talk about unwritten rules and my grand theory of unwritten rules and this fits in perfectly i'm not going to go over the grand theory you should have been listening to episode 85 uh if you don't know it but not really 85 either so don't bother bother. But yeah, I mean, really getting

mad at Dee Gordon for bunting in a normal situation in a normal game is like getting mad at John Lackey for throwing a change up. It's like, you know, however you want to couch it, if you say, ah, it's not sporting or it's not manly or whatever, would all apply to a change up, in my opinion. And so i love it uh it's brilliant i love i love unwritten rules like this for for just that reason brilliant john lackey well done uh and uh yeah good yeah so just in a bad mood yeah uh all right i don't know if you saw this and i it's so outlandish that i assume there was a follow-up tweet immediately after that uh took all the fun out of it and so i have not gone back on twitter for fear of seeing the follow-up tweet terry collins said he didn't

consider nimmo for j bruce pinch running last night because for all he knows bruce is faster amazing it's like something he could actually know you would think he'd know like if he'd said because bruce is faster well that might be uh an unusual opinion but baseball men have unusual opinions about things all the time but but even if he said i don't know like even if he'd been like i honestly i don't know i i you know bruce just got here i haven't had a chance but to phrase it as for all he knows for all i know like there's no way that he could possibly determine the answer i love that i'm gonna read that again so this is

mike puma new york post collins said he didn't consider nimmo for Bruce pinch running last night because for all he knows, Bruce is faster. Love that. I love that. Greatest quote. All right. And lastly, I just wanted to give a plug for episode 11 of Sports Writers Blues, which in the middle of it had, I thought, a really wonderful and interesting and informative discussion about whether Yasiel Puig will, well, it was whether he will have more or fewer than nine wins above replacement for the rest of his career. But it was a really interesting conversation between Pedro and Andy about how each of them knows what they know about Puig and how they can come to really very different positions on him. It was just a great conversation. I just can't tell you how likable Pedro is. Pedro seems like the most thoughtful beat writer in baseball right now.

And I mean, there's other skills to being a beat writer than thoughtfulness, but it is one that very few people have, I think, including probably the people on this podcast. that very few people have, I think, including probably the people on this podcast. Thoughtfulness is really an underrepresented skill in modern discourse, and I just like listening to Pedro. Anyway.

Yeah, there's no time for thoughts. You've got to post the lineup on Twitter. You've got to tweet some play-by-play. I guess one more thing I saw this weekend that I wanted to mention. My nine wins above replacement, by the way. That was just what Pedro said is the over-under. Okay. And Andy took the under. What would you take?

I'd take the over. Yeah. All right. One last thing. There was a play overturned by replay review in the A's Cubs game on, I think, Saturday. And it was like, you know, it was the eighth inning and throw from third base to first base. Anthony Rizzo's feet get a little tangled. His feet come off the bag, but not, he's not stretching for it. His feet just come off the bag because he's doing sort of a weird step thing. And the umpire calls the runner safe, even though the throw clearly beats the runner

and Rizzo calls for the replay they go back and yeah they play clearly the runner is beat by probably four inches but Rizzo's feet are not on the bag he is not back on the bag and it is uh it was weird because the play got overturned even though it was seemed very obvious that it was going to be upheld because his feet were not they were like clearly not on the bag it seemed clear that they were not on the back i just noticed it because you're like if you're doing the review if you're the guy in the clubhouse who's trying to decide whether to call for a replay or not you would never call for a replay for a review on that like you would look at it and you go well that's clear that's definitive there's no way they're going to overturn it uh but because it was after

the i think because it was after the seventh inning, they didn't have to ask for a review. It just happened. They didn't have to use one. So anyway, there was no real loss to it, and so they did it. We talk about teams not using their reviews enough on plays that seem to very clearly call for a review, that it's really close, that you might get it.

But this one wasn't even close. And so now it makes me think that they should be calling for tons of reviews. Yeah. That's all. I agree. Okay. It's a weird call. All right.

