Add an escalator to his contract that says if you win the MVP in the same year that the team wins the World Series, your contract immmediately balloons to $30M/year. It could even be made retroactive to past years on the deal. That way you might one day do something in the playoffs.
as an aside, i still like the notion of making all sports contracts based on incentives.
giving arod maaaajor benefit of the doubt, its possible this whole mess wasn't really what he wanted. sure, bottom line, its arod's move, but its possible a lot of the recent assholism is attributed to boras.
i'd likely not buy that at all if this were just arod, but having rogers make similar "what the fuck, man" statements like the linked article gives some credence to the possibility. seems boras makes a lot of statements without player consent. and kenny rogers did as much "i wanna stay a tiger"ing this year in newspaper quotes as arod did for the yankees. the shock came when both seemed to want out at the end of the year... only later did we find out that neither really wanted out (according to this deeply scientific theory, at least)
its an easier pill to swallow thinking that of kenny rogers, that he actually wanted to stay, and didn't really want to look around for better deals. arod has the misfortune of being universally hated, so its difficult to imagine he actually wanted to stay and didn't immediately press the eject button for a $350 mil ride. ...but its still possible.
to note, boras said it was his decision to announce the "no more yankee" bit during game 4. could be player protection, or could be yet another part of the above speculatoryiation
article's like this add to it moreso, aided by these types o' quotes:
Originally Posted By: Arod
When the time is right and I have a proper forum ... I think it's important for New York fans, for the New York Yankee fans, to realize exactly what happened, from A to Z.
i dunno. hard to imagine, but ...its possible.
Originally Posted By: THE Bastard
Offer his punk ass $15M/year and see if he REALLY wants to be a Yankee.
i do like that notion. but i offer a better one:
arod could immediately reject most negative press in a single move -- ask for a lower rate contract.
it'd be a major move on his part. fans would respect his "not all about the money" notion. yankee fans would respect his "i really do wanna be on the team" notion. it'd be a huge contract, getting him to stick around for a long time, and proving his dedication to the team for a decade plus.
meanwhile, in actual behind-the-scenes land, arod's pitch would be for $24 mil/season, for 11 seasons. with that, he'd be the highest paid in baseball. the $264 mil contract would be the largest in history. he wouldn't have to sell off his 9th country home or whatever, cuz there'd really be no difference from his previous contract. ... but the PR perk of "dropping his rate" would make him look like a hero. him, of all people, looking for less, just because he wants to be a team player.
