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Originally Posted by Ilow
A-Rod always looks like a world beater when he's playing the Devil Rays and the score is 15-2, but put him in a pressure situation and he becomes very, very average. He's tremendously skilled, but he seems to have a propensity to pad his numbers in meaningless games (look at the last game against the D-Rays, homers against a crappy team in a blowout game). He really doesn't have any integrity or respect for the game, look at his little bitch move against the Sox last fall when he slapped the ball out of Arroyo's glove because he didn't want to be tagged out.
Finally as for him playing on bad teams, he's been on good teams for the last couple years and has no rings to show for it, and second, he was on bad teams in TX because he was so overpaid that they couldn't afford anyone else, especially pitchers!
[end of rant]
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This is the kind of - no offense - stupidity that needs to be weeded out of sports analysis. And it isn't just you, it is most sports writers, too. First of all, it is funny how anyone can assert that any player "chokes" without presenting evidence - or even proving that there is such a thing as "clutch." There isn't. It doesn't exist. There ain't no clutch hitters, or hitters who only produce in blowouts, or anything like that. Just asserting otherwise doesn't make it true. Maybe ARod homered against a crappy team in a blowout game because he was facing a crappy team that was playing exceptionally poorly that day. Maybe he homered because he is a great player. Maybe Kevin Elster once hit three homers in a single day. These things just happen.
(Oh, and stop talking about these first two weeks as evidence of anything. Like I said earlier, the Devil Rays won 12 in a row in June of last year. Two weeks mean nothing whatsoever.)
Also, ARod was drafted by the Mariners, so he had no control over playing for them. As a free agent, he chose the team offering him like $100 million more than the next highest bidder. I'd choose Texas. And it isn't his fault that Texas wasted millions on Chan Ho Park, or that Texas hasn't developed a good pitcher internally since the Reagan administration. Do NOT blame ARod for Texas' inability to find and play a good 24 players around him. Somehow, the A's managed to be better than Texas with a $40 million payroll. They paid ARod $25 million a year. Their total payroll was in the $90 million dollar range. That leaves $65 million to field 24 other players.
He only played there for three years, then went to the Yankees for one year. They were 1 game from the World Series. No one player, with the possible exception of Bonds, is solely responsible for the success of their team.
In fact - that reminds me. Neither Sosa nor Mora nor Tejada nor the best player since Williams, Barry Bonds, has a ring. So what?
EDIT - Also, about ARod's error. Judging the entirety of ARod's fielding ability based on the fact that he booted one grounder is like saying the Beatles sucked because they made one bad song or that you once saw me trip over my shoelaces, and that fact proves that I'm a bad walker.