All right. Did you see the Andrew Miller fireman game? No. Wasn't that like Thursday? Yes. Okay. Last Thursday, he came in with two outs in the sixth in a two-run game. The Indians, I think, had a two-run lead, and Byron Buxton was due up, and it wasn't really a move just to get

Byron Buxton. It was because in the seventh, the Twins had Brian Dozier and Joe Maurer and Max Kepler coming up, so heart of the lineup. And Miller Miller came in and I think the Indians ended up winning by seven runs or something but he came in at a fairly high leverage spot and the margin ended up being pretty wide but maybe that was because he held them there anyway it was interesting that that happened that he came in then and I don't know how much to make of it Because the next time Miller pitched On Saturday it was your standard Save situation he came in In the ninth with a three run lead

And got the save so I don't know If it'll be a regular occurrence But it was notable Yeah did Cody Allen Pitch in any unusual way in the game That Miller got the save in No it was Kluber went eight and then Miller came in. Ah, I see. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know what it means, but they've been, Cody Allen, I think is not really married to the save spot. I think he's made comments to that effect in the past. And Miller has also, he signed with the Yankees, maybe knowing that he wouldn't get saves or he wasn't dead set on getting saves when he signed with the Yankees. I think he said at the time. So maybe these are two good guys to try something experimental with. All right. Okay. Anything else?

Nope. All right. So Alex Rodriguez is maybe retiring from baseball. What would you put the odds on that he's maybe retiring from baseball. What would you put the odds on that he's actually retiring from baseball? 92%. All right. So this is sort of a, well, it was definitely a forced retirement. He would have kept playing just like he was, it seems,

if Hank Steinbrenner hadn't pulled him aside in a very nice way, according to John Heyman's account, told him that he needed to hang it up, that there weren't going to be plate appearances for him anymore, and that he could hang on, travel with the team and bat once in a while, but that realistically he was not going to be a big part of the team going forward, and that it was probably time. And that if he walked away, then he could have a nice retirement in the Yankees organization

as, who knows, special assistant or ambassador or maybe someday hitting coach. And so according to Heyman, again, who wrote a nice TikTok of this decision, A-Rod spent three days on this decision and decided that he would walk away. And so Friday is his last game. These are basically things that A-Rod said at his press conference. All right, there you go. Not to discount Heyman's report, but I was watching the press conference and A-Rod basically said as much. I think Heyman beat the press conference.

Oh, okay. I might be wrong about that okay who cares yeah it doesn't matter the information's out there one way or another so no i don't think i don't think he did beat the press conference anyway there's a photo of the press conference okay is that good so alex rodriguez probably the best player between barry bonds and mike trout yeah yeah i mean pooh holes is the only other one with an argument and also maybe the least popular uh you know i mean really in a i think in a way that probably most of the write-ups of alex rodriguez will focus on in the next few days.

He was a player who was incredibly good, and particularly his, I think, his early career, his age 20, 21, 22 seasons are really outlandish from a historical perspective. He was, you know, Mike Trout before Mike Trout. But I think a lot of the focus is going to be on what a sort of tragedy his career was, in a sense, that you could be this good, that you could be the greatest player of your generation, that you could be one of the few phenoms who lives up to any possible expectation of what your career is going to be. And yet be so unpopular and seemingly so unhappy through it all. unpopular and seemingly so unhappy through it all. And I don't know that any of us writers who are going to write those pieces is necessarily qualified to do a, you know, rich psychological accounting of A-Rod's emotional state through 20 years. But it is definitely a sort of a feeling of loss when you think about the way that his career went and for what

seemed like fairly petty reasons. And therefore, it, I think, behooves us to ask ourselves the question of where A-Rod went wrong and whether there is anything about A-Rod's career that Mike Trout and Bryce Harper should be learning from, if you think that's fair. So when I wrote about Mike Trout as a 20-year-old for ESPN, the magazine, at the tail end of his rookie summer, I wrote, This year may be as good as it gets for Trout. He still may improve as a player, but baseball fans abhor an unchangingly positive narrative and have a hard time

dealing with middle age. Ultimately, many will find reasons to dislike him. Overhyped, overrated, overpaid, overexposed, overconfident. In the past 30 years, only two players were nearly as successful when they were as young as Trout. Both went on to Hall of Fame level careers and both ultimately let fans down. Alex Rodriguez couldn't stay likable and Ken Griffey Jr. couldn't stay exciting. Trout's rookie year is historic, but his legacy is still many, many years from being safe. And Trout, five years later, four years later, has actually managed to avoid even a single bad day from a public relations perspective. I would say the closest maybe was he had a very, very brief and very, very

unserious tension with the Angels over them renewing his contract at the Major League minimum, I think in 2013. And really, that's it. And so he is, he's only 25. He just turned 25 on Sunday. He's only 25. But there's nothing about Trout that would suggest that he's going to let us down or that we're going to let him down.

