Not nearly enough is made out of the fact that when the Texas Rangers traded Alex Rodriguez to the New York Yankees, the Rangers agreed to pay a large chunk of the salary owed to Rodriguez under his contract -- that is, the contract out of which he just opted.
Any contract extension agreed to before the opt-out would have supplemented the original contract: The Rangers obviously wouldn't have been on the hook for whatever else Rodriguez (actually Scott Boras on Rodriguez's behalf) and the Yankees agreed to, but they would still have owed the Yankees money until the original contract ended. ($21 million in all.)
Once Rodriguez opted out, of course, any new contract he signed would replace the one he terminated. In other words, Tom Hicks no longer owes George Steinbrenner $21 million.
When Brian Cashman claims that the Yankees won't negotiate with Rodriguez after an opt-out, even though the posturing is of some sort of hallowed principle, it really just means that he thinks the $21 million difference makes the window where both sides would be content a whole lot smaller (probably non-existent).
The Yankees had a chance to get Rodriguez for $21 million less (from them) than he'd cost now (all other things being equal). They failed to take advantage of this -- or, more likely, were unwilling to let Rodriguez/Boras keep some insanely high portion of that $21 million.
I imagine it was a lot like an ultimatum game, where Boras's demand simplified to (something like) $19 million of the $21 million, the Yankees called his bluff, and he followed through on his non-bluff.
Posted by Matt Bruce at October 29, 2007 06:37 PM