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A-Rod, NY suddenly in love with one another
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Author:  Wabberjocky [ Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:21 pm ]
Post subject:  A-Rod, NY suddenly in love with one another
Funny how Derek Jeter impersonations achieve that:

NEW YORK (AP) — Alex Rodriguez turned Kei Igawa’s forgettable debut into a day he’ll long remember.

Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two outs and the Yankees trailing by a run. Just the type of pressure situation Rodriguez failed at during the last two Octobers. Nearly the same circumstances as two nights earlier, when he popped out and tossed his bat to the ground in disgust.

This time, A-Rod wound up getting shoved back onto the field by Derek Jeter for a curtain call.

Down to his last strike, Rodriguez came through in the most dramatic way, sending a soaring drive into the center-field bleachers, Yankee Stadium’s famed black seats. His grand slam off Chris Ray, A-Rod’s second home run Saturday, gave the Yankees a memorable 10-7 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

“It felt awesome,” Rodriguez said in the clubhouse, still smiling, the ball perched on a shelf in his locker. “I was so excited, I felt like a fool running around the bases, like it was Little League.”

“Somehow, I knew it was going to come to down to me. Even with two outs and nobody on,” Rodriguez said. “Somehow or another, it always ends up with me somewhere.”

Robinson Cano singled, Jeter walked and Bobby Abreu was hit on a knee by a pitch.

Rodriguez then connected on a 1-2 fastball. As soon as he hit it, he knew it was gone, and what remained of a crowd announced at 50,510 on a 39-degree afternoon went wild.

“It’s something about New York, that I love it here,” Rodriguez said. “There’s just energy. It’s crazy, one way or another. Every night is always exciting.”

Contract extension, anyone?
Author:  wordygurdy [ Sun Apr 08, 2007 12:20 am ]
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Days like the one A-Rod had today (3-for-4, 4 runs scored, 6 RBI) are why Yankee fans get so frustrated with A-Rod. The guy could put up numbers the likes of which the game has never seen if he would only relax in the clutch. He's got game-breaking talent; it just seems to rise to the surface not nearly as often as would be expected in a player of his caliber.

Do we want him to win an MVP every year? No. Just for him to produce when it counts, in October. Reggie did it. Bernie did it. O'Neill did it. Jeter does it. Even Brosius did it.

No one is going to pay A-Rod more than $27 mil a year, including the Yanks, especially now that Brian Cashman has the keys to the family Jaguar. Boras will have about three markets to go to aside from New York (Boston, Chicago and L.A.), and fans in Boston hate A-Rod (though they should really hate Gene Orza, who prevented A-Rod from engineering his trade to Boston in 2004). He'd be a perfect fit on the Angels, either behind or in front of Big Daddy Vladi. Don't know enough about the Dodgers to make an informed judgment.

A-Rod would love to go to the Cubs and reunite with his father figure/mentor, Lou Piniella. But with the team likely to be sold in the near future, will the new owners want to pay upward of $30 mil a year for one player? The White Sox are probably out because supposedly Ozzie Guillen hates Rodriguez "with the intensity of 1,000 suns," according to one New York scribe.

The thing that's even more wearisome is that his contract has yet another opt-out clause after 2008, so we are bound to endure all this speculatioin again throughout the 2008 season as well. I'm already tired of it.

I would rather have a complementary player like Brosius who plays solid defense while contributing some pop at the plate now and then during the regular season but always seems to come up big in the postseason, when it's crunch time (Brosius was the MVP of the '98 Series). But Yankee fans are probably stuck with A-Rod, who will always put up stellar regular-season numbers and poor postseason ones. At least he lives a clean off-field life, is well spoken and patient with the media and hustles all the time. There are plenty of lesser talented players than A-Rod about whom one can say none of those things.
Author:  Wayne Countryman [ Mon Apr 09, 2007 10:55 am ]
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Easy for me to say, cuz I've never made much money doing anything and have never signed a contract that didn't cost me money, but:

If I knew I'd be making millions upon millions, I wouldn't let my agent or anyone else push for so much that it caused resentment and other distractions.