He seems to be perfectly content to stay the kind of younger brother figure in baseball for now. Harper is a bit different. Harper had some of A-Rod's ambition, some of his flash, and some of what would be described as arrogance. And for the most part, Harper has stayed very popular because Harper has been very fun. But do you think that there are lessons that they can take from A-Rod, who also, I would say, at this stage in his career, was generally seen as very popular, very fun? Yeah, right. I mean, don't sign the biggest contract ever yeah so that's a that's like a really good question because like tiger woods for instance was it seemed like even more popular

because of how much he was making as a young golfer with nike i didn't he signed the biggest i think he signed the biggest endorsement deal ever with Nike, which for a golfer is kind of your salary. And that just added to how big a deal he was. I mean, Tiger Woods was popular up until he crashed his car, right? Yeah, sure. And of course, Michael Jordan, everybody knew Michael Jordan was the biggest, the most lucrative, the most highly paid athlete in the world. And he never stopped being popular or stopped being influential, right? Right. Of course, both of those guys had something that A-Rod also lacked, which was a reputation for being just incredibly clutch, incredibly tough. If Tiger had a lead on a Sunday He wouldn't lose it If Jordan was at death's door

He would still play And score 40 points And A-Rod had the opposite reaction Which was that, I don't know He just put up numbers when it didn't matter And he choked in the playoffs When did that, when do you feel like That narrative picked up

Around him? Because of course he wasn't making the playoffs with the Rangers. Right. And I think that's part of it probably is the fact that he was putting up those enormous numbers for, and you know, winning an MVP award for teams that weren't contending, which is a really unfair thing to hold against a guy. He did as well as he possibly could have done with the Rangers. His three years in Texas were amazing. And it's not his fault that there was no team around him, except for the fact that he was making so much money, which maybe made it harder for

there to be a team around him. And maybe some people held that against him. So I think maybe he, you know, he's hitting 52 homers, 57 homers for just terrible teams. So like what the 2002 Rangers won 72 games and A-Rod hit 57 homers and 2003 Rangers, he won the MVP award and they won 71 games. So I guess that was maybe the beginning is just that, you know, like Jeter, the guy who he was always compared to was winning World Series and playing in the postseason every year. And here was A-Rod with the really flashy stats, but they didn't count in the sense that, you know, people think of stats only counting if you actually win. in the sense that, you know, people think of stats only counting if you actually win. So this is going to be a pattern, but almost anything you can say about why A-Rod is hated, you can say about the same facts about somebody who is beloved. And like, okay, so A-Rod played for a bad Rangers team and Felix Hernandez has played for a bad Mariners team. And in a way, it seems like that has made him more beloved that people were, you know, people really want to see Felix finally get a chance to be in the postseason and Ernie Banks, like, you know, Ernie Banks is famous based on, you know, three things. And one of them is never being on a good team. So A-Rod was very good in the

postseason for the Mariners in, you know, basically three series. And then he went to New York. And in fact, I assumed it was there that the reputation immediately took hold. But in his first division series, he had a 12-13 OPS. In his first league championship series, he had an 8-95 OPS. And so then it really was, it wasn't until he had already been fairly clutch for New York that he sort of stopped hitting in the postseason. And it was really one, two, it was two postseason series. It was two division series.

