is A-Gone.
The man who said a bit back when the Yanks claimed a playoff spot…
This feels like home. It’s hard to believe that I played for another two organizations. So much has happened to me here - adversity, some success - that I feel like anything but New York feels weird for me now. Alex Rodriguez
Decided last night that he wanted to test that weird feeling and see how much they will pay, by opting out of the last three $91 million years of his contract. In a nicely timed announcement during game four of the Sux sweep of the Rockies, without really giving the Yanks any chance to present him with an offer.
So the Yanks won’t be negotiating with him as they would lose out on the $30 million the Texas Rangers had to cough up over the next three years, I bet Rangers owner Tom Hicks is a bit happy about being off the hook for that, can use it for more bench warmers at ‘Pool 😀 Unless they have a big change of heart, which reading the utterings from the Steinbrenners doesn’t sound too likely.
“It’s clear he didn’t want to be a Yankee…He doesn’t understand the privilege of being a Yankee on a team where the owners are willing to pay $200 million to put a winning product on the field. I don’t want anybody on my team that doesn’t want to be a Yankee. Hank Steinbrenner
Will be interesting to see what kind of deal A-Rod gets without the Yanks there to push the price up and maybe teams being ready to play a bit of brinkmanship with him and his agent, who claims it’s because of the unsettled nature of the club with Torre gone and no news on any deals with Posada, Rivera and Pettitte and of course nothing to do with any greed. Still think there’s obviously going to be a number of teams that chance their arm and one’s going to be forking out the best part of $30 million plus annually for a number of years to come.
It is a tough loss playing wise, well in the regular season, big numbers that would be extremely hard, if not impossible to replace, he certainly carried the team in the early part of the year and it would mean little or no power from the right side of the plate without him.
And who is going to play 3rd next season? Wasn’t this situation the reason they went out and traded for Wilson Betemit, there’s talk of moving Cano over there along with signing the likes of Crede and Lowell. Latter two have a ring of paying big for someone who has had recent success but then flops in the Bronx that we’ve seen so often.
Yes I wanted A-Rod to stay, didn’t have the negative feelings towards him as so many Yanks fans but now just gotta look at it like this, he put up some great numbers in pinstripes but we won nothing, never even got to the show. So maybe back to the 90s it should be no gaudy numbers just the right players for the right situation.
We’ve lost bigger and better over the years…now just got to find a manager…