Alex Rodriguez has not played a Major League Baseball game since August, 2016, but it wasn’t until the 2017 regular season ended that saw the end to his historic paydays as a professional baseball player.
In December, 2007, A-Rod agreed to a 10-year, $275 million contract with the New York Yankees, a deal that only came about after he opted out of the final three years of his original 10-year, $252 million contract he signed with the Texas Rangers. Those two contracts are still two of the three largest contracts in MLB history, surpassed only by Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million contract with the Miami Marlins.
The Rangers ultimately paid a little less than half of the $252 million total on the original deal as they agreed to pay the difference ($67 million) between A-Rod’s open-market value and what was remaining on his contract at the time of his trade to the Yankees ($179 million).
As a result, the final tally on A-Rod comes to this: The Seattle Mariners paid him $12.0 million for seven seasons, 189 home runs, no MVPs, and no World Series titles. The Rangers paid Rodriguez $116.8 million for three seasons, 156 home runs, one MVP, and no World Series titles. The Yankees paid him $307.8 million for 12 seasons, 351 home runs, 2 MVPs, and one World Series trophy (continued below).
In the end, the Yankees did get a lot of good production from Rodriguez, but it was also clear that they also got a lot of the bad as his production quickly fell off a cliff at the end. Meanwhile, the Rangers' total is actually going to be higher thanks to interest as they still owed A-Rod $26 million in deferred payments as recently as 2016, with the total to be paid off by 2025 with interest added.