If I were a fan who knew an important player on my team tended to choke, I'd try not to boo him if it were clear it would just make him play worse. Try booing the front office somehow. Write letters. Picket outside the stadium.

If I were a player who disliked pressure from the fans and press or didn't handle it well, I'd avoid playing in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:28 pm ]
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7 1/2 games.
6 HRs
15 RBis.

The Man Who Will Be Known As The Greatest Player In Baseball History is having another godlike start.

Seriously, if A-Rod stays healthy, his career numbers are going to be insanely off the charts.

Sometime in 2013, he'll get 3,000 hits. He could break the Aaron/Bonds HR mark as early as late 2015.

I know it's tough to like him right now for whatever reason, but by all means appreciate him.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Tue Apr 10, 2007 10:09 pm ]
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Oh, he's appreciated. The greatest thing is that Barry Bonds can't do a thing about A-Rod's assault on the record books, including the career home run record. Really, the only thing that could derail A-Rod would be injury (shhhhhhh).

Lately at the plate he has been uncorking such viciously precise swings as to evoke, for me, Darryl Strawberry in his heyday. Strawberry would kick his massive right leg down, and then suddenly the bat would be but a mere twig, a blur, as it helicoptered through the strike zone, and the next thing one saw was the majestic parabola of a white dot as it sailed into the next ZIP code. Same with A-Rod.

When a player is as hot as he is, you wonder how he ever makes an out. (And in fact, tonight the Twins intentionally walked him in the fifth inning with a man on third, while it was still a relatively close game. They pitched to him in his other at-bats, though. I think that's the first intentional walk A-Rod has received this year. It will be interesting to see if other teams take the bat out of his hands, given that his protection is either Hideki Matsui or Jason Giambi, neither an easy out.)
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:14 am ]
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True enough, Wordy. I watched Baseball Tonight and marveled at how A-Rod reached for a pitch on the outside black of the plate without giving any body positioning. He just reached out for a pitch as part of his basic swing, a pitch most hitters couldn't pull ... and viciously yanked it deep into the left-field seats.

Any time any of you get tempted to get worked up over Barry Bonds, just remember that he's a mere less-than-a-decade placeholder for a man who will need no asterisk.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Thu Apr 19, 2007 9:34 pm ]
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Umm...A-Rod is sort of, shall we say, unconscious? Today, after going 0-for-4 and making an error in the top of the 9th inning to let the Indians score their sixth run, to make the score 6-2, came up with men on first and second in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. The Yankees came back to score three runs, so it was 6-5 when A-Rod strolled to the plate.

Joe Borowski uncorked a wild pitch to move the runners to second and third. 1-0 on A-Rod.

The next pitch resulted in a blur of A-Rod's bat. Borowski must have got whiplash as he turned around and watched the ball sail deep into the Yankee bullpen, landing just in front of the black area in left-center. It was gone as soon as he hit it, a titanic, no-doubter blast. 10 homers, 26 RBI, .965 SLG, .351 AVG, .418 OBP.

And you can't really pitch around him, because Jason Giambi is starting to get hot (he hit his fourth homer today). Walking him intentionally today would have loaded the bases for Giambi.

One wonders how thick the booklet Scott (Avenging Agent) Boras is preparing on A-Rod's feats will be by October, the booklet being the main tool Boras will use to try to extort oh, say, $30 mil a year for 5 years from some team in the winter of 2007-08.

One wonders where the team is that will pay such a princely sum.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:44 pm ]
Post subject: 
Nice column here from Wallace Matthews of Newsday on how A-Rod can save baseball. I agree wholeheartedly.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:59 pm ]
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I agree. It is in the best interests of baseball for Alex Rodriguez to break Bonds' single-season HR record (and maybe Hack Wilson's RBI record while he's at it) this season.
Author:  jjmoney62 [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 10:32 pm ]
Post subject: 
Mr. April.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 10:42 pm ]
Post subject: 
Not so much.