And I guess it was very bad timing that the Yankees got bounced from three division series in a row. And it felt like that was the, you know, the end of this run where they were the world series favorites like almost like against the field it felt like they were the favorites up until 2003 and then they just started losing and that so to get bounced in three straight division series and for him to be you know more or less completely absent from him i guess would be significant i don't really know that there's a way that you can strategize around that. I mean, he hit in the postseason. Like, that's, if you look at his career, he was a postseason hitter who hit well. Like, that's, it's hard to say, well, not only do you have to hit well in the postseason, but you have to, you have to make sure that it's organized nice and tidy so that nobody can ever find a bad week even to pin on you. Yeah. And he, I think he had the misfortune of joining the Yankees in 2004. So he joins the

Yankees and he was perceived to have a down year. I mean, he was between MVP seasons then, or he was coming off an MVP season. No one knew that he was between them yet. And he had his worst offensive season since, you know, he was 21 or so. So that kind of fed into this idea that maybe he couldn't handle New York or he was not, you know, he didn't perform as well in New York when it mattered as he did in Texas when it didn't matter. And now that I look like baseball reference has that as like a eight win season almost, I guess because of defense, because it really wasn't that amazing an offensive season. But you know, that was a down year for him and he was great. But I think that was maybe part of it. And you mentioned Felix, I think the

difference there is that Felix stayed in Seattle. He signed the extension. He was the one guy who didn't leave for someone else's money. And A-Rod did. I see. Okay. So, yeah. So being a mercenary and going to a last place team is worse.

That makes sense. sense, particularly because of the misguided assessment of the Rangers years that he was that even the Rangers came to believe that he and his salary was part of the problem, which is crazy. But to go to a last to go to a team that to take the highest contract in history and go to a team that then loses. I mean, that is something that like almost everybody is rooting for. I mean, that is something that like almost everybody is rooting for. Like even with athletes we like, I think we sort of root sometimes for like them to lose because it's more interesting, if that makes sense.

And so then for him to go to a team where they completely fulfilled that desire to root against him made it pretty easy. And 2004, his first year with the Yankees was the year that the Red Sox finally won and finally beat the Yankees. And you can't really blame him for that because he had a fine ALCS, but he was there when it happened. So it was bad timing on his part, I think. If he had not agreed to play third base for the Yankees, and if he had made a big deal out of it and say I don't know Jeter had moved to second or something to accommodate him is there any way that that would have I guess what I'm saying is that it feels weird that his agreeing to go to third didn't

get him any points at all yeah and I wonder yeah no and I gave him points so since it since it didn't you wonder whether in fact our culture maybe values some other quality that if he had held firm and bent. Like if he had, I don't know. I don't really know. I don't really know how to say it. I think maybe Yankees fans just never would have even occurred to them that Jeter would be the one to move. Yeah. Because he was, you know, the captain by that point.

But hadn't A-Rod won the gold glove the year before yes but uh the two years before yep people still thought Jeter was a good shortstop though but yeah I mean I don't know that was a that was a debate I remember having just like in eighth grade or you know in high school like who do you want a rod or jeter and i always said a rod because he was putting up ridiculous stats and i remember having a that argument with my friend andrew just back and forth back and forth just the the typical intangibles versus gaudy stats i guess the the kind of point that i was trying to make or the feeling that i have is that maybe by agreeing to go to third he set himself up forever to be subservient to jeter

and that it would never be his town it would never be his team he would always be the you know the mercenary kind of or the you know the guy who was brought in to help cheater and you could i don't know you could maybe imagine a different world where he i don't know by fighting to be the leader of that team he would have earned more respect from people who saw him as something other than just you know a guy that goes around being paid a lot to be good at baseball. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe it is the sort of thing where, I mean, in the short term, I'm sure people would have criticized him and said he was selfish and who is he to come in here and make Jeter move, the guy with all the World Series rings.

But yeah, maybe in the long term, people would have had a grudging respect for him sort of holding onto his turf. Did the PEDs change how much people disliked him, or was that already pretty well established, in your opinion? It definitely changed it, certainly outside of New York. I think by that time he already had the reputation for choking. In the postseason, what was the first time that he confessed or was caught in the lie? What year was that? Was it 2009? 2009, February 2009. Okay. I think, right. So by that time,

