In their chat, the concept of Rodriguez becoming a special advisor came up and the 41-year-old accepted it while getting paid the remainder of his contract.
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And if this is what he thinks, at the lowest moment of his time with the Yankees – as the team announced he was going to be released – there would seem to be a good chance he will look to play for another team.
The three-time AL MVP said that despite the setbacks this season he still thinks he can contribute to the team. He thanked the Steinbrenner family for the opportunity to stay in baseball. “He’s been a leader and a mentor”.
In short, Rodriguez has made a decision to call it a career by retiring on the 12th.
The announcement ends one of the more complex relationships a player has had with a team.
GM Brian Cashman said his guess was that A-Rod’s retirement “was not a forced situation” based on conversations with Rodriguez and Steinbrenner.
“I heard his pregame interview, and you can tell (despite) a lot of the things people said about him, the guy played with a lot of passion”, Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “I need to kind of think on this, sleep on it.’ I have not thought past the pinstripes, and my horizon is Friday”, he said. “And, I haven’t thought much more than that”.
A 14-time All-Star, Rodriguez is hitting.204 this season with nine home runs and 29 RBIs in 216 at-bats. The Yankees on Sunday announced that Alex Rodriguez would be playing his final game in the coming week.
He wasn’t in the starting lineup Sunday against the Indians. I say get him off the team today”, Mike Robinson, 65, of Bayside, Queens, said Sunday “He’s been nothing but a leech on the Yankees’ finances and morale for years, and I just wish there was a way to opt out of paying him next year’s salary. Rodriguez said. “We all want to keep playing forever but it doesn’t work that way. I love this game and I love this team”, he said, often choking up. The two met face-to-face a few times, and A-Rod said he asked for one more chance to play in front of a NY crowd. A-Rod will have until Friday to add to his career home run total, which now sits at 696, fourth highest in history. Faced with this report, Rodriguez copped to using steroids in the 2001, 2002 and 2003 seasons – when they weren’t specifically banned by baseball – as he began a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers.
Saying goodbye may be the hardest part of the job, but that’s what I’m doing today, ” said Rodriguez. If you went back to 2013 and told anyone covering Biogenesis that A-Rod would end up as a roving adviser and instructor in the Yankees system by 2017, we’d have laughed in your face.
His 22 seasons have brought him untold riches and great feats, but also moments where he couldn’t get out of his own way and suffered painful-to-watch lows.
NY manager Joe Girardi said he’d talk to Rodriguez about possibly playing this week in Boston.
And if he did walk from the game sated without another spotlight turn, it would be consistent with the Rodriguez we’ve seen since his season-long drug suspension and the supposedly transformational psychotherapy he underwent.
“He’s always had some ups and downs, but he’s always gotten back up”, Cashman said.
A-Rod made a successful return past year, when the Yankees made him a fulltime DH, but his offense slid late in the season and hit.224 from September 1 on. He hit.250 with 33 homers and 86 RBIs overall.
-The Arizona Diamondbacks placed outfielder David Peralta on the 15-day disabled list due to inflammation in his right wrist. Brito is batting.211 with two homers in 13 games for Arizona this season.
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At 39, and having not seen major league pitching in 18 months, the odds were stacked against Rodriguez’s renaissance in 2015.
