The Loop
A-Rod absolutely laying into the Yankees front office was both shocking and spot-on
Before he became a color commentator on ESPN, A-Rod was drawing rave reviews as a FOX in-studio analyst. So much so that even his most staunch haters had to tip their caps. The only legitimate complaint is that he was a Yankees homer, but every studio sports show has one of those (Desmond Howard with Michigan, Michael Strahan with the Giants, Urban Meyer with the Buckeyes, etc. etc.).
A-Rod, who played for the NYY from 2004 to 2016, was anything but a Yankee homer on Wednesday evening following the Bronx Bombers 8-4 defeat at the hands of the Tampa Bay Rays. Rodriguez, clearly as frustrated as Yankee fans are with the 2-1 series deficit, laid into the Yankees front office, taking not-so veiled shots at Brian Cashman, who A-Rod did not end on the best terms with back in 2016. But this wasn't about that, this was about Cashman and the rest of the front office's failure in Game 2 (make no mistake, the Yankees attempt at "bullpenning" was not manager Aaron Boone's decision):
That was, um, spot on. Game 1 was Gerritt Cole locking it down and the Yankees smacking a bunch of homers to win in dominant fashion. It felt like the late '90's, early 2000s again. In Game 2, the Yanks tried to go full Rays, trotting out 21-year-old Deivi Garcia for one inning than turning it over to J.A. Happ in the second, only for the veteran to get shelled. It's a pretty open secret now that these general managers are running the show, using guys like Boone as puppets. For A-Rod to come out and say it about his former team who he usually only speaks in glowing terms about is pretty shocking, however.