Read this, don't read this.

Sports Illustrated provides a well-researched and thoughtful report on the latest ARod controversy.  You know: Journalism!:

"It’s a cliche to say that 'time will tell' when it comes to Rodriguez’s fate, but a legacy is something that’s determined over a long period of time, not via a knee-jerk response to breaking news. In the wake of the latest revelations, the urge to shovel dirt on Rodriguez is understandable, but much of it is founded in fantasies that some process can make him disappear. Like the rest of the steroid scandal of the past few decades, that’s simply impossible."

Retirement, voiding of contract, release, inability to come back from injury: All of these outcomes seem exceedingly unlikely.

Without exception, fan bases seem willing to forgive any player as long as they are productive (reference: Melky Cabrera, $16 million). With a rehabbed hip, I actually believe that this is possible.


For the opposite of journalism, we can turn to the always reliable Mike Lupica and Ian O'Connor.

Lupica conveniently remembers that Texas paid a major chunk of ARod's salary for four NYY years, two of which were MVP years:

"Everybody was happy. Why not? The Yankees thought they were getting the best player in baseball, one in the middle of his prime, they had even gotten the Rangers to pay nearly $70 million of his contract. Maybe we should have paid closer attention to that, how the Rangers didn’t just want to get rid of Alex Rodriguez, they were willing to pay the Yankees big money to get out from under the last seven years of the $252 million contract they had given Rodriguez when he had left the Seattle Mariners."

ARod's production in New York -- and his entire career -- may have been fraudulent. But there is simply no way to claim that his career has been unproductive.

ARod has delivered 2 MVPs since 2004, 1 ring, 8 playoffs.

Since that day in 2004, all the Rangers players combined have one less ring than ARod.

So the Yankees won and the Rangers lost, right? Is that your point?


O'Connor simply makes no sense whatsoever:

"The same man who once upstaged the World Series by opting out of his contract has upstaged Super Bowl week by allegedly opting out of his responsibility as a clean athlete … again."

For the sake of a pointless and tenuous link to a story from 2007, O'Connor actually said that ARod's story is currently upstaging the Super Bowl.

Even with a relatively pedestrian Super Bowl matchup, ARod's story is not upstaging the Super Bowl by any measure.

Perhaps a small point, but still indicative of O'Connor's insistence on bending the truth.


"The Yankees aren't ready to comment on the specifics of this case, but there's nobody in the organization who would dispute the fact that Rodriguez now represents the worst investment they've made, 2009 title or no 2009 title. Carl Pavano for $40 million, A.J. Burnett for $82.5 million and Kei Igawa for $20 million have nothing on Rodriguez for $275 million."

I love how the only ring that doesn't matter is ARod's ring in 2009.


The Yankees spent $46 million on Kei Igawa. Ian O'Connor knows this and Ian O'Connor is therefore a liar.

For that $46 million, the Yankees got 2 wins.

Which is a slightly worse ROI than the Braves got for Mike Hampton in the mid-2000s, by the way.

Three years, $45 million, 3 wins. But Hampton was injured, so that comparison is kind of unfair and uninteresting.  Still, there is no way ARod's contract is worse than Hampton's.



"Same goes for other people in other places. Mike Hampton for $121 million with the Rockies? Eddy Curry for $60 million with the Knicks? Albert Haynesworth for $100 million with the Redskins? Oliver Perez for $36 million with the Mets? Gilbert Arenas for $111 million with the Wizards?

In the end, Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez outplayed them all. He should take a victory lap around the bases for that."

O''Connor's analysis is simply incorrect. All the contracts he listed are worse than ARod's.  I can list dozens of other contracts that have been worse than ARod's.


One analyzes an investment properly not simply by its size, but by its return.