he was coming off the 2005, 2006, 2007 ALDS. He was fine, really. But it was, you know, like was fine really but it was you know like 2006 ALDS 2005 ALDS so he had that reputation even though he won an MVP in 2005 and then won another MVP in 2007 I mean I you know I was amazed just watching him in those years he was the best player I had ever watched on a regular basis. But yeah, I think that the PD stuff definitely made him less popular. He wasn't beloved, I don't think, in the way that you would expect a two-time MVP for your team to be, but that definitely hurt. So everybody disliked him already. And Serena Roberts was able to write a book that was essentially an extremely critical hit job on him. And that was who he was as a public persona. But I think we see, especially

in baseball, probably in all sports, that when you get older, you take on a different place in the public imagination. And if you just make it to old age, generally you start to look wise, people love you, and you get all sorts of kind of reassessments of your personality. And I guess it's easy to think, well, everybody already hated A-Rod in 2009, so probably the PEDs didn't matter that much. But I would bet that they prevented the reassessment. That while we think of A-Rod and while Andy McCullough, for instance, painted this picture of A-Rod as this kind of goofball hero. I don't know. Goofball hero doesn't seem right. I don't know what does seem right.

But while there is a generally positive feeling of A-Rod among, I think, people that we follow on Twitter, that's very much the minority opinion. And A-Rod did not get the middle-age bump that would be expected of a player of his stature reaching a certain age. Yeah, especially because in 2009, he was a monster in the postseason. He was amazing. Right, yeah. And yeah, so coming after the revelations that he was a PD user, instead of that completely clearing away the no-clutch reputation that he had, and now he is a player without flaws, it just, you know, it came at a point where it was almost impossible for anybody to start liking A-Rod.

It just, you know, it came at a point where it was almost impossible for anybody to start liking A-Rod. Yeah, like Bonds, right, who had the same reputation for choking and then hit fine. But by that time, he had kind of poisoned the well. So some bad decisions, some bad timing, general lack of generosity from the public. But if you're Bryce Harper, what are the, I mean, look, Bryce Harper is going to go for the biggest contract ever. He is going to be going for it with great pride. It is probably something that he aspires to and that he will see as a signifier that he has made it in this sport. And you could imagine that going either way. So how do you, if you're Bryce Harper and you get a half a billion dollars, how do you keep it from being the thing that derails your happiness for 15 years? that would also help. I think, I mean, A-Rod just always, it's partially his persona, just the way that he kind of always seemed like he wanted everyone to like him and he just

didn't seem as confident or as comfortable in his skin as you would expect this superstar, you know, inner circle Hall of Fame type talent to to be and every now and then he would do something on the field that seemed to confirm that whether it was the the slap play or the the ha when he shouted ha oh my gosh so that's a i forgot about yes we talked about this with andy too like that to me is like the perfect example of no matter what a rod did from a certain point on yeah it wasn't gonna work because like that is such a small thing we're running across dallas braden's mound yeah that one didn't really stick to him though because dallas braden was such a you know like dallas braden turned into the heel i think in that one i think that's true but yeah

like the slap it like it's like again like i think I said this when we talked about it the first time, but it's not as though like he was like trying to engage in some sort of like sneaky subterfuge that like nobody was in. Like he slapped the ball in front of everybody and the glove in front of everybody. And if there's a rule against that, then they call you out. Like, what was he doing? He was just trying to win. He was like, like he just instinctively was like whoa whoa there's a oh don't tag me and like that's it like i don't and yet somehow like that is like to me that is the baseball equivalent of al gore invented the internet like just i hear it so much and it's just not a thing it's not a like that's not a

thing at all but that's that's a rod and i think a rod would have been better off if he had had bryce harper's reputation for being brash or too cocky i mean maybe there was some arrogance was part of a rod's reputation but really it was that he was too sensitive or he was too eager to please or he was too polished or something. Too pretty. Don't you think it's too pretty? Yeah, that's probably part of it. Well, I mean, that didn't hurt Jeter any though, but. Jeter's not actually pretty though. Jeter has, Jeter has, no, Jeter has nice eyes, but Jeter is, Jeter has a sort of a, like an asymmetry in his face. Jeter. Jeter is not a conventionally handsome man. Yeah, not to the same extent that A-Rod was, I guess.

