The story has been re-told hundreds of times, but the Yankees have been in the off season for more than two weeks now. With post ideas running a little thin forgive me for recapping it here. In 2007 had the best season of his career. He hit 54 homers, with a wOBA of 449 and a wRC+ of 178. He was just 32 at season’s end. With over 500 home runs to his name already, it was a matter of when, not if, he would take control of baseball’s most cherished record.
Things have not gone to plan since the 2007 season. A-Rod’s power numbers largely remained in tact from 2008 through 2010, but he played less than 140 games each season. As a result he hit “just” 95 homers over those three seasons. That’s a great result for just about any other slugger in his mid-thirties, but it’s not enough for a player trying to hit 763 homers in his career. Every homer A-Rod didn’t hit during his early thirties is one more he’d have to hit in his late thirties, when age would make power that much harder to achieve. Needless to say, A-Rod’s injury plagued 2011 season in which he hit only 16 homers has made things that much worse. Time is not on Alex’s side if he is going to break ‘ record. Can he still do it?
Sitting at 629 career home runs, Alex needs to hit an additional 134 homers as his career ends if he is to get to 763. At first glance, that seems reasonable. It translates to just 22.3 homers over the six years Alex has left on his contract. Given that Alex has averaged 42 homers for every 162 games he’s played in the majors it means he only needs to be about half as effective a home run hitter as he’s normally been. While that goal seems achievable, it hinges heavily on two things: Alex remaining healthy — something he hasn’t done since 2007 — and Alex not declining much more. Can he do either?
Baseball Reference provides similarity scores by age for current players. These scores are meant to be a statistically driven means of comparing the current career trajectory of a single player to the career trajectories of players who came before him. Although crude, they help answer this question. A-Rod will have a better chance of breaking the career home run record if the players he is most similar to hit roughly 100 or more home runs between ages 36 and 42. If none of those players achieved something similar, then it will indicate that the cards may really be stacked against Alex.
In order, Alex rates as most similar to the following four players: Hank Aaron, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson and Willie Mays. Rodriguez is under contract through 2017, when he will turn 42. Of those four, only Aaron and Mays played until they were 42 years old and both retired after that season. Ott’s last season came when he turned 38 and Robinson’s last season came when he turned 40. This information doesn’t bode well for Alex or the Yankees. The generic assumption that Alex will break the record if he hits just 23 homers a season for the next six years is based on the second order assumption that he won’t age much during that period. Implicitly we know that isn’t true, but these comparisons help drive home just how untrue it is. Not only is it unlikely that Alex will put forward an evenly distributed performance over the remainder of his career, it is not even clear he’ll have enough left in the tank to play out his contract effectively.
Digging deeper, of the four players who compare most similarly to A-Rod, only Hank Aaron and Willie Mays hit anywhere near the same number of homers as Alex needs to break the record after the seasons in which they turned 36. Aaron was essentially ageless. He hit 47 homers his age 37 season and a stunning 163 over the last six years of his career. Mays wasn’t as effective. He hit just 96 homers over his last six seasons, which wouldn’t be enough for Alex but would put him in the ball park of where he needs to be for the record.
If Aaron and Mays show that there is a chance that Alex could break the record, then Ott and Robinson serve as stark warnings that a player Alex’s age with his injury trouble is almost as likely to fall off a cliff. Robinson hit 30 homers in his age 37 season and 22 homers the next year, but he was done after that, hitting just 12 homers over his last two years. Ott, meanwhile, was done when he was A-Rod’s age. He hit just one more homer in his entire career after he completed his age 36 season.
It isn’t enough for Alex to be as productive specifically as Aaron if he’s going to break the all-time home run record. He also has to be productive the same way Aaron was. The Hammer did most of his damage in the first half of the last six years of his career. In fact, he was a monster, hitting 47, 34 and then 40 homers over that period. A similar burst from Alex would put him at 750 career homers, just thirteen shy of breaking the record.
