July Round Up!

OK, let’s talk about A-Rod. Yes, again….

Last week, he went on Bret Boone’s podcast to weigh in on the biggest topic of ahead of tomorrow’s MLB trade deadline: Should the Angels trade Shohei Ohtani? Ohtani, who is the best player on the planet and quite possibly in baseball history, is a free agent at the end of the season, and seems unlikely to stay in Anaheim, where the Angels have been mired in mediocrity for years, despite the brilliance of both Ohtani and Trout.

So Alex Rodriguez suggested that, if it were his decision, he would trade Ohtani for “a bunch of draft picks.” Now, he was roundly mocked for this because, as most baseball fans know, MLB teams cannot trade draft picks. But I think this line of criticism is a little unfair: It seems very possible that A-Rod was using the term “draft pick” interchangeably with “young prospect,” since he uses the term in the context of “loading up [the] farm system.” In other words, he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that teams trades the picks themselves, but recently picked prospects. I think A-Rod probably knows you can’t trade actual picks.

The problem with these comments is not some gotcha about whether Rodriguez knows the rules about trading draft picks — it’s the actual substance of what he said. If you listen to his comments in full, A-Rod doesn’t just talk about about draft picks. He also suggested that the Angels should find a trade partner who will take their “bad contracts” in order to get Ohtani. This kind of talk is a very depressing way to think about baseball. It turns an exciting unicorn like Shohei Ohtani into nothing more than asset to be arbitraged.

But it is frankly unsurprising from Rodriguez. If you have followed A-Rod’s post-retirement career — if you’ve heard him broadcast a game or listened to his studio analysis or caught one of his podcast appearances — then you’ve surely noticed how reflexively he takes the owner’s perspective. He is constantly advising teams to “load up their farm system,” praising executives for tanking, and celebrating the game’s lowest-paid players. It has really turned him into an awful announcer. While his knowledge of the game is hard to match, and his enthusiasm can be fun, the fact that he is such a simp for owners and executives turns makes his perspective kind of rote and joyless.

What’s ironic is that all the things Rodriguez lauds now are the things he was criticized for not being as a player. He loves to praise team executives, but he himself fought so openly with his front office that his former GM once publicly told him to “shut the fuck up.” He loves to tell teams to dump “bad contracts,” but he himself was constantly made a scapegoat for his “bad contract”; one team got him to accept a voluntary salary cut, while another tried to void his deal. He loves it when guys bunt, but A-Rod did not have a sacrifice bunt after he turned 24.

How did this happen? How did Alex Rodriguez go from every owner’s bête noire to their unofficial mouthpiece? Well, it’s a long story, but if you’re interested then boy do I have a podcast for you…

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We’re really proud of this miniseries, so please do check it out. If you’re nervous about diving in for a full episode, here’s an excerpt from Chapter One:

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In non A-Rod news, this piece from early July has aged pretty well in light of the New York Mets’ fire sale.

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Did you even remember there was a “no-hitter” earlier this month? No you did not, because combined no-hitters are bullshit.

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Some thoughts on the Northwestern football scandal.