A-rod

So, I've had an interesting argument with my good friend Mike, who, like Perrotti, has been unfortunate enough to be a Yankee fan. I know, I know, it's okay to feel bad for them. It's probably not their fault, but what can you do? Well, one of the best things to do with a Yankee fan is to make fun of them for Arod. It really is, you should try it if you haven't. The reason being is that although they're going to pay arod more than a quarter billion dollars(that's right) nobody is as uncluch as A-rod. Nobody is(well, maybe Jeter post 2001). And if you're wondering why people hate A-rod, it's not because he makes a lot, lot, lot, lot more money than me, it's because he doesn't deserve the money. He doesn't. It's outragous to pay someone who's going to suck once it comes to October. This is one of my favorite Yankee stories. In 2006, right when I had mono, I took my little sister to see a Mets-Yankees game at Shea for her birthday because, unfortunately she's a Johnny Damon fan. So we went with my older sister and one of my younger sister's friends. This friend happens to be a die hard Spankee fan. So, she came dressed in all Yankee stuff and we went to the game. It happened to be the Sunday night game and it was on ESPN. Well, I really can't remember who was pitching for the Mets(it could have been Glavine) but for whatever reason the Yankees were leading 2-0 until the 5th inning. Now, if you had watched the game, the Yankees should have been up a lot more. I mean, it should have been like 8-0 or worse, but the Mets had a strategy that when there were 2 outs, let people get on base until A-rod gets up. I believe A-rod came up 4 times with runners in scoring position and 2 out and all 4 times he got out. It was unbelieveable. It was awesome. By the third time up, my sister's friend admitted that A-rod sucked. There was no denying it. And as luck would have it, in the 5th inning the Mets were able to get 2 men on base for Delgado who happen to crush a pitch into the NY skyline for a 3 run homer and then David Wright followed with a solo shot and the Mets won 4-2 with the Mets hero really being A-rod because I believe he left something like 10 guys on base and 6 of them in scoring position. My friends from high school and I joke about A-rod that the only time he hits a home run is when the Yankees are either up by 5 runs or down by 5 runs and last week against the Rays was a perfect example of this. In the 7th inning, with the Yanks down 5-0, A-rod hit a 2 run homer. Fast forward to the ninth inning, the Yankees had 2 guys on and no one out and A-rod up. What does he do when it really matters? He hits a can of corn for the first out. He he. To be honest with you, I didn't hate A-rod at the beginning of his career. Actually, I kinda liked him when he was on Seattle because the guy was a monster. He was a 40-40 threat every year he was there. Then came free agency and that's when I started to not like him because he went to Texas, signed a $250 million contract and killed that team. I can't wholely blame A-rod for signing for that kind of money, because anyone who just cared about themselves would sign for that much money. You also have to blame the gm for being that stupid. How can you spend most of your money on 1 player, when you have to get 24 other guys to play on that team? Really? How can you do that? There was no way for that Rangers team to compete because they really couldn't sign more good players and they would have to contend with a rotation that was lead by Chan-Ho Park pitching in a hitters ballpark. Ugghhhh. See, if A-rod cared about the team more than himself, maybe he would have "settled" for something around 16-17 mil a year and give the team some flexibility to sign a couple more good players. Role players. You know, people who will come through in the clutch. And, as you can guess, the Rangers finished in last every year that A-rod played for them. And what did he do? He put up HUGE numbers. That's because he didn't play in any meaningful games. Nobody really cared what he would do because the Rangers were always out of it by the end of April. No pressure at all. Now, I'd like to say that I'm upset of the way that he acted before he signed with the Spankees, but really, I can't be upset at anyone who would pull the rug out from under the Red Sox. I realy can't, so I'll give him a pass on that, he he. Now, my good friend Mike's argument is that if A-rod was on my team, I'd love the guy. And my response was it would really depend on when he would have become a Met. Now, if he became a Met this past offseason I would still hate his guts and I'd dump the Mets for the Rays. I really would. There's no place where A-rod would fit on this team, unless he wanted to play in the outfield. But, if the Mets had signed A-rod, how would we have gotten Santana? It's not like our offense is really bad. Our offense is pretty good, even though Omar wants to sabatoge it by keeping really really old guys and getting rid of the younger guys. So, yes, A-rod would make our offense a little bit better. But Santana means a lot more to the Mets than A-rod would. We NEED Santana. We need him 250 million times more than A-rod, especially now that Pedro hurt himself. I'd be even more of a mess if we didn't have Santana. Now, there is an interesting fact that has come out now. A-rod actually said that he wished he had gone to the Mets instead of to the Rangers, if he could do it all over again. Hmmmm..... now that would be interesting. Plus, it gives me another reason to hate Steve Phillips. See, that would bring up all kind of interesting options for the Mets. It makes me think if maybe the Mets wouldn't have traded Kazmir to the Rays? And then maybe Omar would have pulled the trade on the Lastings & Heilman for Dan Haren. And maybe Omar would have kept Brian Bannister because we wouldn't have needed to call him up in '06 and no one would have been interested in him. Hmmm.... very interesting. Because, then maybe we'd have a rotation of this: Haren, Kazmir, John Maine, Brian Bannister, Oliver Perez. Pretty nasty, eh? Then our infield would probably be something like this, Wright @ 3rd, A-rod @ SS, Reyes @ 2nd, Jacobs @ 1st because I don't think that Omar would have made the trade for Delgado because we would have already had enough fire power in the lineup. Plus, we'd have an outfield of Carlos Gomez, Beltran(I think Omar makes this signing because he would want to bring in another hitter to bat infront or behind of Beltran because when Beltran was a free agent we didn't know what we were getting from Wright. He was only a rookie) & maybe they would bring up Martinez from the minors? Maybe we still have Alou. Who knows. But this team would be pretty sick. Our lineup would be something like this, Reyes, Beltran, Wright, A-rod, Jacobs, Gomez, Other outfielder, Castro. Or you could put Gomez in the 2 hole and move Beltran to 3rd, Wright to 5th and everyone else down a slot. That's still a nasty lineup who can hit for power and steal a lot of bases. And maybe A-rod would come through in the clutch because there's less pressure if you're a Met and honestly, I doubt we'd be in that many close games. And even when A-rod doesn't come through, he'd still have someone to back him up so maybe we could mask his struggles better. But, that is a different life.