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Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez.
He's one of the great catchers in baseball, maybe the best right now. He is fourth in the American League in batting average and doubles and leads the league in hits. His defensive ability is unmatched at the catcher position. Only Mike Piazza compares offensively.
Yet all of that is diminished by his recent contract dispute. The Texas Rangers have offered Rodriguez a very healthy contract offer, but he turned it down.
The contract calls for Pudge to make $38 million over five years. But he wants $45 million. So Rodriguez turned down the deal that would have made him the highest paid catcher in the game because he wants $9 million a year instead of $7.6 million.
The simple problem with this is that Rodriguez is just not loyal. It happens all the time, but for some reason, this contract dispute bothers me.
I always thought of him as a nice guy, a hard worker, and an amazing talent. He's never done anything to cause waves. You expect it from Dennis Rodman or Roberto Alomar, but not Pudge. It's hard to not like Pudge. But I've found a way.
For once, I'm on the side of management. The Texas management wrote a letter to the Rangers fans telling them what the contract consisted of and that they were apologizing to the fans for not being able to sign him. Pudge is a fan favorite in Texas, and the fans will probably be upset when the Rangers trade him as they most likely will.
However, I hope that the fans of Texas and baseball in general can appreciate what management tried to do. Despite being 10 games out of first place, Texas was not ready to just dump their players like most other teams and start over. The Rangers feel that they only need minor tweaking to compete for the World Series, and rightly so. They feel that with Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez, they have a powerful 1-2 punch, as they should.
But Rodriguez cannot handle making just $7.6 million a year for five years (with options the following two years at $8 million a year). The deal would certainly place him in the top 10 in baseball as far as salary is concerned. He is a far cry from one of the top 10 players in baseball, but Texas was going to award him for his loyalty. What a laugh!
This brings up another point. The dreaded salary cap.
Baseball needs one. I realize that the central focus of the last strike was the salary cap, but it needs to become an issue again.
I like what the NBA did with its salary cap. Called a "soft cap," teams can re-sign players from their own teams without it affecting the cap. However, to sign a free agent from another team, a team would have to keep that player's salary under the cap. It keeps players from moving around as much and indirectly keeps salaries down somewhat.
For instance, Rodriguez can probably find a team now that will pay him $9 million a year. However, with the soft cap, Pudge would have to either take the $7.6 million from Texas or go to another team that could only afford to pay him $3 or $4 million a year.
I don't hear too many NBA players complaining about the cap, and it makes for consistency from year-to-year among teams. Baseball just has no way of making it more desirable for a player to stay put when he can leave for more money.
So Rodriguez will probably take his six All-Star appearances, five Gold Gloves, and three Silver Slugger awards to another team this week that is competing for a playoff spot and needs one more big bat in the lineup. And maybe Rodriguez will get his $9 million a year and all will be forgotten in a few years. But this is still a large problem and could become another of the many scars on the face of baseball.
