The Drubbing

As a Yankee fan and someone who has never, and will never boo Alex Rodriguez, I thought it might be interesting to try and project what Alex Rodriguez’ final career numbers might be. So in what is admittedly a simple analysis, here we go.
Through 15 seasons, here are A-Rod’s totals in some selected counting stats:

Now, through those 15 years, we can surmise what an average A-Rod season looks like (and yes I know it isn’t perfect because it doesn’t account for playing time, ballpark, etc.)

A-Rod is in peak physical condition, has a relatively clean injury history, and plays in the American League where he can DH if he is a bit banged up. He is also entering what is normally considered the tail end of the prime years for hitters. So, if we assume that A-Rod has four more years where stays relatively healthy and simply meets his career averages, his statistics now look like this:

Look at those numbers again and let them sink in a bit. Given four more simply average years for him, He is well established among the top players in the history of the sport. He finds himself in the 10 all-time in four of the eight categories we are looking at. Were it not for the recent explosion in home runs, that 697 number would look mighty impressive. The 3,044 hits alone would make him legendary. He would also be the third member of the 2,000 runs/2,000 RBI club joining Ruth and Aaron.

Ok, so what now? A-Rod is 36, he still has 5 years remaining on his contract, he is within shouting distance of several unbelievable records, and he still has some gas in the tank. How much you ask? Well, lets be incredibly pessimistic and sat that an average A-Rod season over the next three years is 20% worse than his career average. If you run those numbers and then add them to what we have so far, here is what A-Rod at 39 looks like:

Now we are really getting somewhere. Of those eight categories we were looking at, A-Rod is now in the top ten all-time in 5 of the 8 and in the top 2 in four categories. Moreover, some of the numbers are deceiving. For instance, the 2291 Runs would place him just four behind Rickey Henderson’s current record, and the 2292 RBI would place him just five behind Hank Aaron’s current record. Impressive indeed.

Now, we have a 39 year old A-Rod who has a reasonable argument that he may be the best baseball player of all time. However, because the Yankees are insane and gave him a ten year contract, he still has 2 years remaining on his deal. Although it would be reasonable to assume that playing time could decrease, I am going to go ahead and suggest that with the Yankees still paying him $32 million dollars a year, they will find a significant amount of DH at-bats for A-Rod. So, let’s be pessimistic again and assume another 10% decline in his performance for the last two years of his contract. That leaves us with this:

Wow. Simply wow. Remember again, this is an incredibly pessimistic projection, and it includes a simply average output by A-Rod over the next four years with a significant falloff after that. Any continued excellence or overachievement in any category pushes these numbers up even further. If A-Rod were to overachieve a bit (at least in relation to this projection), he would need only 27 additional doubles to crack the top ten, and 112 hits to pass Hank Aaron for third all time. The only mythical number he most likely has no shot at is 4,000 hits. Even with nine consecutive years of his current career average, he would only get to about 3,844 hits.

So in summary, my fellow Yankee fans, and all baseball fans, stop booing and hating A-Rod. Yes he is a bit eccentric, yes he may be dating Madonna, and yes he did sign two outrageously large contracts which make him richer than many of us can imagine. He also happens to be a once in a generation talent who when his career is over will probably have scored more runs than Rickey Henderson, hit more home runs than Barry Bonds, driven in more runs than Hank Aaron, and touched more bases than Babe Ruth.