Starting in December and ending on Opening Day, Joe Posnanski will count down the 100 greatest baseball players by publishing an essay on a player every day for 100 days. In all, this project will contain roughly as many words as “Moby Dick.” Yes, we know it’s nutty. We hope you enjoy.
Let’s begin with how Allard Baird saw him.
Baird is one of the most admired and remarkable talent evaluators in all of baseball. He’s now the New York Mets’ assistant general manager for scouting and player development, and for more than a decade, he did the same for the Boston Red Sox as they won three World Series titles. Before that, he worked his way up from a low-level scout who lived out of his car to the general manager of the Kansas City Royals.
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Baird saw him in the early days, those 200,000-mile-a-year days when Baird fueled on fast food and hope and followed the lights from small town to small town in search of a ballplayer. He didn’t fully know what he was doing yet. He was still learning how to judge a young player’s potential, and he was learning how on the famous 20-to-80 scouting scale. You probably know the scout’s scale better than I do, but just in case: Scouts rate players on five tools (hitting, power, defense, speed and arm) on a 20-to-80 scale.*
*Scouts do more than this, particularly now, but the 20-to-80 scale on five tools is remarkably durable.
The scale itself works like so:
20 means poor. There are not many players with 20 tools in the big leagues. Maybe the single slowest player in the big leagues (Albert Pujols now?) would be a 20 speed.
30: Well below average. Someone who would hit fewer than five homers in a full season has 30 power.
40: Below average. Pretty self-explanatory.
50: Average. Pretty self-explanatory.
60: Above average or in scout terms, “Plus.” If someone is an above-average defender but perhaps not quite Gold Glove elite, you might put a 60 on their defense.
70: Well above average or “Plus-Plus.” Walker Buehler has a plus-plus fastball. Cody Bellinger has plus-plus power. And so on.
80: OK, now we’re getting into some inexact territory. I’ve heard some scouts refer to an 80 tool as “Hall of Fame” level. I’ve heard others say that it’s even better than that — it’s the best of the best of the best. So basically an 80 for each tool would be:
Hitting: Ted Williams
Power: Babe Ruth
Speed: Rickey Henderson
Defense: Ozzie Smith
Arm: Roberto Clemente
The point I’m trying to get at is that, for someone scouting a high school game, an 80 is no-go territory. You just don’t give them out. What is the likelihood that you’re going to see a high school player who could throw like Clemente or hit like Williams? Right: It’s less than zero. Baird had been scouting for a while, and he had never once given out an 80. He’d hardly ever given out any 70s.
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And then came to the day he went to see Westminster Christian School play so he could get a look at the junior shortstop they had there. Baird didn’t go unprepared: He knew that this kid was talented. He was the talk of the scouting community and had been for a while. But Baird had not yet seen him up close.
And what he saw? He’s never forgotten it. He never will.
First Baird watched the kid take some groundballs before the game … and he couldn’t believe his eyes. That balance! That range! That quickness! The ball just seemed to stick to his glove, and then he would transfer it to his throwing hand so fast that Baird felt like a sucker in a three-card monte exhibition. It was utterly incredible. This 16-year-old kid, Baird thought, could hold his own at shortstop in the big leagues immediately.
Then there was that arm! It was more amazing than the fielding. Baird had never seen anything like it. This kid just flicked his wrist and the ball turned into a laser beam shooting across the infield.
That was the first time Baird thought: Holy cow, this kid has an 80 arm.
Hitting? That’s Baird’s specialty. He has studied the human body, looked hard into movement and rhythm and weight shifts, man, that stuff thrills him. How the arms come through. How the legs power the swing. The hands. Baird could talk all day and night just about the hitter’s hands.
He watched this kid swing the bat and … his jaw dropped. It was perfect. He had never seen a better high school hitting stroke. He had never dreamed of seeing a better high school hitting stroke.
The power was easy. The kid hit two home runs that day, both of them absolute bombs.
The speed was easy. The kid stole two bases that day, one of them standing up (this after one of two intentional walks). The kid was 35-for-35 in stolen bases that season.
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It didn’t seem real. But as impressive as those tools were, there was something else that Baird saw, something that blew his mind: The kid played baseball with such infectious delight. Scouts, if they’re good, look for so many things. They look to see how a player responds to teammates (this kid was in the front of the dugout cheering them on). They look to see how teammates respond to the player (they so obviously loved this kid, they met him at home plate happily after each home run). They look to see if the player is coachable. This kid seemed utterly coachable.
You just don’t see a player like this. Not ever.
