The New Yor Times
Yankees Want Rodriguez to Stay, but Won’t Sweeten His Deal
TAMPA, Fla., March 21 — Alex Rodriguez has often said he is proud of his
contract, and it is easy to see why. It is not only the richest deal in
baseball history, but it provides him a chance to make still more money for
even more years.
Rodriguez, the Yankees’ third baseman, seems destined to play this season
against a backdrop of speculation about the clause that allows him to opt out
of his 10-year, $252 million deal after this season. The latest issue arose
Wednesday — the Yankees’ only day off during spring training — when
General Manager Brian Cashman said he had no plans to extend Rodriguez’s
contract to keep him from leaving.
“It’s the same thing with Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and all the other
guys,” Cashman said in a telephone interview. “He’s got a significant
contract he’s earned, and we hope he stays.”
Cashman, who first conveyed the strategy to Sports Illustrated’s Web site,
had already said he would let Rivera and Posada play out the season before
deciding whether to bring them back. Rivera, the closer, and Posada, the
catcher, are unsigned past 2007.
Rodriguez is signed through 2010, but that may be only a technicality. He is
scheduled to receive $27 million each season in 2008, 2009 and 2010. If he
does not exercise his opt-out clause and decides to stay with the Yankees, he
can still choose to become a free agent after 2008 unless the Yankees
increase his salary to $32 million for the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, said he had no plans to speak with Cashman
about the contract until after the season.
“Alex has directed me that there is not going to be any discussion about his
contract status until after the season is over,” Boras said in a telephone
interview. “We’ve not had any contractual discussions with the Yankees
about Alex other than when we first negotiated the contract to bring him here.
”
Boras was referring to the trade in February 2004 that sent Rodriguez to the
Yankees from the Texas Rangers, who included $67 million in the deal. Asked
if he would use the opt-out clause to seek a raise or a contract extension
after this season, as the Yankees believe, Boras said, “I’m not going to
address anything about that.”
Rodriguez said at the start of spring training that he wanted to stay with
the Yankees for the rest of his career, and he repeated last week that he was
“100 percent” committed to staying in New York. However, he made those
comments after an interview with the radio station WFAN in which he suggested
that the fans and the front office would have to make him feel wanted for him
to come back.
Cashman said he was not worried that Rodriguez’s contract would be a
distraction this season.
“He’s under contract; he can opt out of it if he wants,” Cashman said. “
That’s really his decision. It has nothing to do with us. There’s nothing
we can do about it. It’s something he negotiated. If it becomes a
distraction, it’s because it’s part of his deal. He controls that and no
one else.”
For all the drama Rodriguez seems to create, he has produced at a high level
for the Yankees, winning the 2005 American League Most Valuable Player award.
If the Yankees flatly tell him after this season that they will not extend
his deal or give him a raise, they could risk losing him and having to
replace him as a right-handed threat in the lineup.
The risk for Rodriguez, 31, is mainly to his legacy. If he becomes a free
agent, the teams in Los Angeles and Chicago, among others, would probably be
interested in offering him deals lasting much longer than three years. But if
he left after professing his love for New York, it would strike some fans as
dishonest.
The one certainty, of course, is that Rodriguez will remain very rich. But it
also seems clear that the issue of his future will hover over him and the
Yankees for this year and perhaps beyond.
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