Right. A-Rod is like really – A-Rod is gorgeous. Like A-Rod is that Ronaldo thing, right? Yeah. I mean he's – I guess his whole persona is sort of Ronaldo-esque, but I think that's something that probably helps Harper and Trout in avoiding the A-Rod scenario, just because Trout is just, you know, he's just like an aw shucks, gee whiz guy who likes meteorology

and says neat and never says anything controversial in any way. So that probably hurts him as a superstar or as a guy who gets endorsement deals, but it probably helps him, you know, stay out of the public eye for bad reasons. And then Harper just is perceived to, and probably to some degree does, have this attitude and this chip on his shoulder or you know sense of entitlement whatever it is and that is probably something that i mean it definitely annoys people and you know people will say oh bryce harper he doesn't play the game the right way or whatever but everyone sort of respects that more i think than they do A-Rod's persona. So will he make the Hall of Fame? I mean, certainly not via the current method, via the BBWA voting.

I guess we'll just have to see what happens with the new Veterans Committee and whether that will be the way that some of the steroid users kind of slip in who didn't get elected. some of the steroid users kind of slip in who didn't get elected. So, you know, if that happens, if guys like Bonds and Clemens end up getting in kind of through the back door of the Veterans Committee, then A-Rod certainly belongs in that group. But I can't imagine him doing any better in the voting than those guys did. So the only reason that I can imagine him doing better in the voting, besides the demographics of just people in six years, there will be more turnover of the voters. And young voters seem to care less about this. using drugs, who ever, you know, basically played in the era where there was a method for disciplining players who were caught and where you could serve your time. And so in some sense,

maybe it's disproportionate, but in some sense, this is how you hold Bonds and Clemens accountable because the league never was able to or never did. A-Rod, on the other hand, at least for his second instance, did serve his time. You know, he was punished. He missed a year of baseball. So you could, if you were a voter, you could say, you could maybe say that that was the punishment. Like that's a closed book, perhaps. Yeah, you could, or you could hold it against him even more because he did this in an era when everyone knew what the consequences were, when, you know, there was a real stigma associated with it.

Like you could kind of excuse the pre-2004-ish guys and say, well, everyone was doing it. There were no consequences. Everyone was looking the other way. It was still cheating, but, you know, it was kind of just everyone did it. Everyone got away with it. And A-Rod came along years later, and this was after there was testing. And, you know, he had this whole regime, and he was skirting the testing, and then he was lying about it publicly multiple times and like baseball had already gotten its black eye and was coming back from that and then he just you know gave them another black eye so i could see people holding it against him even more and it's not totally unfair to think that way yeah all right uh anything else about a rod i mean i'll miss him i will too yeah I mean, not just because he's been an entertaining news story for various reasons for the last few years, but just in his prime, obviously, was just an amazing player.

Just both sides of the ball, really great to watch. And I just kind of liked him as much as I knew him and not any more than anyone else did but I just sort of I don't know the things that annoyed other people just sort of made me feel sympathy for him and even in his press conference you know his emotion seemed very genuine and it was just a sad thing to have this guy who was one of the greatest players of all time just kind of you know like giving thanks that he was going to get the chance to get a few more at bats it was sort of a pitiful way for his career to come to an end yeah i mean when i think of him like yes he's a ped user you know among the worst violators certainly among the worst that we know of what

they did. And yet, I don't know, it doesn't really diminish how I think of him as a player, maybe just because he came up so young and was so great immediately and was just seen as like an all time talent. You know, even before before he made the majors he's a number one pick and just everyone knew that he was going to be a rod almost from day one that that just sort of makes me think that i don't know i don't really have any basis for saying how much drugs helped him or didn't help him but he was just so talented from such a young age and just had so many physical gifts that were clearly not a product of the PDs that I just think he would have been an all-time, 115 wins above replacement player. I mean, if I had to like assess some sort of PED penalty on that, it would be a very small fraction of his total, which, you know, again,

