Alex Rodriguez has backed off his claims of retiring after the 2017 MLB season at the end of his New York Yankees contract. Could A-Rod play in 2018?
On Wednesday afternoon, reports first came out that veteran slugger of the New York Yankees Alex Rodriguez was going to call it a career after completing the final two years of his deal with the Yankees in 2017.
Rodriguez retracted his comments Wednesday evening that he made to ESPN with the New York Post stating, “I’m thinking in terms of my contract, which ends in 2017. After that, we’ll see what happens. I’ve got two years and more than 300 games to play.”
In his 21-year big league career with three American League teams (the Seattle Mariners, the Texas Rangers, and now the Yankees), Rodriguez has accumulated over 600 career home runs, over 2,000 runs batted in, and over 3,000 hits.
While he has been arguably the most complete offensive player of his generation, Rodriguez didn’t do it cleanly, as he twice admitted to using performance enhancing drugs. The first time was with the Rangers in the early 2000s. The other caused him to miss all the 2014 MLB season as a repeat violator in the eyes of former MLB commissioner Bud Selig.
Though Rodriguez is one of the most reviled players in recent memory in the game of baseball, nobody has made more money than A-Rod in terms of career earnings. Rodriguez since his rookie season in 1994 has earned well over $400 million on his lengthy big league contracts.
If he chooses to play in 2018 at age 42 and beyond, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Rodriguez could make over $500 million before finally calling it a career in his mid-40s. While his skills have diminished in the field defensively the last few years, Rodriguez can still hit. He had 33 home runs for the 2015 Yankees last season. Maybe he has more in the tank than the two years left on his New York contract?
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