ARod stinks. This is not news.

Consensus is to give Beltran the DH spot and stick with Hicks in RF.

The thing is, Aaron Hicks also stinks. So does Chase Headley. Worst of them all is the pitiful Mark Teixeira ... so bad that I don't think Yankee fans even want to boo him ... they want to laugh at him ... mock him with "MVP" chants.

So it's perplexing to see the criticism constantly leveled at Jacoby Ellsbury and Alex Rodriguez. This skewed criticism simply doesn't reflect reality.

Nobody is really going to fight the notion of taking 200 at-bats away from ARod. But who are you going to give them to? Hicks has a good arm, but it's going to get tiring to watch him stand at home plate and pointlessly attempt to hit major league pitching.

If the goal is to keep ARod fresh, that's probably Girardi's plan, anyway.

But until you find an OFer better than Hicks or Ackley, you may as well continue to put ARod up there and tell him to swing really hard in case the pitcher throws one into his bat.