Baird left that game and headed back to send in his report. But he felt dizzy. No, it was like he felt like Jack from the beanstalk story — who would ever believe he’d seen an actual giant? As he looked at the report where he was supposed to fill out those numbers, he honestly did not know what to do. And then he realized that he had no choice: If he wanted to be a good scout, he had to be entirely honest.
And so he put an 80 on the kid’s arm, an 80 on the kid’s power, and an 80 on his hitting talent.
He put 70 on his speed and defense.
He had never expected to send in a report like that. And he never would again.
And when Allard Baird finally faxed in his scouting report on Alex Rodriguez, he was literally shaking.
There’s no point in trying to clean up Alex Rodriguez’s brilliant, infuriating, dazzling, inauthentic, breathtaking, destructive and altogether messy baseball career. No point at all. It’s all there. And it’s everything.
A-Rod is the power hitter of his time. For 20 years, he seemed certain to break the all-time home run record. Even in falling short, he hit 696 home runs.
He’s also a liar who was suspended for an entire year for using PEDs (this after threatening to sue Major League Baseball).
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A-Rod is a Yankees postseason hero, a guy who carried the Yanks to their last World Series title in 2009, almost by himself.
He’s also a multi-time Yankees postseason goat who inspires more fury among New York baseball fans than anyone in the team’s history.
A-Rod is a player who broke the bank and also a player who tried to give up the money to try and win some love. He’s a Gold Glove shortstop who gave up the position for a player who was not, by any measure, his defensive equal.
He’s a three-time MVP who spent a baseball lifetime hitting lazy-looking fly balls that sent outfielders to the wall with hope, only to keep on going and going, like children leaving for college, soaring so far out of reach. Nobody hit a baseball quite like him, balls that would never come down, balloons being taken by the wind.
He’s also a tabloid back-page punchline, being fed popcorn by Cameron Diaz, hobnobbing with Madonna, being labeled “A-Fraud” in headlines so often that at some point that became his name.
He’s a player who talked again and again about how much he loved the game.
He’s a player who so rarely seemed to be enjoying himself on the field.
He’s a player with more wins above replacement than any position player of the last 50 years who is not named Barry Bonds.
He is a player who, it has been reported, has not one but two paintings of himself as a centaur.
How can you clean up the A-Rod story? Which parts would you leave out?
Sure, the people who loathe him — so, so many of those — would happily leave out the extraordinary ballplayer, the incredible defense, the untouchable arm, the breathtaking power, the stunning speed. They would happily write him out of baseball history. That would be convenient … but impossible. Try this experiment: Think of the first person who comes to mind when I say: “Five-tool player.”
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I tried this on Twitter and maybe 50 or so names came up, not counting various jokey choices like lovable slugger Steve Balboni.
The players named most were: Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds, Clemente, Henderson, Henry Aaron, Larry Walker, Bo Jackson, Eric Davis.
All of them are wonderful choices, wonderful players, but you do notice the thing they all share, right? They were all outfielders. And that makes them fundamentally different from A-Rod. Could Bo or Davis hit like A-Rod even at their best? Could Bonds throw like A-Rod? Could Griffey or Aaron or Walker run like A-Rod? Could Rickey or Clemente slug like A-Rod? Could Mantle or Trout field like A-Rod?
Even Mays — the ultimate of the ultimate five-tool players — could he play shortstop like A-Rod?
No, he’s alone in this game. There has never been a player with so much breathtaking skill.
But you can’t tell that story, either. Sure the people who love him — not quite as large a group, I suspect — might want to downplay the rest of it, the grotesque way he kept denying and admitting and denying and getting caught using PEDs, the nasty fight he had with baseball over PEDs after he was caught, the multitude of ways so many of his teammates loathed him, the way he warred with Yankees manager Joe Torre, the way he got benched in the playoffs because he seemed so overwhelmed by the moment, the way he distracted Toronto third baseman Howie Clark by shouting “Mine!” while on the basepaths, the way he slapped the ball out of the Bronson Arroyo’s hand during that playoff game, the way he freaked out Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden by walking across the mound after a foul ball, the way he took shots at his friend Derek Jeter in a magazine article (years before they became teammates) and so on and so on and so on.
But can you really leave that out? No. Of course not.
And so what are you left with? A cloud. A blur. A baseball Rorschach test. Who, after all, sees A-Rod the same way?
Alex Rodriguez was 20 years old when he had a season for the ages. He hit .358 and led the league in runs (141), doubles (54) and total bases (379). He also hit 36 home runs, drove in 123 runs, stole 15 bases and played a superior shortstop.
