The question ricochets among talent evaluators these days as they watch Alex Rodriguez take 4.7 seconds to run to first base, as ground balls scoot by him at third base, as he struggles to catch up to fastballs. The question seems both a little unfair and yet truly fair game, and it's because of what Rodriguez has acknowledged about his past.
The question is this: Is Rodriguez, a month from his 34th birthday, much less of a player because he presumably no longer takes performance-enhancing drugs?
It's a question that can never be answered, but it's a question that will continue to be asked, probably more within the Yankees organization than anywhere else. And really, if you want, just consider the question in terms of money.
The Yankees are still on the hook for about $250 million in the next eight-plus seasons. The player who will receive that money can never give them quite what they paid for, in a sense, because A-Rod, as a marketing tool, is damaged forever. They would settle for paying him just to hit well, field effectively and run the bases as well as he did for 15 years -- doing all the things on the field they needed him to do when they signed him to the highest salary in the game.
But he is not providing any of that, either. Even after delivering a crucial two-run single in the Yankees' win over Atlanta on Wednesday night, Rodriguez is batting .210 this season; since June 7, his batting average has dropped 45 points. His slugging percentage of .441 is by far the lowest in any season since 1994, when he had a handful of at-bats for the Mariners as a teenager.
"He looks like a record playing at a slower speed," said one talent evaluator who saw Rodriguez over the past two weeks.
Said another, "He looks old. He's a first baseman. How many years does he have left on the contract?"
This is Year 2 of the 10-year deal, the talent evaluator was told. He whistled. "I don't know what they're going to do with him," he said.
The Yankees will keep playing him and ignore the question that hovers over Rodriguez and every other aging player who has been linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. They have to hope that what they're seeing is someone simply struggling to recover from hip surgery, someone who is prone to doubts, anyway. They have to hope that he will start to hit eventually. They have to hope that he isn't overcome by frustration with his performance and simply decides to pack it in and have the more extensive hip surgery that he already knows he needs.
The Yankees might be asking themselves the same question that rival talent evaluators are asking, about whether A-Rod without steroids is, in his mid-30s, destined to be a shell of what he was in his mid-20s, when he says he was young and stupid and juicing. But there really isn't much point in the Yankees' dwelling on any of that, because they cannot change the terms of his contract, they cannot ever know how much of A-Rod's success was built on his talent and how much was predicated on his PED use.
Rodriguez, as far as we know, has passed all his drug tests since after the 2003 season, and he says he stopped using performance-enhancing drugs after being traded to the Yankees. But, of course, he has lied in the past: He famously told "60 Minutes" that he hadn't used steroids at all. Nobody but Rodriguez will probably ever know what he used and when he used it, and in which doses. Nobody will ever know, for sure, how much of his success -- his 562 home runs, his three Most Valuable Player awards, his 2,433 hits -- is predicated on drug use. There is no way for even A-Rod to know, for sure, how good he might have been without steroids.
But as he grows older and if he struggles to hit, the question will be asked by those who write the checks and file scouting reports, as it is asked these days about many older players. The same question will be asked about
Manny Ramirez if he is a less dynamic player after returning to the Dodgers next week.
The downturn in the economy has had a profound impact on the sport and the salaries. But so has increased scrutiny of the impact of drugs on baseball by those who make personnel decisions.
Many executives will see players in their early and mid-30s floundering these days and will quickly theorize that the decline in the player is tied directly to the decline of PED use. "I have my doubts about whether a lot of what we saw five years ago, or three years ago, was real," one GM said recently. "It makes it extremely difficult to evaluate players. But I've come to the conclusion that it [PED use] went far beyond anything I imagined."
Two years ago, A-Rod was widely regarded as the best player in the majors. Now he is the best player to admit past steroid use, and that has made him something of a lab rat. His performance will be dissected as talent evaluators continue to ask the question that can't be fully answered.
Ups and downs
A-Rod and
David Ortiz are going in different directions, as Jason Paradise of ESPN Stats & Information shows here, because of their ability to handle the fastball. Here's a comparison of Rodriguez and Ortiz versus fastballs since June 8.
• Ramirez played four innings in his second injury rehab game, writes Dylan Hernandez. He's being protected by a guy who once protected presidents.
• Jose Canseco is making Barry Bonds look good, writes Gwen Knapp.
Fixing Florida
The Florida Marlins' bullpen is in tatters, in the aftermath of word that Matt Lindstrom may not pitch for many weeks, to go along with injuries to Leo Nunez and Kiko Calero. Sources say that right now, Florida's top priority is to add a proven reliever, and given that most of the bodies lost by the Marlins this season have been right-handers, adding someone like a LaTroy Hawkins or Danys Baez would make some sense. They also will consider Luis Ayala, whom the Twins cut loose and is reportedly being considered by the Pirates.
The Marlins' need is acute, and the timing is right: Ricky Nolasco is on a roll right now, and the Marlins moved above .500 for the first time in more than six weeks with their victory over Baltimore on Wednesday. The injury to Lindstrom has the Marlins searching for relief, writes Dave Hyde. Manager Fredi Gonzalez is looking at his bullpen situation as a glass-half-full thing, Joe Capozzi writes.
The Marlins have been among the many teams considering Mark DeRosa, but in the end, they might solve that problem internally and wind up going with a platoon of Gaby Sanchez and Emilio Bonifacio at third base. The expectation among rival executives is that in the end, DeRosa will go to the team that offers the best pitching prospect in return. There is a lot of demand for DeRosa but also a lot of reluctance within the game right now to part with young pitching, one executive said. "Those zero-to-three [years of service time] prospects are absolute gold right now, even more than they have been before."
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Buster Olney
