Commentary

BP Daily: A-Rod likely to miss HR mark

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

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.


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