Which ARod will show up in 2016?

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No matter what you think of Alex Rodriguez, and I am sure that many feel that he should have been banned from baseball, what he did last year is one of the greater comeback stories in the history of baseball. Coming back from a full year away from baseball and a major hip operation, he hit 33 home runs and drove in 86 runs while playing in 151 of his teams 162 games and, along the way, hit his 687th career homer.

The question facing the Yankees at this point is, can he do it again? Sure, 33 homers is a great total and 86 RBI is nothing to sneeze at, particularly in a 40-year-old who missed most of the season in 2013 and all of 2014.

In the first 82 games of the 2015 season, he hit .278 with 18 homers and 51 RBI. In the last 69 games, he hit just .216 with 15 homers and 35 RBI. He averaged just .191 for the months of August, September and October.

According to Baseball Reference, in 2015, he hit only .179 for the year against so called ‘power pitchers’, those with a higher strikeout to walk ratio than the average pitcher. Against so called finesse pitchers, those with a lower strike out ratio, he hit .280. Although, I do not generally put too much stock in these new statistical methods, it would appear that ARod was having trouble catching up with the fast ball last year. Anybody who had seen him in his prime and saw him play more than a few times during the 2015 season could see that he was obviously not the same hitter.

The numbers appear to show a player in decline. However, the numbers from his last few seasons prior to the drug suspension, combined with his loss of time and physical problems, would never have led anyone to believe that he would perform at the level he did last year.

My guess is that anyone who showed the dedication and desire that he emulated last year is capable of producing one more time. If he isn’t, the Yankees had better have a replacement ready. If he is able to produce as he did last year, everybody, Red Sox included, better watch out for those Yankees.