Let Me Get This Over With, But I Am Not Calling Him A-Fraud...How About A-Roid?

Gregg Easterbrook has an entire week to write TMQ and it doesn't show up until mid-Tuesday, so I will cover that tomorrow, assuming it contains its usual writing samples from Gregg. I don't want to talk about A-Rod and his positive steroid test from 2003, I really don't. For some reason, I have defended A-Rod in the past a lot, whether it was regarding his using steroids, hitting in the clutch, or anything else. So then he makes me look stupid by using steroids...thanks A-Rod.

I was actually going to ignore the story except for a brief mention once it settles down a little but this article caused me to reconsider. Before we get to that, Chipper Jones got a little bit of heat for these comments and it seems he has been proven fairly correct. Now my only concern is that I hope he did not use steroids either. I don't think he did, but.......you never know.

Pretend you are a GM and you have a player on your team who has been accused of using steroids when he was with his previous team, he admits to it, and has a huge contract with your team. What do you do with this player? Let's just say you have $270 million and scores of jersey sales tied up in him as well. Remember, even though A-Rod is a disappointment to pretty much everyone everywhere, you are a General Manager and your job is to make the team money while helping the team win games. Here's Bill Madden's answer:

Now that A-Rod's pursuit looks as counterfeit as Bonds', they should do what's best for the organization:

Cut him loose - no matter the cost.

Sure, this makes sense in a perfectly moral and wonderful world. I would like to see him get cut from the team for this. This is not the world we live in. There are two problems with this: The first being, Yankees fans were not actually betrayed by A-Rod. If you believe him, which you only kind of have to, he has not used steroids since Spring Training in 2004. So the Yankees have had the clean A-Rod and not the steroided up A-Rod, therefore it would be hard to get rid of him without a little bit of a backlash...and with the Yankees going into a new stadium...this is not happening. Second, why would the Yankees get rid of (yes, he still is...if we assume he has been clean) the best hitter in baseball AND continue to pay him his massive contract? Basically, getting rid of A-Rod makes no financial, business, or sports sense. It only makes sense on a moral level, which if you can't tell from the steroid era, doesn't exist in baseball.

You can't get rid of A-Rod. This is a stupid idea and a stupid column and I say this ever so politely simply because I have no sympathy for him and will always think that he is a cheater.

Here's an outside the box theory. Try to trade him and eat a lot of his contract. You make a point and actually get some value for him!

As difficult as it is to imagine eating $270 million, the Bombers will be making a statement, not just for the Yankee brand but for baseball as a whole.

That statement is: we have no problem with Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield or any other steroid user that has been on our team, but now we are changing our policy just in time to put the best baseball player in the league on the free agent market in the prime of his career.

I am not defending A-Rod and I don't understand why he took steroids, not because of the morality of it all, but because he had zero need for steroids. Assuming he has been clean from 1994-2000 and 2004-2008 his numbers were fantastic when he was not on steroids. There was no need for him to take steroids. His homerun numbers went through the roof during that time period, but with or without steroids, he is the best hitter in baseball right now. If he was so worried about earning his big contract, he should never have signed the big contract. I am sure Bill Simmons blames Scott Boras for that one.

They will be applauded for it.

The rest of the teams will applaud the Yankees for it because he will be earning over $20 million dollars from the Yankees and can sign for whatever amount he wants with a different team. Basically, there is nothing that prevents him from signing with any team in baseball at this point. Teams tend to applaud when the best player in baseball is on the free agent market and would be very close to free.

If they are going to remain true to both, then they have no choice but to sever ties with Rodriguez.

This argument would have some semblance of merit if you could describe why this is different for A-Rod than Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi. Since you can't, your argument sucks.

I know I am coming off as being an A-Rod apologist but he did not even use steroids with the Yankees, again if you believe him, so they have not been betrayed by him. They thought they signed a clean player to a $270 million deal and they got a clean player. Maybe he is lying about this as well, and since players are currently being tested and he has not failed a drug test, I would assume he is not lying. He did use steroids, he doesn't anymore, and he is still playing at a high level. Maybe I am naive, but I don't see the problem for the Yankees...and they can't get rid of him and get nothing in return. They could trade him, but not just severe ties.

The Rangers should be pissed as heck right now because they are the ones that were completely duped by A-Roid, but the only point the Yankees would be proving by severing ties with A-Rod is that they hold players to a double standard. If I am not wrong, both Giambi and Pettitte were on the Yankees' team when they tested positive or were caught having used steroids and the Yankees did nothing. They actually defended both players when the news came out.

Don't think for a minute that Derek Jeter and the rest of A-Rod's teammates are privately reveling in his exposure as a true phony, as some people are suggesting.

