Alex Rodriguez reportedly training with MLB home run leader Barry Bonds
Alex Rodriguez was seen training with MLB’s home run leader Barry Bonds.
It looks like Alex Rodriguez is trying to regain his hitting form that made him a 14-time MLB All-Star.
A-Rod still has three more years and more than $60 million left on his massive $275 million, record-breaking contract that he signed with the New York Yankees back in 2007. He has not played since 2013 due to being suspended all of the 2014 season for violating MLB’s performance-enhancing drug policy.
Even before his suspension, he was not playing like the A-Rod of old. Since being named an All-Star in 2011, he has struggled with inconsistent play and injuries. His batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage have decreased in each year since 2011. With A-Rod getting older, now 39, and being dormant for a year, it’s certainly a possibility that those trends continue when he comes back into the lineup for the 2015 season.
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There’s no way the Yankees will be able to trade him with his massive contract he carries, so they will try to milk all they can out of A-Rod for the next few years. One way they will try to do that is making him the permanent designated hitter for the 2015 season and not returning to the third base position where he has played since coming to the Yankees.
A-Rod, however, believes that he can still play the field and expects to play third-base this year. It seems that he’s taking precautions though, just in case he will be the permanent designated hitter this season. That seems to be the case, according to Sports Illustrated, as A-Rod has been seen training the MLB’s home-run leader, Barry Bonds.
SFGate.com has reported that people have spotted Bonds and A-Rod training together at Bay Area training facility owned by Charles Scott, who was a former teammate of Bonds at Arizona State.
If A-Rod is going to be the permanent designated hitter for the Yankees this season, even if A-Rod doesn’t like it, it couldn’t hurt to get some tip from the MLB’s greatest hitter of all-time. It’s also interesting that the two are training together, since both of their careers have been tainted with steroid use.
Bond’s retired in 2007 as MLB’s leading home-run hitter with 762 after he was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury during the BALCO investigation. That was, coincidentally, the same year A-Rod signed is record-breaking contract with the Yankees.
The two are already somewhat linked together because of A-Rod being the supposed heir-apparent to Bonds and the steroids scandals, now it seems they are even more directly linked with each other.
H/T to Sports Illustrated and SFGate.com for the information.