Despite the Yankees signing Chase Headley to a four-year, $52 million contract this winter, Alex Rodriguez thinks the club’s starting third base job is his to lose. Yep – the 39-year old who didn’t play at all in 2014 and hasn’t played 100 games in the field since 2010 is assuming that he’s going into Spring Training with a starting role at the hot corner. Hold me. Newsday has the quotes from a source close to Rodriguez, which in all honesty, is probably just A-Rod himself..
“Alex’s mind is that job’s not Headley’s, it’s Alex’s to lose,” the source said. “That’s what he thinks. Alex is going into training camp thinking that he is the starting third baseman, that if there’s a competition, Headley’s got to win it from him. It doesn’t matter about the money, what they signed Headley for. This guy [Rodriguez] can play.”
Yankees GM Brian Cashman was obviously nonplussed.
Told of Rodriguez’s thinking, general manager Brian Cashman said, “We signed our third baseman, but Alex has to come in to compete for as much playing time as he can possibly get, so I would expect him to come in to be a two-way player, which is offense and defense.”
So, there’s that. The Newsday piece also has some quotes about Rodriguez being “cut” and “ripped” because “he’s been training hard for months”, and also discusses how Rodriguez has “changed as a person”.
The Yankees might not be contenders this year, but they’re definitely going to be a sideshow worth watching. If the Yankees were at all confident in Rodriguez’s ability to play the field this year, they wouldn’t have committed $52 million to Headley. Rodriguez has a better chance of replacing Derek Jeter at short (which by the way, would be an absolute riot) than he does of wrestling the starting third base job from Headley.
[Newsday]
