NEW YORK -- There’s no point in even debating the issue: When position players report to their respective spring training camps next week, there will be no bigger story in New York, and probably all of baseball, than the return of Alex Rodriguez to the Yankees.
The question is, how long will A-Rod continue to be a big story?
The answer, of course, is that the A-Rod story will have legs for as long as he does.
And that may not be very long.
Because once you strip away all the soap opera surrounding yet another Alex Rodriguez mea culpa, and the circus that will document its every nuance, you are left with this reality: A-Rod hasn’t been a truly good ballplayer for five years.
And by the time the first pitch is thrown in a real game this April, he will not have been a ballplayer at all for 19 months.
Throw in the fact that he will turn 40 on July 27, and you’ve got all the potential in the world for a great, big letdown. All windup and no pitch.
Aside from the Yankees' distaste for having to pay him the remaining $61 million left on his contract -- and a possible, but highly unlikely, $30 million more for reaching five contractually stipulated home run bonuses -- and their personal enmity for a player they believe has lied to them for the past six seasons at least, the Yankees have a solid, legitimate reason for saying quite publicly that they frankly expect nothing from Alex Rodriguez this year.
That is because since 2010, he hasn’t shown them anything to heighten their expectations. And in fact, there is a very definite line of demarcation in A-Rod's career that runs right below his 2007 season.
Above that line, he was phenomenal. Below it, not so much. And now, he is eight years below that line.
Regardless of how he did it, the numbers A-Rod rolled up between 1996, his first full season as a 20-year-old Seattle Mariner, and 2007, when he won his third AL MVP in his fourth season as a Yankee, say he was one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game.
In those dozen seasons, A-Rod averaged 43 home runs and 124 RBIs a season, and played in an average of 153 games a year. He also strung together 12 seasons of 100-plus runs per season, and led the AL in runs scored five times. (In a strange coincidence, A-Rod’s RBI and runs totals over that 12-year period were exactly the same: 1,482.) His batting average never dipped below .285 -- he had eight .300-plus seasons, including 1996, when he led the AL in batting at .358 -- and his OPS was routinely over .900, and six times was higher than 1.000.
Since then, he has been a different, and rapidly declining, player.
Again, there are likely a lot of reasons, PED use and injuries foremost among them. (Not necessarily age, since A-Rod was just 31 in 2007.) But in the six seasons he has played since that 2007 season, Rodriguez has averaged 23 home runs a year, 78 RBIs and 70 runs. He is down to an average of 111 games per season. His batting average fell to the .270s -- he hit .244 in 44 games in 2013 -- and his OPS has dropped steadily into the .700s.
No matter what you think of him as a person, it is easy to see why the Yankees can look at that trend and rightfully say they will be happy with whatever they can get out of Alex Rodriguez this season.
At this point, projecting off his recent production -- A-Rod hit seven home runs and drove in 19 runs in 156 ABs in 2013, and averaged 17 HRs and 60 RBIs in 2011 and 2012, the last two seasons in which he played regularly -- it is hard to imagine him being anything more than an average to below-average player.
In 2014, American League teams averaged 23 home runs, 83 RBIs, a .248 batting average and .744 OPS from their designated hitters, which as of now is A-Rod’s designated role. The Yankees got even less than that -- 18-63-.230 and .662 OPS -- out of their DHs.
And yet, a season of 18 home runs and 63 RBIs is one Alex Rodriguez has not enjoyed since 2011, although the batting average and OPS numbers may still be within his reach.
The point is, A-Rod’s arrival in Yankees camp and his first news conference may be the highlights of his 2015 season.
After that, the odds are we are in for the dispiriting spectacle of the aging superstar trying to recapture a fraction of his former skills before a battery of cameras, notebooks and microphones. It’s possible that A-Rod’s well-known determination to prove the skeptics wrong -- maybe especially those on his own team -- will carry him further than anyone has a right to expect.
But as an outgunned fighter’s wife once said after her husband was knocked out by a champ, you don’t win the Indy 500 in a Volkswagen unless you know a hell of a shortcut. And by now, you would think Alex Rodriguez has pretty much run out of shortcuts.
This time around, after the big rollout, the Alex Rodriguez circus is likely to have a very short and highly unsatisfying run.