A Postscript For A-Rod

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract Excerpt

Since A-Rod's retirement, I fished out my copy of 'The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract', which has the following write-up on Alex Rodriguez:

17 - Alex Rodriguez
(1994-2000, 70G, 189 595 .309)
 The best seasons ever by a 20-year old player. 

1. Ty Cobb, 1907
2. Silver King, 1888
3. Alex Rodriguez, 1996
4. Dwight Gooden, 1985
5 Mickey Mantle, 1952
6. Bob Feller, 1939
7. Ted Williams, 1939
8. Mel Ott, 1929
9. Al Kaline, 1955
10. Noodles Hahn, 1899

Of the other nine players on the list, six went on to have Hall of Fame careers. The three who failed to do so were all pitchers - Silver King, Doc Gooden and Noodles Hahn

Then right below it, he has a section that goes:

XXX - Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Jeter
It is too early to rate Nomar garciaparra and Derek Jeter; the same is true of A-Rod, of course. I have nothing to add to the constant hype that accompanies all three men, except that I will observe that it seems likely that all three men will rate amongst the Top 20 at the position and that I would regard any stronger statement as speculation. We do not know whether any of these men will eventually have better seasons than they have already had. 

Pretty careful avoidance-of-prognostication there. For the record, the final tally for these guys were:

• Alex Rodriguez: 114.9 oWAR, 9.5dWAR from BRef, and 112.9 WAR from Fangraphs.
• Nomar Garciaparra: 42.6 and 6.0dWAR from BRef and 41.4WAR from Fangrpahs.
• Derek Jeter: 95.5oWAR, -9.5dWAR from BRef and 71.7WAR from Fangraphs.

Baseball Reference seems to think all three were better than what Fangraphs has them pegged as having been.

By our contemporary reckoning and ignoring the PED issue, A-Rod clocks in at about the 14th best player of all time, while Derek Jeter sits at about no.50. If you think about the value to the franchise, A-Rod delivered about 60-odd WAR to the Yankees. That's pretty remarkable lump of performance. Eyeballing the Shortstops in the HOF, and again ignoring the PED issue, A-Rod and Jeter would be a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame, but Nomar falls short (50WAR is about the cut off for HOF consideration for Shortstops).

Ravaged by injuries, Nomar really didn't get to rack up the counting stats. A-Rod moved off Shortstop in favour of Derek Jeter, which is going to be one of those stories they'll be talking about a hundred years from now. So A-Rod's value at Shortstop ceases at 2003; even so A-Rod did rack up 52WAR as a Shortstop to that point in time, so if he dropped dead at the end of 2003 instead of playing for the Yankees, he still did better than Nomar's entire career and still would be worthy of being a Hall of Famer.

As it is, it is most certain that only Jeter will make the Hall of Fame out of these three men. Not something Bill James might have predicted given what was in front of us in 2000. Things played out much more strangely than one might have predicted back then. I was asked his week if I went soft on PED cheats because all these Yankees like A-Rod, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Jason Giambi got caught. It's most likely true that I did. Taking those drugs sure didn't make those teams win the World Series more. For all the personal records and even the numbers in the seasonal win columns, the Yankee dynasty after 2001 was more notable for how fruitless it was given how much money was being invested. A-Rod was the poster boy even for that.

Yet if it really gets down to the brass tacks, A-Rod was trying to win each year. I'm not going to fault him for something like that given that half of professional sports is about the entertainment value. The numbers might be tainted by PEDs, but at the end of the day there's only the championships and flags fly forever. We were mightily entertained by A-Rod, and that's the truth. I can't fault him for trying to entertain us more. Pretending that simple relationship doesn't exist in spectator sports is exactly what makes lesser sports boring.