However, the athlete affectionately known as A-Rod will remain part of the organisation until 2017, staying on as a special adviser and instructor. “Today I’m saying goodbye to both”, Rodriguez said. He’s started only once in 15 games since July 22.
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He has 696 career home runs, and is just four away from joining the illustrious 700 Club, which now has just three members, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth, respectively. He’d be the fourth player in Major League history to achieve that milestone joining Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.
A couple years after resigning with the Yankees, in 2009, it was discovered that Alex Rodrigues had tested positive at some point for performance enhancing drugs.
And PED use might not necessarily keep him out of Monument Park; last season, the Yankees retired the number of Andy Pettitte, who also was connected to PED use.
Rodriguez has a $20 million salary this year and is owed $20 million more in 2017, the final season of a $275 million contract that was the largest in baseball when he signed it.
If Rodriguez has not reached the 700 mark by his last game as a Yankee, might he want to look at another team?
It also comes as A-Rod was batting an anemic.204 and still being paid his full $21 million for this year. “He’s hit a lot of home runs [four shy of 700], he’s had a lot of big moments”.
-Yankees manager Joe Girardi said he would talk to Rodriguez about possibly playing in Boston on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday before the team returns home for Friday night’s game against Tampa Bay.
With one notable exception: Brett Gardner, who will become the longest-tenured Yankee once Rodriguez departs, was not swallowing the party line of a happy parting between Rodriguez and the team.
Again, the numbers are there; two of Rodriguez’s MVP awards were with the Yankees. The terms of his departure will stun the baseball world.
For some – mainly for Alex Rodriguez himself – it was an emotional day when A-Rod announced that Friday would be his last game. “It’s been painful and embarrassing and awkward”, Rodriguez said. His contract for this season and next put the American League’s three-times most valuable player and 14-times all-star at $21 million annually.
Welcome to the 3,000-hit club, Ichiro Suzuki to do it in 15½ years is something special.
ROYALS 7, BLUE JAYS 1: Yordano Ventura pitched effectively into the seventh inning, Kendrys Morales hit a grand slam, and Kansas City beat Toronto.
He called Rodriguez a “team player” who helped shine a spotlight on the Bronx and the Yankees franchise, particularly after he helped lead them to the 2009 World Series title. The 29-year-old Freeman was hitless in nine at-bats in eight major-league games for the Diamondbacks earlier this season.
In denying with such conviction that he never used steroids and angrily insisting to his BFF he shouldn’t serve a single day of his ban, A-Rod gave a performance that could serve as his Hollywood audition tape. “We all want to play forever … saying goodbye is the hardest part of the job, but that’s what I’m doing today”.
Alex Rodriguez leaves press conference wearing Nike sneakers after announcing retirement from New York Yankees.
He acknowledged how ugly the last few weeks have been.
“I know he has bigger goals and bigger dreams to do bigger things, and I wish him the best”, Sabathia said of A-Rod’s outside aspirations.
“I think Friday was logistics”, he said.
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Asked if he received an ultimatum from the Yankees to take this offer or be released immediately, he said: “I don’t think the conversations ever got that strong or aggressive”.
