Mark Whicker: ARod contract would draw a shrug this off season

Alex Rodriguez steps to the podium in December 2000 after signing a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers. Photo: Gary Barber, All Sport

December 14, 2022

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

Perhaps you remember when baseball died.

It happened in early December, 2000. The place: Dallas, Tx., in the lobby of the Anatole Hotel, just north of downtown.

Some Americans were preoccupied with a Presidential election that was supposed to have been decided a month prior, and some others were eyeing a Supreme Court that was about to roll out the finish line on George W. Bush and Al Gore. And many folks in Dallas, including the people who ran the newspaper sports sections, were concerned about Troy Aikman’s physical condition.

But the larger public was sobbing softly as Scott Boras, Tom Hicks and Alex Rodriguez conspired to put a pillow over baseball’s face, and pressed hard.

Rodriguez, a free agent after six brilliant years in Seattle, signed a contract to play for the Rangers. It would pay him 10 years and a total of $252 million.

We weren’t as numb to the numbers back then. The Rockies had broken the MLB contract record a couple of days earlier when they gave pitcher Mike Hampton $123 million. At that point Rodriguez was thought to be shooting for a mere $200 million. But Hicks, who owned the Rangers, was taken up the ladder by agent Boras, who, then as now, throws the highest heat in the game.

It was shocking, for sure. When Hicks bought the Dallas Stars hockey team, he only paid $250 million, total. At the time Rodriguez signed the deal, the Twins, Royals and Marlins all had total payrolls under $25.2 million per year.

At the time, Sandy Alderson was an assistant MLB commissioner. He came into the lobby to issue the counter-programming. When he was asked if this number made Rodriguez a “franchise player,” he replied, “Considering what other franchises are worth, it makes Alex a three-franchise player.”

Fortunately baseball was only unconscious for a little while and was out of the ICU by the beginning of spring training.

In 2001, even with Rodriguez, the Rangers had a payroll of $87.8 million, which ranked seventh in baseball. In 2022, the Rangers had the 15th highest payroll in the game. It was $142 million. The Rangers did lapse into bankruptcy, but not because of Rodriguez. They were rescued by an investment group that featured Nolan Ryan, Chuck Greenberg and current principal owner Ray Davis and bid $593 million.

In March of this year, Forbes magazine put a $2.05 billion sticker on the Rangers, if anybody wants to pay. In 2020 the reincarnate Rangers built a new domed stadium, across the street from a stadium that was built for them in 1994.

Major League Baseball took in $11 billion in 2022, making a full recovery from two years of COVID-19-related discomfort. It passed the revenue marker it earned in 2019, which was $10.7 billion. It also signed a seven-year, $85 million streaming deal with Apple and a two-season, $30 million deal with Peacock.

Disney also finished its takeover of Baseball Advanced Media, which brought another $752 million.

That might help explain why the owners made it rain so hard at the winter meetings in San Diego last week.

Rodriguez would be asking to re-negotiate if he were still playing. Trea Turner, who is assuredly not a potential Hall of Famer but a very good hitter and shortstop, signed an 11-year, $300 million contract with Philadelphia that includes a full no-trade clause. That means that a 40-year-old Turner, who by then presumably will have lost the speed that makes him distinctive, will be making $27.2 million under any and all circumstances.

Aaron Judge, who does have a shot at Cooperstown, signed a nine-year, $360 million deal to remain a Yankee.

Xander Bogaerts, another very good shortstop in the context of modern baseball who will probably not have a stadium named after him, signed a $280 million deal over 11 years with San Diego. That’s $25.4 million per, and he turned 30 on Oct. 1.

Jacob deGrom is 34. He won back-to-back Cy Young Awards in 2018 and 2019 as a Met. He also has started 38 games in his past three seasons and pitched 224 innings. That did not restrain the Rangers – them again – from giving him a five-year deal worth $185 million. No contract this month is as drunk as this one.

While all this happens, bottom-feeders like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Florida bravely line up as cannon fodder for the big spenders. There is no salary cap in baseball but there also is no salary floor. Mets’ owner Steve Cohen is expected to pay $421 million for baseball players in 2023, and that includes a luxury tax payment of $70 million. But in the NFL and NHL, teams are prohibited from exceeding that cap, which complicates the job of a general manager and halts the testosterone level of an owner.

Last year Oakland’s payroll was $42.2 million, barely more than Judge will make this year by himself. Baltimore’s was $53.5, and the Orioles actually had a winning record. Pittsburgh’s was $54.1 million. Six teams won fewer than 41 percent of their games, and four lost at least 100 out of 162.

This is the landscape Alderson feared in 2000.

“I have four season ticket applications on my desk,” he said that day. “But I want to know what I’m going to watch – an Athletes In Action exhibition, or real competition? I’m concerned about the exponentiality of it.”

The outrage over Rodriguez, a truly elite player, has dissipated into a shrug and even a round of applause for this round of runaway inflation. Cohen is being hailed as a hero for going for it, trying to win, etc.

But good management wins, too. Atlanta and Houston have barely made a peep this winter. That’s because they have already signed their best players to manageable extensions or have invested wisely in the draft and in the Caribbean market. Or both. In doing so, they have maintained a team-first ethic that has locked up players who are and will be in prime time.

As for the Rangers and Rodriguez, they were only together for three seasons, all of them under .500, a grand total of 54 games under .500, although A-Rod led the American League in home runs three times. Suddenly destitute, Texas dumped Rodriguez into the lap of the Yankees, who wound up paying him $33 million in 2009 and 2019. Rodriguez finally got a World Series ring in that 2019 season.

And George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency, right about that time, as the nation’s baseball writers skidded on Metroplex ice to attend Rodriguez’s triumphant news conference in Arlington. Bush, too, had owned the Rangers. Now he lives in Dallas and remains a baseball fan. How convenient. There’s still a ballclub there.