Will A-Rod's Disastrous Postseason Affect Future Superstar Free-Agent Deals?

The New York Yankees were swept in the American League Championship Series by the Detroit Tigers, marking the first time since the 1976 World Series that they've been swept in four straight in a best-of-seven series.

And it was all Alex Rodriguez's fault.

OK, that's more than a slight exaggeration. A-Rod collected only one hit in nine at-bats in the ALCS, but he wasn't the only Yankee hitter who struggled to hit against Detroit's good/great/stupendous pitching. Plus, he wouldn't have even played in the final two games of the series had he not been summoned as a pinch-hitter in Game 4.

The Tigers had the game pretty well in hand by the time A-Rod entered the fray in the sixth inning. Max Scherzer had a no-hitter through five, and Miguel Cabrera and Jhonny Peralta both hit two-run homers in a four-run fourth that broke the game wide open. The Tigers went on to win 8-1.

A-Rod won't miss the ALCS. For that matter, he won't miss this entire postseason. He collected only three hits in his 25 at-bats with 12 strikeouts and two walks. He never did end up getting a hit against a right-handed pitcher.

The Yankees were hoping for a little more production than that out of their $29 million third baseman. He further complicated matters by kicking off a media frenzy by trying to score with a couple lovely ladies in the middle of Game 1, which was scooped by the New York Post. 

Rock bottom, my friends. A-Rod has hit it.

On his way down to the bottom, Rodriguez somehow managed to become a walking storyline bigger than the series itself. My guess is that most of you are pretty sick of hearing about him by now.

Well, too bad. The A-Rod saga is just beginning. Ahead of us lies an offseason in which the Yankees are probably going to try to unload A-Rod onto another team. If they do, they'll probably still be responsible for the five years and $114 million remaining on the 10-year, $275 million deal A-Rod signed back in 2007.

A-Rod won't make it easy for his employers to get rid of him. The word from ESPNNewYork.com is that Rodriguez is planning on being in New York next season, which means he could exercise his no-trade clause even if the Yankees do find a taker for him. Consider it just another way that his contract is haunting the Yankees.

Even if the Yankees do unload A-Rod, his disaster of a contract is not going to go away. Not for them. Not for Major League Baseball. Not for anyone.

For other players around the league, this could be a problem. A-Rod's deal is the contract all players strive for. It has years. It has money. It has bells and whistles. It's perfect.

And now general managers around the league have an excuse to never give out another contract like that ever again. A-Rod's contract may represent the ultimate goal for players, but it represents the ultimate bust for GMs and baseball executives. None of them want one of their own.

Obviously, being able to look at A-Rod's deal in retrospect helps make it clear just how huge of a bust it really is. Even at the time he signed it, however, it was clear enough that the Yankees were taking a huge risk that they could easily come to regret.

Sure, A-Rod was fresh off an MVP season in 2007 that saw him post a 1.067 OPS and hit 54 home runs. He was 31 years old in 2007, though, and he would be 32 in the first year of his new deal, just a couple years away from that nebulous area where hitters' prime years go to die.

The Yankees rolled the dice anyway, and the results have left much to be desired. Since his MVP season in 2007, an average season for A-Rod has consisted of an .873 OPS and 26 home runs. 

And then there are the postseason numbers. A-Rod posted a .597 OPS in the 2010 postseason, and a .372 OPS in the 2011 postseason. This year, he managed a mere .305 OPS in the postseason.

Yes, A-Rod was money in the 2009 postseason just two years after re-upping with the Yankees. He posted a 1.308 OPS and hit six home runs, and seemingly every hit he came up with in leading the Yankees to their 27th World Series title was a big one. 

But don't take the 2009 postseason as an excuse to justify the 10-year contract A-Rod signed with the Yankees in 2007. Had he not opted out of his deal in '07, he would have been under contract with the Yankees through the 2010 season anyway. He was going to be around in 2009 one way or the other. What the Yankees did in 2007 was ensure that A-Rod would be around in 2011 and beyond.

Had A-Rod not opted out in 2007 and cut ties with the Yankees following the 2010 season, nobody would have been in a position to complain. An average season for him between 2001 and 2010 consisted of a .971 OPS and 42 home runs, and he won three MVPs and a World Series along the way.

In that 10-year window, he thus managed to do the impossible by being worth every penny. Not a steal, but worth it.