He created 157 runs that season. It was the most runs created for a shortstop since … ever.
Most runs created for a shortstop through 1996:
- Alex Rodriguez, 1996, 157
- Arky Vaughan, 1935, 147
- Alan Trammell, 1987, 137
- Robin Yount, 1982, 136
- Ernie Banks, 1958, 135
It was also the most runs created in a season for a 20-year-old — and it still is. Even Mike Trout at 20 did not surpass it. A-Rod just lost the MVP that year to Juan González in one of the worst MVP voting blunders in baseball history (though you could make a solid argument that Griffey should have won it over González, too).
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Two years later, at age 22, A-Rod became the first — and still the only — player in baseball history to have a 42-42 season, that being 42 homers and 42 stolen bases. He also led the league in hits, in WAR, he scored 123 runs, drove in 124 runs, he played superb defense again, and this time he finished ninth in the MVP voting, which again, bizarrely, went to González — voters loved Juan Gone and RBIs in those days.
González’s combined WAR in his two MVP years was not as high as A-Rod’s WAR at age 20.
Two years after that, A-Rod had perhaps his best season. He hit .316/.420/.606 with 41 homers, 134 runs and 132 RBIs, he should have won the Gold Glove at shortstop and was by all the measurements one of the best baserunners in the game.*
*A-Rod’s speed and baserunning savvy always were wildly underappreciated. He took the extra base like few others. He scored from second on a single 16 out of 19 times that year. He scored from first on a double 11 out of 19 times.
And that’s exactly why A-Rod and the most zealous agent in the business, Scott Boras, went to market. They did not hide their intentions. They unabashedly went after the biggest contract in the history of sports. And they got it from a surprising source: the Texas Rangers. It remains as surprising now as it was then.
The Rangers didn’t just make A-Rod the highest-paid American athlete ever. They Usain Bolted past everybody else. Here were the highest salary packages in team sports at the time:
Football: Troy Aikman, 9 years, $85.5 million
Basketball: Kevin Garnett, 6 years, $126 million
Hockey: Jaromir Jagr, 7 years, $48 million
And here was A-Rod.
Baseball: Alex Rodriguez, 10 years, $252 million.
As you might imagine, everybody was pretty chill about the whole thing. Or not.
“Baseball has just signed its death warrant,” was the headline of Bill Plaschke’s column in the Los Angeles Times.
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“The Texas Rangers signed him to a contract worth $79 million more than what Peter Angelos paid for the Orioles — a contract that isn’t just bad for baseball, but disastrous for baseball,” wrote John Eisenberg in the Baltimore Sun.
“Folks, this is nuts,” Gary Mason wrote in the Vancouver Sun. “This is madness. And if you care about the future of sports, you should be enraged.”
“I’m stupified,” former A’s GM Sandy Alderson said. “We clearly have a crisis situation at hand.”
“It just speaks to the insanity of the economics of baseball today,” said Dean Bonham, head of a sports marketing firm.
Papers ran all sorts of charts to show just how much money A-Rod would get per game, per inning, per at-bat, per strikeout. They offered very odd calculations to show just how many airplanes, Porsches, rounds of golf, Microsoft shares and McDonald’s Happy Meals his salary could buy.
“This wasn’t about winning,” Mike Lupica wrote of A-Rod and Boras in the New York Daily News. “It wasn’t about finding the best possible stage … Agents like Scott Boras run baseball without any love of the game, any respect for it. Or any soul.”
“What’s breathtaking,” Thomas Boswell wrote in The Washington Post, “is the majestic size of the blunder the Rangers have pulled. … Don’t they show Sesame Street in Texas? Can’t anybody count?”
And the unkindest cut of all came from the brilliant Dan LeBatard in A-Rod’s hometown of Miami: “Rodriguez has always conducted himself with uncommon grace and dignity. But now he has sold a slice of his soul for that $252 million, becoming a little more like all the rest of the athletes keeping score with money. It isn’t just that he went after the money. If Oprah and Jim Carrey and Ricky Martin get paid like that, Rodriguez is entitled too. It’s that he took it from a team that is equal parts loser and sucker, and he’s far more likely to be swallowed by the quagmire in Texas than he is to lift the Rangers out of it.”
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A-Rod did indeed get swallowed up by the quagmire in Texas to the point where after three years, he was willing to do anything, to the point of giving up much of the money, just to get the hell out.
But it was worse than just getting swallowed up. Before the deal, Rodriguez was seen as one kind of player — bright, fun, lovable, incredible. Maybe he didn’t get his due in Seattle because of the time zone, or because the team was just good enough to break a city’s heart. But his game was just so exuberant and wonderful. He was not yet 25, and he had 189 home runs and he could do it all and so many baseball fans adored him.
