Don’t look now, but Alex Rodriguez is having himself a pretty good start to the 2015 season.
Through two weeks of the season, Rodriguez has already hit four home runs, batted in 11 runs and currently holds a solid .317 batting average for a New York Yankees squad looking to get back into the championship picture.
But for all of the success that “A-Rod” is having to start the season, it now creates another interesting turn in the saga that has already been all over the map.
Rodriguez’s start to the year is a surprise to many, especially those outside of the team. He was coming off a year-long suspension for steroids use and hadn’t played in over a year and a half. And before that, he was far from the top shape he was in when he played for the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers (although those years were tainted by performance-enhancing drugs). In fact, things were so bad that the Yankees were sort of hoping that he would be banned for at least the end of his current contract or could find a way to get out of the contract so they could stop paying him.
And going into this season, it was hard to find anybody who was having a positive outlook for Rodriguez. He’s 39-years-old, well passed his prime and had already been struggling prior the latest suspension. If anything, the best thing for the Yankees would have been for him to just go away.
Instead, it’s been the opposite. Thus far, Rodriguez has been a bright spot on a team that has otherwise struggled to muster anything in this young season.
And it now puts the Yankees in an interesting position. Before and during the suspension, the team wanted to find a way to part ways with him and find a way to save money to develop the team further. But now he’s actually performing (hopefully in a clean way for everyone’s sanity), albeit it a number of years later than what the Yankees had hoped. And now the Yankees and their fans are celebrating his successes — a complete 180 degree turn from that of a couple of years ago.
Of course, there’s still a lot of baseball to be played. It’s been shown time and time again that some players will get off to a hot start to the season, but then fall by the wayside as the calendar flips to May and April. And at the age of 39, having used steroids in the past and a history of injuries, who knows if Rodriguez can even make it through an entire season, much less keep this pace up for 162 games.
Still, A-Rod’s hot start to the season raises some eyebrows and adds an intriguing story line for the Yankees and all of baseball. And who knows, maybe this is turns into one of the greatest comeback stories of all time.