Another Hip Surgery for A-Rod

[PlanetZoltan]

Hey guys, not alot going on here lately, just thought I would drop this in.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/new-york-yankees-alex-rodriguez-second-hip-surgery-may-miss-season-start-120312

[GiambiJuice]

I wonder whether the Yankees front-office regrets this contract extension for A-Rod. Would they trade their 2009 World Series Championship to not have this albatross around their necks? Serious question; I really don't know the answer.

There's no way they win in 2009 without A-Rod carrying that team in his back throughout the postseason. Just imagine what the pressure would be now if the yankees were going on 13 years in a row without a championship.

[Afterglow]

Sucks for him, or any other playing having hip problems.

That's a killer for any athlete.

[Afterglow]

I wonder whether the Yankees front-office regrets this contract extension for A-Rod. Would they trade their 2009 World Series Championship to not have this albatross around their necks? Serious question; I really don't know the answer.

There's no way they win in 2009 without A-Rod carrying that team in his back throughout the postseason. Just imagine what the pressure would be now if the yankees were going on 13 years in a row without a championship.

Of course they regret it. Atleast some, but nobody could have predicted he would start falling apart phyiscally in such a short time span.

[NJYankeeFan]

Of course they regret it. Atleast some, but nobody could have predicted he would start falling apart phyiscally in such a short time span.

Nate Silver did.

His projections for A-Rod were downright terrible. Wish I could find them now.

[Buczilla]

BP Daily: A-Rod likely to miss HR mark

By Nate Silver | Baseball Prospectus
Originally Published: February 23, 2009

We're less than two years removed from Barry Bonds' somber, strange and soulless quest to break Henry Aaron's lifetime home run record. It was a spectacle most sports fans -- even the few like me who were relatively sympathetic toward Bonds' plight -- would go to great lengths to avoid experiencing again.

Unfortunately, it seems history is getting ready to repeat itself. Alex Rodriguez already has hit 553 home runs, by far the most for a player who just completed his age-32 season. He needs only 203 more to surpass Aaron and 210 to best Bonds. Rodriguez has hit an average of 42 home runs per season since joining the New York Yankees in 2003. If he maintains that pace, he'll overtake Bonds' mark on the last day of the 2013 season. And he seems to have plenty of time to spare, being under contract with the Yankees through 2017.

But player haters can rejoice: Rodriguez's breaking the career home run record is nowhere near the foregone conclusion it appears to be. The reason boils down to that fine print you ignored when you invested your daughter's college fund in Citibank stock a few years ago: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Rodriguez certainly has been among the best players in baseball over the past couple of years. And chemically enhanced or not, there are a lot of indicators that ordinarily would be favorable toward his continuing to perform well. Among them:

• All-around athleticism. Rodriguez is far from a one-dimensional player. At an age when most guys refrain from challenging themselves on the basepaths, he still averages about 20 stolen bases a year. He plays a fairly difficult defensive position and plays it pretty well. He is a complete hitter, able to draw walks and hit for average as well as aim for the fences. Multidimensional players, generally speaking, age better than unidimensional ones.

• The Benjamin Button Principle. This is the concept that the beginning of a player's life sometimes resembles the end -- guys who start their careers with a bang sometimes tend to end it that way. Rodriguez, who arguably was already the best player in baseball by the age of 20, started his career like few others in history; he has a better-than-usual chance of finishing it that way.

• Perverse Incentives, Part I. Rodriguez stands to make a $30 million bonus if he breaks the all-time home run record. If he gets close, those are 30 million reasons for him to extend his career until he does, rather than consider early retirement.

On the other hand, another set of indicators implies uncertainty in Rodriguez's future:

• The aging curve. The steepest part of the aging curve -- when a hitter experiences the most decline in his abilities -- tends to come between ages 32 and 34. Rodriguez, who turned 33 this past July, now is about halfway through that period. And he hasn't come away completely unscathed. He hit 30 home runs in the first half of the 2007 season and 24 in the second half, then 19 home runs in the first half of the 2008 season but 16 after the break. That could be just a fluke -- or it could mean he has started on a fairly steep downward trajectory.

• Injury risk. Although Rodriguez generally has been the picture of health, that trend somewhat reversed itself in 2008, when he missed 24 games, the most in any season since 1999. Injury problems sometimes can be compounding, especially when a player reaches his mid-30s. There also is some anecdotal evidence that players who have experimented with steroids are more inclined to have chronic injury problems.

• Perverse Incentives, Part II. Unless he was investing with Bernie Madoff, Rodriguez already has all the money he'll need for life, and it's highly unlikely he'll ever be on the market again. Most of us, given a guaranteed salary for the next nine years that requires us to do nothing other than show up and put on a uniform, might become somewhat lackadaisical in our work habits. Many professional athletes are different -- but others aren't.

The favorable and unfavorable indicators are reflected to some degree in Rodriguez's series of PECOTA comparables. His list includes many Hall of Famers, such as Dave Winfield, George Brett, Frank Robinson, Reggie Jackson, Tony Perez and Hank Aaron himself, who were elite athletes late into their 30s or even their early 40s.