Therefore, if Alex is going to stand any meaningful chance of breaking the all time home run record he will need to be extremely productive the next two or three seasons, at least as productive as he was from 2008 to 2010, and realistically more so. This will be difficult. Alex’s defenders may point out that he’s been injured his last few seasons, limiting his potential, but Aaron was injured often during the three seasons in question as well. He never played more than 139 games after turning 37, and still put together not one, but two 40 home run seasons. In fact, in 1973 Hank played only 120 games and still hit 40 jacks! Alex hasn’t seen close to that level of production in recent years.
A lot of things are guaranteed for Alex as he plays out the remainder of his career. He’s already achieved a place in baseball’s inner-circle of great players (even if the steroids scandal keeps him out of the hall of fame). With 629 career homers, 2,775 career hits and 1,893 career RBI (over rated, I know) career milestones of 700, 3,000 and 2,000, respectively, all seem within reach over the next three seasons. But 763 homers is beginning to look more and more like too much of a stretch.
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None of the player you use as examples had the benefit of the DH. That should add 20% to AROD’s totals.
That is a fair, but untested point. Playing as DH certainly may keep Alex on the field longer, but he rated very well as a 3B this year. He’s not due to take up full time DH responsibility anytime soon. When he does it certainly could serve to beef up his homer totals, but I’m hesitant to say that it would add a full 20% to his production.
My assessment of the numbers is that Alex needs to have about two dominant seasons over the next two or three years if he is going to have a chance at breaking the record, whether he plays in the field or as the DH.
I believe Arod’s two major injuries this year came from base running and fielding. So you can remove him from 3B, even if that isn’t the correct call right now, but he’s still going to have to run the bases. So while DH may help a bit, he can still easily get injured.
Or he could be like John Goodman from “The Babe” and trot to first after a hit before tagging in a pinch runner whose there waiting.
So you advocate more playing time for Greg Golson?
Golson had probably the worst base running gaffe of the season (aside from anything Posada did) in that final game vs. Tampa. I would of been really upset if I wasn’t rooting for Tampa in that game.
I wonder how excited people would be if he did approach the record.
If he can put up 2 outstanding seasons over the next 3, and the Yankees can manage to find 5 decent starters, everything should be very exciting, since the Yankees will be running away with the division!
I recognize your point about how unlikely that is, but A-Rod needs to be more productive than Mays was over his last six years, and almost as productive as Aaron was, which means that he needs to have at least two more 35+ homer seasons. If you don’t think he can do that — a fair assessment, by all means — then you don’t think he’ll catch the record. For my part, I no longer believe A-Rod will get it, but I’d like him to.
My guess is fairly excited, at least in Yankee land. The collective sports media freaks out every time any big name player approaches a record. It freaked out thoroughly when ARod approached 500 and 600 career jacks. Plus, this would feature not one, not two, but three of the baseball media’s guilty pleasures: Steroids, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez.
Yeah, there would probably be anti-steroid articles every day that would have many of the YA guys grinding their teeth to nubs. Maybe Rodriguez would even get attacked enough to rally Yankee fans around him.
I’m getting angry just imagining those articles. I also love how quickly so many of the fans have dropped A-Rod again. Apparently the 2009 post season was a long time ago.
It’s like it never happened. The sad part is that people completely ignore that he’s in his late 30s now, and that he was coming off a serious injury.
Not to make excuses for him, but it’s not like it was back in 2005 when he was arguably the best player on the planet and expected to carry us to the promise land. He’s not half the player he was then. So why so much hatred? It’s frustrating.
People have never looked at A-Rod rationally wherever he’s played. If A-Rod doesn’t turn into Babe Ruth in October, 2009, the Yankees might not get past Minnesota, let alone win the WS. I’m stunned at how quickly everyone’s forgotten that.
Even in 2005 and 2006, when he had horrible ALDS performances, he was still a critical reason, if not the critical reason, the Yankees made it to October.