According to his ESPN.com stat-splits page, in the last three years — three of the most critically abused of his career — here's how he's done, month by month:

April: .281 batting average, .365 on-base percentage, .526 slugging percentage

May: .337/.451/.640

June: .274/.374/.442

July: .288/.379/.542

August: .300/.388/.565

September: .316/.425.570

October: .364/.364/.727

Postseason (for his career): .280/.362/.485


The comparative June swoon is pretty curious.
Author:  onceahack [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
Wabberjocky wrote:
The comparative June swoon is pretty curious.

Who have the Yankees played in June the last three years?

I suspect that even over three years there aren't enough data points to ensure randomization---that is, that the competition faced by one particular team in any given month is just like the competition it faced every other month. This could be a real trend, but it would take closer inpection of all the variables to say for sure.

But at least it does show that "Mr. April" is not a good fit.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Thu Apr 26, 2007 11:49 pm ]
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You can also look up a player's team-by-team splits on the same page.

The American League team that Alex Rodriguez struggles against more than any other? None other than the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Over the past three seasons, he's hit .253/.347/.447 against them.

By comparison, against Boston in the same time frame, he's hit .275/.398/.484. And he absolutely wears out the usually good Oakland A's, proprietors of one of the biggest pitchers' parks in baseball, at a .321/.405/.585 clip.

I love finding little bizarro anomalies like that in baseball statistics.
Author:  wordygurdy [ Fri Apr 27, 2007 12:22 am ]
Post subject: 
That is interesting, Wabber.

And the Yankees (and the other 29 teams) are generally playing interleague series in June, so that might account for the slight dip in A-Rod's numbers, given that he probably hasn't seen most NL pitchers too often.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Fri Apr 27, 2007 12:34 am ]
Post subject: 
The "June swoon" also serves to show that even when Rodriguez is bad, he's still pretty good. Most hitters would be thrilled to have a season-long .274/.374/.442 line.
Author:  Edit2Eat [ Fri Apr 27, 2007 12:48 pm ]
Post subject: 
What's surprising is that June has been interleague time. Rodriguez should have seen lots more fastballs and, if the pundits are to be believed, inferior pitchers. This June in Coors will be his chance to turn those numbers around, I'm betting.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Fri Apr 27, 2007 3:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
I can't find a unified stat line for Rodriguez in interleague play between 2004 and 2006, but I did find his numbers against National League teams. The sample sizes are all pretty small — between 9 and 13 at-bats per NL opponent, except for against the Mets — but I don't see any big negatives.

His worst line is a 1-for-11 dive against the Dodgers.

Against the Mets, he's at .352/.440/.493 in 72 at-bats.

So I don't see him being overmatched by NL pitchers in interleague play. My read is that, overall, he's slightly below his norms against the NL, but not really in a significant way.
Author:  Wabberjocky [ Wed May 16, 2007 8:18 pm ]
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From Newsday:

CHICAGO - It was a near-given that Alex Rodriguez would cool off from his other-worldly start. No one really expected him to hit .370 with a home run every 6 1/2 at-bats.

But Rodriguez has turned downright chilly at the plate, like most of the rest of the Yankees’ hitters. Rodriguez entered the nightcap in Wednesday’s doubleheader just 8-of-43 (.186) with one home run in his last 12 games, dropping his average from .367 to .319.

“They’re definitely being a lot more careful,” Rodriguez said of opposing pitchers.

It hasn’t helped that Jason Giambi, who had been hitting behind Rodriguez, fell into a funk at the plate. But Rodriguez has also just missed on several balls he has hit deep into the outfield but just shy of the wall.

“I thought I hit that ball in the seats today,” Rodriguez said of a long fly ball to left field against the White Sox’s John Danks.

Yankees Manager Joe Torre said: “It looks like he’s just a little out of whack right now.”

Rodriguez has walked only 14 times in 37 games, an average of one walk for every 10.3 at-bats. Entering his season, he had walked an average of once for every 8.3 at-bats.
Author:  Crabby Editor [ Thu May 17, 2007 8:08 am ]
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Well, A-Rod earned a lot more love from N.Y. than Bobby Abreu.
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