After the contract, all of that melted away. He wasn’t exuberant or wonderful. No, he was a dollar figure. He was a mercenary. He had three absolutely extraordinary seasons in Texas. In 2001, he played every game and shattered the shortstop home run record, becoming the first in baseball history to hit 50 (he finished with 52, breaking Banks’ record by five).
Then next year, A-Rod played every game again and he broke the record again, this time hitting 57 home runs. He also led the league in RBIs and total bases, and he won his first Gold Glove.
And the next year, he played every game but one, led the league in runs, homers and slugging percentage, won another Gold Glove and finally took his first MVP award. All of this stuff was unprecedented and unheard of and remarkable.
And … so what? Who cared? The Rangers finished fourth all three years. A-Rod got booed everywhere for chasing money to the exclusion of all else. Whispers began leaking out about how much his teammates did not like him. He became the very symbol of the out-of-touch ballplayer. “Somebody wins a lottery and they’re a national hero; somebody works their butt off, and he’s the devil,” he complained, which only made people boo him louder.
How much of it was fair? Who can say for certain? Fair or not, it was real. A-Rod played every card he had to get out of Arlington and get a reset on his career, and this eventually led him to New York, where he moved to third base for Derek Jeter. He won two MVP awards for the Yankees and, in 2007, had one of the greatest offensive seasons in team history when he hit .314/.422/.645 with 54 homers, 143 runs and 156 RBIs. Only Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio among Yankees greats produced more runs (runs + RBIs – homers) than A-Rod that season.
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Then the PED stuff started coming out — first when José Canseco called him a hypocrite and a liar, then when what was supposed to be an anonymous 2003 test result was leaked and then when the Biogenesis scandal broke with A-Rod front and center. He humiliated himself again and again through these years with his angry denials and humbled admissions swirling together so seamlessly you could hardly tell one from the other.
By the end, his career was a broken trail of anger and regret and lost promise. He got his 3,000th hit, almost nobody cared. He got his 600th and 650th home runs, almost nobody cared. He had something of a revival season at age 39 as he tried to make things right, and America loves a comeback story. Almost nobody cared.
“I do want to be remembered as someone who was deeply in love with baseball,” he said at his retirement, but he knew full well, even as he said that, this would not be at all how people remembered him. There was no coming back for Alex Rodriguez.
The way Alex Rodriguez has come back in retirement is one of the more stunning stories in sports. The only comparison I can come up with is George Foreman. He was as menacing a figure as anyone in the history of sports as a boxer. Then he was the happy George Foreman grill guy. It was quite the transformation.
A-Rod’s is not quite to that level in that I don’t think he’s nearly as popular as Foreman. But it’s unquestionable that many people now adore him. He’s the lead broadcaster for ESPN’s Sunday Night Game of the Week. He’s a regular guest on all the talk shows. He’s been a shark on Shark Tank. He’s an Instagram star. He’s engaged to the incomparable J-Lo. He’s the guy players all around baseball look to for advice — and not just about baseball.
He even hosts a show on CNBC about helping former athletes make comebacks in life.
“Can you believe this?” he told USA Today as he was sitting at Centre Court of Wimbledon with John McEnroe watching Novak Djokovic play. “I could never have dreamed this five years ago. I’m so grateful for where I am … it’s crazy how this has worked out.”
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Yes, I repeat, there are still many, many, many people who loathe A-Rod and always will.
But this comeback: It’s something quite remarkable. How did it happen? Well, I think he’s a smart guy who has come across as sincerely contrite for the mistakes he made and managed to get across his true love of baseball. This alone is incredible; so few athletes have managed to do it. Think Pete Rose. Think Barry Bonds. Think Roger Clemens.
But I think there’s something else, too. It goes back to what Allard Baird saw all those years ago on a high school baseball field: A-Rod was destined for greatness, perhaps more than anybody who ever played the game of baseball. And he was great, truly great, but it never quite felt that way. It always felt corrupted. It always felt disappointing. He did that to himself.
And now, A-Rod stands before America and says that he wishes he’d done it all differently. He wishes that he could go back to that high school day when he hit two home runs and stole two bases and inspired a young scout to send back a report with 80s on it. He can’t go back. He knows that. We know that, too. And maybe we all understand that feeling too well.
Note: Portions of this series were adapted from previous work that originated on my personal blog.
Check out the complete series on this topic page
(Photo: Rob Tringali / Sportschrome / Getty Images)