Who are "some people?" Imaginary people in your head who talk about these things as you sit at your 1967 Old Style Hermes typewriter wondering what other incredibly insane notion you can put on your typing paper? Everyone loves to crucify A-Rod and now they have a great reason to do this. His teammates still have to play with him, so there is no way they are enjoying all of this attention...though that Joe Torre book is not getting much play in New York anymore, is it?

Is this what the Yankee brass wants as the image of the new Yankee Stadium? If so, then it's just as well that they left the ghosts of Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle and DiMaggio across the street.

Oh yeah, Ruth was just a saint. Ignore the fact he had the same problems as A-Rod has, with his marital infidelities, strained relationships with teammates and love of food, so A-Rod is basically a skinny Babe Ruth.

Mantle also committed multiple marital infidelities, which the holier than thou press helped hide from the public...oh, and he was also a raging alcoholic through only about 40 years of his life.

Everyone has problems, they are now just magnified with the 24 hour news cycle. Pretending "the old days" players did not have similar problems to today's players is just being naive. So the Yankees are not leaving some grand tradition of nobility from its players in the old Yankees Stadium and trading them in for the hedonistic pleasures of A-Rod.

They were concerned enough about Jason Giambi's involvement in the BALCO steroids scandal that they looked into ways of voiding his contract.

Yeah, they wanted to void his contract, but not get rid of him completely if they still had to pay him. Don't act like the Yankees were doing something noble in looking to void his contract. They were only going to release him if there was no way they had to pay him, otherwise he stayed on the team, which is what ended up happening. The Yankees have no history of making moral stands and they are not going to start with the best player in baseball.

I suspect when Brian Cashman gets around to writing his book, he'll cite Nov. 15, 2007, as the worst day of his life. That was the day Hank Steinbrenner proudly welcomed A-Rod back for $275 million.

Is this really true? At this point is Bill just typing words hoping a new dramatic soap opera will notice and hire him? The Yankees are the Yankees (meaning they have no farm system) and they had no options when A-Rod left the team and A-Rod had no options because the Yankees were the only team that would pay him. That's why they came back together.

I realize A-Rod lied to the Rangers but according to him, he has been clean since playing for the Yankees. He did not deceive them in any fashion that I can think of. If anyone can think of a way that A-Rod deceived the Yankees, other than lying when asked if he had taken steroids, I would love to hear about it.

Not that Cashman's grand design of building from within wasn't a noble one. It's just that when A-Rod told Hank he wanted back in, Cashman was helpless to produce an alternative from the perpetually bankrupt Yankee farm system.

He could have signed Mike Lowell or traded for another player. They could have moved Jeter to 3B (the horror!) and traded/signed a SS. There were other options the Yankees could have chosen. I don't think the Yankees were as handcuffed to A-Rod as everyone wants to try and point out. He was the best 3B on the free agent market, the Yankees usually sign the best players in free agency, so they signed him. It just so happened he also played for them the year before.

There are still no third-base prospects in the system and in 15 years of fruitless amateur drafts, the Yankees have not produced a single impact position player since Derek Jeter.

It's called research, maybe do some on the Yankees farm system.

This guy is the 10th ranked prospect in the Yankees farm system according to Baseball America. Is he going to be another A-Rod? No, but he is a 3B prospect.

I can't argue with that second part though, it has been especially brutal to see Robinson Cano regress because he would have been the first impact position player since Jeter.

Now, everything about the pursuit of championships and the Yankee brand is a mockery if A-Rod is the centerpiece of this team.

See, I disagree. There are 24 other players on that team that have not been accused or admitted to using steroids and A-Rod is no longer using steroids.

I find a tiny little bit of irony that the media spent the past year remarking about what a wonderful person Josh Hamilton is for overcoming his drug addiction but can't wait to bury any athlete that previously used steroids. I know it is different and overcoming drug addiction is much more respected than a person no longer using steroids, but either way both people put drugs in their system and neither of them are using those drugs anymore. The difference is that people feel like A-Rod cheated them by inflating his numbers by using PED's, while Hamilton only cheated everyone from seeing what could have been an absolutely remarkable baseball player.

A-Rod cheated and he is going to pay for that. I just don't think the Yankee brand is JUST NOW a mockery. I think the Giambi and Pettitte situation helped the cause out as well and being affiliated with Roger Clemens doesn't help either. That doesn't even include Gary Sheffield. The Yankee legacy was gone way before A-Rod confessed to Peter Gammons.

As painful as swallowing that $270 million might be, there will be consolation for the Yankees when no other team elects to besmirch their brand by taking in A-Rod - even for nothing.

