Columnist: A-Rod on his way out of The Big Apple

Alex Rodriguez is as good as gone.

He was the most feared hit­ter of his gen­er­a­tion once. Now he’s an afterthought.

Yan­kees man­ager Joe Girardi said as much in the after­math of Tues­day night’s AL cham­pi­onship series Game 3 loss to the Tigers. What may turn out to have been New York’s last chance to change the course of the series came in the ninth inning with two on and two out and left-handed reliever Phil Coke on the mound. Instead of bring­ing the right-handed Rodriguez in to pinch-hit, or even as a decoy to force his Detroit coun­ter­part, Jim Ley-land, to turn to right-handed reliever Joaquin Benoit, Girardi elected to roll the dice once more with the Raul Ibanez.

Unlike when Girardi played a sim­i­lar hunch last week against Bal­ti­more, let­ting Ibanez pinch-hit for Rodriguez, the left-handed vet­eran struck out to end the game.

“Joe, did you con­sider hit­ting Alex or a right(-handed) hit­ter?” a reporter asked. “What went through your mind there when Ibanez came up?”

“Well,” Girardi replied, “they were going to bring in Benoit.”

“So you liked that first matchup bet­ter than the other one?”

“Ibanez has been one of our best hit­ters down the stretch here,” Girardi said matter-of-factly.

Thanks to that thicket of sta­tis­tics Girardi has within arm’s reach in the dugout, he knew the per­cent­ages the Yan­kees were up against.

On the one hand, Benoit has yielded seven home runs against right-handed bat­ters this sea­son; on the other, Rodriguez was .158 in his career off Benoit, with one home run, slightly bet­ter than the 0-for-17 — with 12 strike­outs — he’s posted against right-handers this postseason.

Any­one who doubts Girardi has effec­tively given up on A-Rod sim­ply had to look at who was in the on-deck cir­cle when Ibanez struck out — the sim­i­larly strug­gling, but left-handed hit­ting Nick Swisher.

And though Girardi hasn’t said as much, he hasn’t lost sleep over whether his deci­sion to bench Rodriguez has dam­aged their relationship.

“Of course that’s some­thing that you have to worry about,” Girardi said recently. “But I don’t think you can worry about it today. Rela­tion­ships go through their ups and downs, no mat­ter who they are, and you have a chance to rebuild them.”

Or end them.

Rodriguez has never been a com­fort­able fit with the Yan­kees. He’s a tar­get for the tabloids, even when he’s not in the game, a reminder of which came with a report in the New York Post that he spent some of his time on the bench Sat­ur­day night flirt­ing with two fans two rows behind the New York dugout. And at 37, with his skills in decline, he still has five years and $114 mil­lion guar­an­teed to run on his con­tract, plus the power to veto a trade. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

In the National League, Atlanta could use a name to replace Chip­per Jones at third. Rodriguez also would be a fit at third for Miami, where he grew up and owns a home that he’s try­ing to unload for $38 mil­lion. The Dodgers’ new own­er­ship hasn’t been shy about accu­mu­lat­ing high-priced tal­ent and cur­rent third base­man Luis Cruz isn’t going to help sell tickets.

But A-Rod to the Amer­i­can League seems like a bet­ter deal all around. His cur­rent con­tract con­tains a num­ber of bonuses for career mile­stones — all home runs — and his best chance to even­tu­ally reach those is as a des­ig­nated hitter.

Based on his per­for­mance this sea­son, Rodriguez would be an imme­di­ate upgrade at third over the pla­toon of Maicer Izturis and Alberto Callaspo the Los Ange­les Angels deployed this sea­son and he’d be pop­u­lar with the team’s Latino fan base as long as he remained productive.

Even the Chicago White Sox might be an option, since the club has made a habit of tak­ing on fad­ing stars in recent years, so long as the price is right.

Best of all, though, might be the Hous­ton Astros, who have money to throw around as a result of an agree­ment with Major League Base­ball to move to the AL next sea­son, and des­per­ately could use the buzz.

That said, not one of those clubs is likely to con­sider Rodriguez at the full retail price. But the Yan­kees have a his­tory of unload­ing high-priced tal­ent by con­tin­u­ing to pay part of the bill and esti­mates the team would have to fork over some­where between 50 and 75 per­cent of his salary for the next five years aren’t nec­es­sar­ily a deal-breaker. Not after this postseason.

Recently, Yan­kees Pres­i­dent Randy Levine was asked whether he thought A-Rod would still be wear­ing pin­stripes when his cur­rent deal ended in 2017. He told ESPN Radio in New York, “That’s like one of those ques­tions: Where’s the stock mar­ket going to be in 2017, who’s going to be pres­i­dent on Nov. 15?

“If I had crys­tal ball to pre­dict all of that stuff, I’d be a lot smarter than I am,” he added. “I’m not going to go there.”

Not yet, any­way, and not before this sea­son comes to a mer­ci­ful con­clu­sion. But Rodriguez lost the fans long ago, and from the sound of things Girardi and gen­eral man­ager Brian Cash­man might not be too far behind.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Oct 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.