The only logical reason is A-Rod’s enormous salary, which I’ve always seen as an unfair reason to root against him. I once felt I was overpaid at a job I had, at least when I first began. I never gave my employer back a single dime of that money.
I’d say it’s the salary and the media’s coverage of him (although to be fair Arod has brought a lot of the heat on himself). The media has been painting him as this surly mercanary since day one. Maybe Arod is a bit of a diva behind the scenes, but he seems like a guy who answers all the questions they ask. I’ll never forget the back page of the newspaper ripping arod for sunbathing in central park (forget which paper). For some reason that was a huge story, like it really matters. And there there is the whole Ha! and running across the pitchers mound incident, which were completely overblown. Guy can’t win, and the fans feed off these stories.
IIRC, Aaron enjoyed those banner seasons at Fulton County Stadium after the fence had been moved in.
…and Ruth had a ballpark built for and tailored to his swing. If you want to cite how many more ABs it took Aaron to pass Ruth, that’s fair. HR/AB show how much more dominant Ruth was. But let’s not get into ballparks, you can’t win that argument.
And A-Rod racked up a his juiciest homer totals in Texas, on steroids. Everyone has an advantage or two.
He will never be a part time player because of the money being owed to him. The Yankees will never find a suitable trading partner for him, and no one can afford to put 27 million dollars on the bench. I think he will continue playing at 3B for the next couple of years, and then move to DH which is a role he has shown comfortable in.Also he will always be playing in a strong lineup too, even when he’s a 41 year old DH hitting 7th. Shatter it? No way. Heck I only give him a 65% chance. But I think he will limp across the finish line.
Mike J-R, I believe you were a bit quick to dismiss the DH factor as “untested” in your first response. Look at what DH’ing did for the latter career year stats of guys like David Ortiz, Chili Davis, Don Baylor, Andre Thornton, Hal McRae, Harold Baines, Paul Molitor, Frank Thomas and Edgar Martinez. When I consider what a pure hitter and student of the batting science Alex is — and the fact that only recently have the surgical sciences afforded him the opportunity to eliminate his primary physical infirmity rather than merely make it less painful as has been the case in the past — and I see a very good chance for him to both break the HR record and set a new gold standard in fielding excellence longevity as well … and the heck with the Yankee-haters and naysayers.
I’m not ruling out that playing as a DH could extend his career. I’m just saying that we don’t know what impact it will have. A lot of the players you mention on that list are career DHs. Not all position players make the transition well. I’m uncomfortable adding, say, 20 homers to A-Rod’s potential career totals simply because he’ll wind up at DH some day. We just don’t know what impact that will have.
Arod is a joke, the single biggest stat compiler of all time, with no ability to perform in high pressure situations.
He should do the right thing; walk away from the game while he still have some modicom of dignity and is not shown as a complete fraud.
You’re right. The game tying home run he hit in the bottom of the ninth in game 2 of the 2009 ALDS was the definition of a low pressure situation. The same can also be said of the extra-innings game tying homer he hit in game 2 of the 2009 ALCS. Don’t even get me started on how un-clutch it was of him to hit a homer when the Yankees were losing in game 3 of the 2009 WS. That neither tied the game nor gave the Yankees the lead! They’d have to take the lead later on in that game, which they eventually won.
And his game winning double in Game 4 of the WS. Or the numerous homeruns he hit in LA during that ALCS. He had an incredible postseason when you look back at it. It was nice of him to step aside in Game 6 of the WS to let Matsui rack up all the RBI.
That was the only time he was a true Yankee.
A-Rod should do what you say? Well, if you think that way about him, what about Jeter…the one player that was more responsible for our loss to the tigers then anyone else on the team?
Do you read anything nagative about him? Not at all but, by your standards, Jeter should walk away from the rest of his contract. Captain Clutch, He is not, never has been…look it up! One or two hits over 17 years, a clutch hitter is not!
As with any other player age is his down fall!