Why People Need To Shut Up About A-Rod & Why He Needs To Be A Yankee

Hey hey. Unfortunately, my return to blogging isn't to celebrate the Yankees 28th World Series championship.  The 2012 postseason was rather depressing and I'm not even going to get into that.  I'm here for one specific reason and one specific reason only.  That reason is to try and shut people up about getting rid of Alex Rodriguez.  If you're a level headed person and able to look past any distaste you may have for Alex I hope you'll see my points. But I'm a realist.  I've been listening to some of the sports talk.  There are a lot of Yankees fans who are way off base and borderline insane when it comes to baseball.  I understand and appreciate the passion but some of you guys are downright idiotic with what you say.  Example: someone suggested the Yankees get Jeff Francouer. That made me laugh and left me speechless.  But anyway, back to the reason why I'm here.....

There's really only one reason why the Yankees need to keep A-Rod around and quite frankly it's because he makes the team better.  Let's take a look at some numbers, shall we? 

I'm going to break this down and keep it simple and I need you to keep in mind that A-Rod went on the disabled list back in July and missed a stretch of 36 games, spanning from 7/25-9/3.  Now, I didn't comb through the schedule to pull these #s.  I pulled up the standings as of such-and-such a date.  It's possible I may be off by 1 here and there.  It's not enough to dispel what I'm trying to prove.

• Yankees W-L record after 7/24 game vs Seattle: 58-39 (.598) and had a 7 game lead.
• Yankees W-L record from 7/25-9/2: 18-18 (.500), lead dropped to 2
• Yankees W-L record from 9/3- end of season: 19-10 (.655) and finished 2 gamed ahead of Baltimore.
• Yankees W-L record w/A-Rod: 77-49 (.611)
• Yankees W-L record w/o A-Rod: 18-18 (.500)

You can't really dispute that the team played better with Alex on the team.  Had he not returned when he did maybe the Yankees don't make the playoffs.  Who knows?  I do know one thing and that's that Alex makes the lineup better.  Take Robinson Cano for example:

• Cano's splits after 7/24 game (last game w/A-Rod): .317 avg, .376 OBP, .571 SLG, .947 OPS
• Cano's splits after 9/2 (last game without A-Rod): .303 avg, .366 OBP, .544 SLG, .910 OPS
• Cano's final season splits: .313 avg, .379 OBP, .550 SLG, .929 OPS
• Cano's average from 7/25-9/2 (while A-Rod was on DL): .263 (35 for 133)
• Cano's average from 9/3 thru end of season (when A-Rod was back): .353 (41 for 116)

I'm not going to go through and pull Robbie's splits from 7/25-9/2. I don't need to.  You can easily see the numbers dropped and they dropped quite a bit.  You can also see that after A-Rod came back his numbers climbed pretty sharply. If you think that had nothing to do with Alex being in the lineup you're kidding yourself.

I'm not going to get in to any more.  It's enough for me to see that Alex provides a ton of value to the Yankees and they're not going to be better without him.  If you think they will be you're nuts. 

Last night I fired off a few tweets about Alex.  I'm going to close with those as I think they sum up my feelings nicely:

If this was A-Rod's last game as Yankee, just want to say thanks to the guy. Without him there's no title in 09 & Yanks don't do as well. A-Rod got a raw deal in NY from media & fans. He could do no right. At times he carried team. They don't win close to what they did w/o him. A-Rod made lineup better and having him on team gave them best chance to win. Lots of goats on the team. Unfair he's only one scapegoat. I think Alex still has a lot of value. I hope the marriage isn't done. He may not be worth the $ but few would be. Not his fault. A-Rod isn't perfect & may be a douche at times. But he's a Yankee. A true Yankee that deserves the Pinstripes. You don't hate your own.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie