A-Rod Killing the Postseason...and His Haters

I'm happy for Alex Rodriguez. I really am. Yeah, I wrote a fairly scathing article about him back in the summer, but I've always been a big defender of his. He's one of the Top 10 players ever, and he's doing things that cannot be done on a baseball field by mere mortals. He's been putting up ridiculous numbers year after year for such a long time that people have become accustomed to getting 30 bombs and 100 ribbies from him.

And then hating on him during the postseason.

Sure, he's had his struggles in the playoffs. The 2006 ALDS against Detroit was a disaster, and he didn't hit particularly well against Cleveland in 2007. However, his career playoff numbers are better than those of "Mr. October" Reggie Jackson. To say that the guy isn't clutch in the postseason just isn't accurate. Many of the postseason series in which he's performed poorly have been with the Yankees, which only magnifies the perceived problem. Those short series did not give a very large sample size, and it's possible that A-Rod just had a bad week...you know, those things that happen all the time during a baseball season? Sure, having a bad week at a bad time isn't an excuse for not performing up to expectations in the postseason, but it's not like the guy had 10 games and was bad in all of them.

As we've seen this postseason (and in his years in Seattle), the guy is going to perform if given enough chances. He was on fire against Minnesota and has been downright filthy against Anaheim (no, I still don't call them the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; that's silly). His late-inning home run in Game 2 was unreal. Nobody on, down by one, bottom of the 11th, Angels closer Brian Fuentes in the game (who led the league in saves this year), a steady rainfall coming down...and he hits the game-tying bomb to the opposite field. It was something that you expect a great player to do, yet are still truly impressed when it actually happens. Those are the moments that will endear A-Rod to Yankees fans and will rewrite his legacy as a postseason choke artist.

Even if that legacy is ill-conceived.

~~ Lank