What this tells us, however, is not that A-Rod's current deal isn't a mistake, but that the initial 10-year deal he signed with the Texas Rangers following the 2000 season wasn't a mistake. He signed it when he was in his prime, and it would have ended right when he was brushing up against the end of his prime.

A-Rod's current contract is a horse of a different color. He was in his early 30s when he signed it, and the Yankees were banking on the notion that he would somehow still be worth the money when he got into his late-30s and early-40s. They were hoping that more numbers, more accolades and more team success would be in A-Rod's near and not-so-near future.

Conventional wisdom should have told the Yankees that they were buying a ticket for a train that would never arrive. Hitters don't produce elite numbers in their late 30s and early 40s. Not without a little extra help, anyway (see Bonds, Barry).

This is something that the Yankees are finding out for certain now, and they're going to continue to pay for their mistake even if they find a taker for A-Rod this offseason. He may be wearing another uniform in 2013 and beyond, but the Yankees will still be cutting him checks on the first and 15th of every month.

So the moral of the story, such as it is, is that it's a really, really bad idea to hand out 10-year contracts to players in their early 30s. You're only going to get a couple prime years and then a whole lot of nothing, and you're only going to get the prime years if you're lucky.

Lest you think that A-Rod's contract is some kind of lone exception, it's actually not. He signed his 10-year deal after his 31-year-old season, and Albert Pujols signed his 10-year deal with the Los Angeles Angels when he was fresh off his 31-year-old season.

Pujols, of course, went on to have the worst season of his career in the first year of his deal with the Angels. The Angels also missed the playoffs, and now they have no choice but to hope that the next nine years of Pujols' deal with the club produce better results.

By the time Pujols gets to A-Rod's age, there's a chance the Angels will be ruing his contract in the same way the Yankees are ruing A-Rod's contract. Just sayin'.

Now, I know what you're thinking. It's something along the lines of, "Yeah, but how many guys out there are actually in line to get such a ridiculous deal that late in their careers?"

Admittedly, not many. There are only so many A-Rods and so many Pujolses out there—hence the reason contracts like theirs aren't exactly an epidemic.

And fortunately, contracts like theirs shouldn't suddenly become an epidemic at any point in the foreseeable future. A-Rod's deal is certainly a deterrent for such contracts, but that's only about half the story.

Most of the monster contracts that have been handed out in recent years have gone to players who were/are still in their 20s. Prince Fielder, for example, signed his nine-year deal with the Detroit Tigers when he was fresh off his 27-year-old season. The Milwaukee Brewers locked up Ryan Braun when he was in the middle of his 27-year-old season. The Los Angeles Dodgers locked up Matt Kemp after his 26-year-old season. Joey Votto is 29 now, and the Cincinnati Reds have him locked up through 2024.

Notice the repetition of the phrase "locked up." It's a phrase that's gotten to become en vogue in the last couple of seasons, and that's because more and more teams have taken to locking up their star players well before they're due to hit free agency.

This is possible because there's more money floating around in Major League Baseball than ever before. A lot of teams have their own lucrative television rights, and the recent national TV deals MLB signed with ESPN and with FOX and Turner are going to line teams' pockets with even more money. The extra TV money is already making it easier for small-market teams to lock up their stars, and there's more coming.

This doesn't mean that young stars like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper have no shot of becoming free agents in their early 30s, at which point they'd be on the lookout for massive contracts. Free agency is not going away, and the extra TV money won't be able to kill the concept of the free-agent superstar altogether in the long run.

If anything, all the extra cash will create more opportunities for aging superstars to luck into a contract like the one Rodriguez signed in 2007. The superstar players will still be out there, and there will be more money out there for teams to pump into these superstars' next contracts. 

The one thing that won't change in the near or distant future, however, is the fact that baseball will still be played by human beings. Players in their early 30s have a short shelf life now, and players in their early 30s will still have a short shelf life later.

The A-Rod contract will be more of a deterrent for clubs than the dollars and the years when it comes to prospective free agents in their early 30s. It will be teams' reminder not to commit massive amounts of money spread out over many years to players who are already on the wrong side of 30. 

If you want to believe that A-Rod's contract could possibly do some good in the baseball world, there you go.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. Salary figures courtesy of Cot's Baseball Contracts.

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