But it also includes some other players whose careers did not end all that gracefully. First are the guys who succumbed to injury, like Jeff Bagwell and Albert Belle. Next are a couple of players who, like Rodriguez, were known or suspected to use performance-enhancing drugs: Sammy Sosa is A-Rod's No. 1 comparable, for instance, and Ken Caminiti his No. 4. Finally, there are players like Ryne Sandberg whose skills simply atrophied sooner or more suddenly than expected.

I took Rodriguez's top 20 PECOTA-comparable players and averaged their performances over each remaining season of their careers. Actually, the process was a little more complicated than that (each comparable's performance was adjusted for his park and league context, as well as his previous track record, and we had to make an accommodation for guys like Manny Ramirez who made A-Rod's comparables list but have yet to conclude their own careers). But the basic idea is simple: Comparables like Frank Robinson, who aged well, have a favorable effect on Rodriguez's forecast, and players like Caminini just the opposite one.

PECOTA's best guess is that Rodriguez will finish with 730 lifetime home runs, running out of steam after another three or four seasons and leaving him just shy of the marks established by Aaron and Bonds. Of course, there is a lot of uncertainty in this estimate. If Rodriguez follows the path charted by Aaron or Frank Robinson, he could finish with well in excess of 800 home runs (and possibly as many as 900). On the other hand, if he draws Albert Belle's ping-pong ball, he might not top 600. Overall, the system puts Rodriguez's chances of surpassing Aaron at only about four in 10 and of surpassing Bonds closer to three in 10.

One needs to remember the ways Aaron and Bonds finished out their careers were far from typical. At least as common are folks like Jimmie Foxx (before Rodriguez, the fastest player to 500 home runs), who hit just 34 home runs after turning 33. Only about a dozen players have hit 200 or more home runs from their age-33 seasons onward; Bonds and Aaron are the only two to have hit at least 300.

In other words, Rodriguez still has his work cut out for him if he wants to pass Bonds and Aaron. Say what you will about his past performance -- for him to get across the finish line still would represent a remarkable accomplishment.

Will Alex Rodriguez catch Barry Bonds? A PECOTA-based analysis doesn't think so.
A-Rod yearly projections

Season Home Runs Career
2009 33 586
2010 30 616
2011 27 643
2012 25 668
2013 18 686
2014 16 702
2015 12 714
2016 8 722
2017 4 726
2018 3 729
2019 1 730

http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/insider/news/story?id=3927591&refresh=true

[GiambiJuice]

Nate Silver did.

His projections for A-Rod were downright terrible. Wish I could find them now.

Nate is my first cousin. Nobody's going to be right 100% of the time, but were his projections for A-Rod really all that bad?

[NYYankeesFan92]

We should've traded for Chase Headley when we had the chance.

[NJYankeeFan]

Nate is my first cousin. Nobody's going to be right 100% of the time, but were his projections for A-Rod really all that bad?

Not quite. He predicted 25 HR's in 2012 and 18 in 2013. A-Rod is slightly ahead of schedule in the decline phase.

Here is the bp link if you are a subscriber:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8543

[dominik]

Arods biggest issue have been injuries. when he was healthy he was still producing but those days became rarer in the last years.

this reccuring injury is yet another blow for him but at least this part of the year is the best time for this to happen. If that happened in june half the season plus maybe even the POs would have been in danger. as of now he will likely be back in late ST or so.

[Yankillaz]

We should've traded for Chase Headley when we had the chance.

LOL. This one cracked me up. BTW, who's gonna be the starting third baseman? Eduardo Nunez?

[Yankillaz]

Not quite. He predicted 25 HR's in 2012 and 18 in 2013. A-Rod is slightly ahead of schedule in the decline phase.

Here is the bp link if you are a subscriber:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=8543

He's not quite ahead of the curve, in the fact that Silver had him with 668 hrs by the end of 2012, while he's currently at 647.

[GiambiJuice]

LOL. This one cracked me up. BTW, who's gonna be the starting third baseman? Eduardo Nunez?

Maybe they'll bring back Eric Chavez. He did a very good job last year (.281/.348/.496 , 16 HR in 313 PA). Granted, he can't hit lefties at all and he was 0 for 17 in the postseason...

[BigRon]

He's not quite ahead of the curve, in the fact that Silver had him with 668 hrs by the end of 2012, while he's currently at 647.

Well, he's "ahead" of Silver's predicted decline curve.

[Ben Grimm]

Maybe they'll bring back Eric Chavez. He did a very good job last year (.281/.348/.496 , 16 HR in 313 PA). Granted, he can't hit lefties at all and he was 0 for 17 in the postseason...

With so many teams lacking 3B, there's a few teams looking at Chavez which could cause his price to rise. Somebody mentioned earlier about trading for Headley, but SD said he's not moving and it's a bit counterproductive considering the Yankees' inhouse mandate to get the payroll down. A player who'd cost less and fits better once ARod's back since he can UTIL all around the infield might be Jed Lowrie. At least it won't cost a package starting with Phil Hughes.