Alex Rodriguez Done As A Yankee

Th writing has been on the wall for quite some time now with A-Rod. It was announced on Sunday that he will be playing his final game in a Yankees uniform Friday August 12th at Yankee Stadium and will then become a special adviser to the team until December 2017. So the question now remains what does the future hold for the slugging star? This is being viewed as a fitting end to a career filled with what could have been. Alex Rodriguez is going out on Friday.

When the announcement came down Sunday morning, nobody knew what was going to happen. Then it was announced that this week will be the last week of A-Rod as a player with the New York Yankees. His final game will be as a DH against the Tampa Bay Rays. He then will be released, collecting the balance of his guaranteed $20 million salary this season and his entire guaranteed $20 million salary next season. After that, the Yankees will keep him on staff as a special adviser to the team. There is still a chance that he could be picked up by another MLB team, but with the way things have gone over the last couple of years with Alex, his playing career will be done on Friday. This isn't exactly the way he wanted to go out I'm sure, but then again I don't think this is the way his career seemed to pan out when this wild ride began.

Sure he is sitting at 696 home runs and would have wanted to become just the 4th player in baseball history every to hit 700 or more home runs in the Major Leagues. He had all the talent in the world when he was playing in Seattle. During his seven year stretch in the great Northwest, he averaged 38 home runs a year, and this was all before steroids. He didn't start using the banned substance until he joined the Texas Rangers in 2001, the year his numbers really started to take off. He's been mired in controversy ever since, especially over his last few seasons with the New York Yankees. Lets put it like this. Alex just turned 41 years old, his production is starting to go downhill and the Yankees are right now paying him a lot of money to pretty much sit on the bench and take up space. Now if he had been able to put up any kind of offensive production like he had last year, then things might be a little bit different. When you consider those low offensive numbers, he's hitting .204 with just nine home runs in 62 games this year.

A-Rod had a great career but it will always have the steroids stigma attached to it. The fact that he lied and dragged out this entire saga with steroids really tarnished his record and image and it's something that he will never be able to get back. Had he just admitted it taken his punishment like a man and moved on I think this would have been a little less painful for Alex. This is also coming as a changing of the guard for the Yankees as well. Trading away Miller, Chapman and Beltran. Seeing the retirement of Teixeira at the end of the year and now with A-Rod heading out the door, its signaling the end of an era and the start of a new one in the storied history of the New York Yankees.

Facts are that yes Alex Rodriguez has done a lot to help this Yankees team out in his twelve years with the organization. The last few haven't been that great. Sure he's had a fantastic career, there's no argument about it. At the same time, Alex career is over and he's the one responsable for it because of his actions. A great career will end in disapointment.