Are you freaking serious? If the Yankees get rid of A-Rod, I will be at my favorite MLB team's SB Nation blog with a posting that begins, "Put Chipper in LF, sign A-Rod with the $7 million we have to spend," and then everyone will either laugh at me or get excited with me. I don't think what A-Rod did was right and he is a cheater. He is going to pay in some fashion for his decision, but my opinion is that he is the best player in baseball and I would want him on my team because I think he is clean now. I would not want him on my team based only on the thought that he is a distraction. That's about it though.

I know I am not judgmental enough for some people in believing in some sort of redemption, but fortunately my moral compass is not affected by other's actions, so him being a cheater doesn't make me feel like a bad person. Though really, he is becoming a huge distraction no matter where he goes, so that would probably annoy me after a while.

I say trade A-Rod if the Yankees really don't want this to besmirch their brand, and swallow some of his contract, but get players in return for him. Just don't give him away for nothing, are you stupid? The same statement would be made by trading him as would be made by out right releasing him. The only statement just out right releasing him would be, we are the Yankees and we are absolutely incompetent as an organization.

Mike Lupica has to chime in on this issue as well. He holds the honor of being the worst journalist on Sports Reporters, so congratulations to him. Let's see if we can hear him way up there on his high horse.

Joe Torre and Derek Jeter and Mo Rivera and Jorge Posada and even Andy Pettitte - they're the faces of the old Yankees, what the Yankees used to be.

Joe Torre just sold out the entire organization and spilled dirt on clubhouse secrets. Have we forgotten this already? Andy Pettitte also used steroids. The Yankees used to be exactly what they are today. This "back in the day" stuff has to stop.

But they are not allowed to act remotely surprised that Rodriguez is dragging them through the muck. You sign on with him, you sign on for everything - good, bad and Madonna. You get the home runs, of course. But you also get the rest of it, the off-the-field stuff, so much of it every bit as dumb and hollow as most reality junk you get on television these days.

If you want to come from the "A-Rod is as divisive and as big of a distraction as Terrell Owens and Manny Ramirez," that is an angle I can buy. He is absolutely starting to get into that territory. The angle I can't buy is that the Yankees were a quality organization before we found out A-Rod did steroids, while playing for Texas, and A-Rod has ruined baseball forever. There are 103 names on that list that have not come out yet, they contribute to this steroid problem as well.

Somehow this is a reality series that never seems to be out of season, even when the Yankees are.

You know what Mike? Stop writing about it then, if you are so tired of this same "reality series" all year. It is New York and they have two sports teams in almost every major sport, I am sure there are other columns that could be written. No one is breaking your legs and forcing you to write this column.

He has won two MVP awards here, hit 50 home runs in a season, produced the kinds of numbers only the greatest of Yankees have ever produced. He has also dominated the back and front pages of the New York papers the way old man Steinbrenner did in the days of Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin.

It seems to me Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner are revered, so why so different for A-Rod?

But those Yankee teams won. A-Rod's Yankees have won one playoff series in five years. In the eight years before A-Rod became a Yankee, the Yankees played in six World Series. They have played in none since.

So it all comes down to winning. It is fine to do all of that if the team is winning, but the second the team is not winning (which they are not losing because of A-Rod...for those that are just completely stupid), then the back pages issue becomes a front page issue for Mike Lupica.

I will give everyone one guess why the Yankees have not won a World Series lately? It's pitching, that is why. They haven't had the bullpen and the starting pitching to do it.

One year after paying him the $300 million to hold down the middle of the lineup, the Yankees had to go pay Mark Teixeira $180 million to hold it down with him.

Here I go defending A-Rod again. If you have a player the caliber of Alex Rodriguez, you had better be sure he has a player before and after him in the lineup that is high quality so he doesn't get pitched around frequently. Rather than have a big open hole at first base, the Yankees did what they always do, and got the best player available. Did Gehrig have to help Ruth hold down the middle of the order? No, he helped protect Ruth. That's the same principle here.

Do you know what other category the Yankees spent even more money on than protecting A-Rod on this offseason, Mike? Pitching. That doesn't fit your theory that A-Roid (how's that for a nickname?) is ruining the entire New York Yankee team though.

He has led the league in stories about his relationship with Jeter, in divorce stories and contract stories and stories about books and bimbos and strip clubs and apparently being the last living guy who thinks Madonna is a good get.

He didn't write those stories though. Your colleagues did.

There is all this agitated talk-show talk now about punishing him, or even trading him. For what, being exactly who he is? He's just A-Rod on steroids this time. Sometimes in this world you still get exactly what you pay for.

No. He was A-Rod on steroids this time. If you believe him, which I am not sure I do but I have to go on the theory I do until he fails another test, he is clean now.

Bottom line: Alex Rodriguez cheated by using steroids, he did not need to use steroids because he is a great player without them, he needs to stop making news in New York, he has very loosy goosy morals, the media needs to quit obsessing over him, and he is not the reason the Yankees have not made the World Series since 2001.