I'm guessing it's not based on anything for all I know, for all I know, Brandon Nimmo could be faster than Alex Rodriguez. I don't know. But yeah, for all I know, he could have been taking stuff from high school on and he was never not on it. And, you know, I don't know. I have no real basis for saying it, but I'm just in the way that I will remember him, I won't think of him as like a steroid product the way that I might say Sammy Sosa or something, you know, someone who just seemed to really have a elite career, just not only physical change, but

complete change as a player and became something he'd never been before and wasn't really that great before that. I just don't put him in that class. So I think he was just an amazing player. Yeah, I do too. And I agree with you that he was this great of a player from the moment he was born. He was always going to be a great player. There's this New Yorker cartoon that was on our refrigerator until we moved, and I just threw it out. It had been on the refrigerator through two moves,

but the third I wasn't going to do. But anyway, there's a man. He's sitting at his desk. And he is just complete, like the room is just completely filled with money, like stacks of money, bags of money, gold, bricks, everything. And he's sitting among this pile of money. And like a genie is next to him. And the genie is saying, it's your third and final wish. Are you sure you just want more money? And that is kind of how I feel. I feel like that's sort of, if there

is a tragedy in A-Rod's career, there's probably a few, but that you, it is probably, I don't know, an important thing that we learn from A-Rod that we are insatiable and there is really no goal where you're ever going to reach it and say, well, I've done it. And A-Rod had, you know, all the money in the world, all the prestige he had accomplished so much. He was the best player in baseball. And multiple times, he, multiple times, even after, you know, being busted, multiple times, he decided that he wanted more. And that, you know, he would, he would do things for that more, that surely at some, you know, probably in some part of his brain, he felt guilt about and that he certainly knew was exposing him to great risk. And yet he did it anyway. And I don't know, that's to me that I feel really sad that he felt that way. But I also kind of feel sad that I think probably we all feel that way. A-Rod is a reminder that all of us are living lives of, you know, that we are all blessed and yet through it all, we all want more. And we are all, you know, that we are all blessed and yet through it all, we all want more.

And we are all, you know, somewhat morally ambiguous in pursuit of having more. And that's sort of an unwelcome reminder, but probably an important one. So you had a bet going with Andy McCullough on A-Rod's all-time home run total? Are you conceding? I owe him a buck. I think I actually conceded a couple years ago, and then A-Rod brought it back. But yeah, he didn't get there. The other thing about A-Rod, by the way, is to go from being as good as he was last year to as bad as he was this year, would be, even if this were not A-Rod, even if this were David Ortiz or something, that would already be an interesting story. We could have spent a whole episode talking about how you go from a 130 OPS plus to a 62. Yeah.

And how hard baseball is on the old or something like that. Yeah, I wrote a story a couple of weeks ago comparing A-Rod's age 40 season and Ortiz's age 40 season because it's just such a contrast. You know, like Ortiz getting the full-fledged farewell tour A-Rod getting released Ortiz being the best hitter in baseball A-Rod being unplayable it's interesting parallels in their careers and also ways in which they completely diverged and you know like A-Rod's the longest tenured Yankee. And now he's just getting shown the door. And Ortiz is the longest tenured Red Sox. And he's, you know, one of the most popular players in franchise history.

Dude, will the Yankees even retire A-Rod's number? I wouldn't think so. Oh, my gosh. He's got, let's see. So he won two MVP awards as a Yankee. He had one of the greatest postseasons ever and carried them to a World Series. Yeah. And he produced, by baseball references, measures 55 wins in 13 seasons.

12. 12, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's right, 12. Yeah, that's really impressive He has the stats to be way better Than most of the people in Monument Park But I don't know, maybe

Decades down the line When his career is put in Some sort of perspective You never know Okay, so that's it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged are Leland, Rob Phibbs, Brian Hamilton, Craig

Manami, and Dino Champlone. Thank you. You can buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has To Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Check out the website at theonlyruleisithastowork.com for more information. Leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads if you like the book. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index at baseballreference.com using the coupon code BP,

and you can email us at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. You can hear me on the Ringer MLB show tomorrow. I think I'll have a couple of cool guests. And Sam and I will be back after that with a listener email show. Talk to you then. I love you, Alexander. You bring me through the door.

You look at the whole world. That's what I like. In your green eyes, you shine like mistrust. Die ganze Welt, das ist, was mir gefällt. In deinen grünen Augen glänzt das Misstrauen. Du bist arrogant, ignorant, ich finde das charmant. Einetien, einetien, ich für einen jungen, jungen wie dich. Ja, das ist fantastisch.