Defending A-Rod

I understand the desire to root against Alex Rodriguez. He seems extremely vain, cares way too much about what people think, and seriously insulted all of our intelligence in 2001 when signing his $252MM/10 year contract with the Rangers by insisting that he just wanted to win (the Mariners finished 20 games ahead of Texas in 2000, and 43 ahead of them in 2001). To make matters worse, after only three years with the Rangers, he began complaining about how going to the ballpark wasn’t fun anymore (who’s tying up the payroll?) and was able to sulk his way over to the Yankees.

I get it…and, yes, it is annoying.

But here’s what I find even more annoying than a 31 year old athlete that still dyes his hair: arbitrary arguments that Rodriguez is not a premier player and doesn’t “come through in clutch situations”. Even more baffling is the fact that many of these accusations come from Yankee fans. So I’ve decided (and I know, this is crazy) to look at the actual performances of A-Rod as compared to New York’s golden boy, Derek Jeter. Yankee, and other baseball fans, all have the same arguments…

‘A-Rod can’t handle the pressure here, he’s not a real Yankee…’

I’m not exactly sure what makes Jeter a “real Yankee”, but excludes A-Rod from this club…could it be the fist pumping? At any rate, we’ll ignore that for now. Over his three seasons with New York, Rodriguez has put up a line of .299/.396/.549 to Jeter’s .315/.386/.468 over the same time period. Both put up solid numbers, and Jeter does win the battle over AVG (the most insignificant of the three), but A-Rod has slugged over 80 points higher during these three seasons.

‘...yeah, but he can’t handle New York…’

Actually, he has, slugging 54 points higher at home than he has on the road (.576 vs. .522). Jeter fares quite well in the House that Ruth built as well, posting a SLG of .517. Impressive, but his power shrinks considerably on the road to the tune of .422. Again, these stats cover the past three seasons.

‘...ok fine, he can hit…but he still chokes under pressure…’

In reality, if we look at past performances in many different situations, Rodriguez fares just as well (if not better) that Jeter over this three year period. The chart below breaks this out (note RISP stands for Runners in Scoring Position):










In most cases, Jeter still has a higher average and even maintains a higher OBP in a couple of scenarios (albeit by an insignificant margin), but he doesn’t come close to matching Rodriguez’s power numbers. In fact, the closest his SLG comes is with RISP and 2 outs (25 points below), and is not within 50 points of A-Rod beyond that.

‘…but I’m talking about real pressure…the playoffs...’

Before addressing this most ludicrous of arguments, it should be noted that A-Rod has only 79 post season ABs since joining the Yankees. To put this in perspective, that’s roughly 4% of his complete three year, regular season total with the Yanks of 1,778 ABs.

Did he have a bad postseason series last year? Absolutely, but that was in only 14 ABs, a phenomenally insignificant sample size. However, as long as we’re throwing around small examples in “clutch” situations, let’s take a look at the 2004 ALCS versus the Red Sox. In this series, Rodriguez had 31 ABs (the most he’s had in any one playoff series) and hit .258/.378/.516. Please, ignore the average here…those are great on base and power numbers. How did Jeter fare during this series? In 30 ABs, he hit .200/.333/.233. I’m not using this as proof that Jeter isn’t as “clutch” as A-Rod, nor am I suggesting that Jeter isn’t a premier player (he certainly is). I’m simply making the point that you can’t make broad generalities with such a small fragment of data when a body of past performance paints such a drastically different picture.

‘…he should be way better, we’re paying him more…’

Yes and no. While Jeter will be making $20MM to Rodriguez’s $27MM this season, the Yankees are not paying him all of that money. When you take into account the money that Ranger’s owner Tom Hicks is donating to the A-Rod fund, the Yankees are essentially paying the two the same. Rodriguez’s check will be bigger, but if the money making the difference isn’t coming from New York, this argument from Yankee fans is irrelevant.

‘…but Jeter has all of those intangibles…’

I guess that’s true. Jeter did post 100 happy-fun units last season, and A-Rod only had 82. Honestly, how does one even discuss this? How do you measure intangibles? How do you know that Jeter has more of them? Do you measure them in something like sacrifice flies (by the way, A-Rod has 65 in his career [12 to go ahead, 9 to tie] to Jeter’s 37 [8 to go ahead, 4 to tie])?

Again, this is not trying to prove that Jeter is a bad player, because he clearly isn’t. But having a theory that A-Rod isn’t the player that Jeter is when it really counts doesn’t mean anything….especially when it's based on a personal bias and performances tell a different story.