A-Rod, or Alex Rodriguez, has never been one to hold back, and he didn’t for his interview with our own Jimmy Traina. The two had a wide-ranging chat about the 2026 Yankees, the possibility of an MLB strike this offseason, and so much more. The full interview is a treat, but here are the key takeaways.
ALL ARMS, NO BATS
The Yankees have a real problem: contact. Rodriguez didn’t hedge here, the issue isn’t the rotation. He said the Yankees have “the best pitching in baseball” and also, at times, “the worst hitting team in baseball.” In his view, the real culprit is up the middle: center field, shortstop, second base, and catcher haven’t delivered consistently all season. Batting average isn’t everything, but by his count, four positions are hitting under .210 at the same time. Survivable across 162 games, he argues, but fatal in October, especially for a franchise that hasn’t won a World Series since 2009, the last title Rodriguez himself helped deliver.
“The question is: are they good enough to win 13 games in October?” — [51:41]
He also sees a specific October risk: a worn-down bullpen. As good as the pitching is, a worn-down bullpen can’t be a good bullpen. Noting the Yankees had a chance to, and should have been “ultra-aggressive” at the trade deadline, the bullpen has to be a source of concern. Not because the bullpen has been bad, because it hasn’t been. It’s because of the offense.
“My concern is they’re in so many tight games and their offense has been so anemic that... you’re going to have a bullpen game every single night and every game’s going to be tight. You’re going to have to use your best three. And I think mid-September, early October, those guys’ arms could be hanging.” — [1:00:54]
And beyond the roster construction, he thinks something less tangible is missing.
“I believe you got to bring the championship DNA... you got to find some people that are alums that can get back in the dugout and teach everybody how to be a champion.” — [55:51]
Which raises the obvious question: is Rodriguez himself one of those alums the Yankees should be bringing back?
He’d show up for Old Timers’ Day, if the Yankees ask. Rodriguez isn’t sure where he stands with the tradition, joking that the invite itself is the uncertain part.
“I don’t think I’ll get invited back, so I don’t have a choice... anytime the Yankees would invite me back, it would be an absolute pleasure to be back.” — [56:38]
NO SHORTCUT TO COOPERSTOWN
He’s made peace with the Hall of Fame math. When the idea surfaced that Rodriguez could take a single ceremonial at-bat to reset his Hall of Fame eligibility clock, he shut it down as a gimmick, and it’s the same logic that kept him from chasing a few extra home runs in another uniform late in his career. Rodriguez retired after the 2016 season with 696 career home runs, 351 of them as a Yankee.
“If I’m not going to get to the Hall the old-fashioned way, right in the front door, then obviously I don’t belong there.” — [18:36]
He was specific about just how far he once would have gone to get there.
“Pre-therapy, I would have said, ‘Hell yeah.’ I would have gone to New Mexico, Japan, Korea, you name it. I want to go get my four home runs. And post-therapy, I said to myself, ‘You know what? I’d rather have 696 with the Yankees than 700 with another uniform.’” — [18:59]
He’d put the PED guys in. Rodriguez had no hesitation about the era’s most contested candidates. Barry Bonds is the greatest player he’s ever seen, Roger Clemens the best pitcher, PEDs included and first-ballot in his book. Both fell short again on the December 2025 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, each receiving fewer than five of 16 votes, which, per a rule change, makes them ineligible for the next Era Committee ballot in 2028. Pedro Martínez gets a different title from Rodriguez: toughest competitor he ever faced, and unlike Bonds or Clemens, Martínez was elected to the Hall on the first ballot in 2015.
“The greatest player by far that’s ever laced them up, in my opinion, is Barry Bonds. And the best pitcher I’ve ever seen in my lifetime is Roger Clemens.” — [20:54]
SORRY NO MORE
The documentary almost didn’t happen. “Alex vs. A-Rod,” a three-part 2025 HBO documentary series centered on Rodriguez’s personal struggles and controversies, put his psychology on screen in a way few athlete documentaries attempt, and Rodriguez said it nearly didn’t survive the process, or ever happen.
“They said to me, ‘We should do this,’ but this is my girls who are now freshman and seniors in college, with a couple conditions. Number one, we say it all and we say it all at once. And two, we don’t want any more apologies from you, Dad. You’ve apologized more than any major league baseball player alive.” — [6:55]
Watching early cuts with his daughters got so painful that he told producers to pull the plug, not once, but three separate times.
“This stuff is just too hard, and we think we should just give you your money back and we’re good.” — [8:56]
The documentary was Rodriguez settling up with his past. On the present-day game, he’s less conflicted.
SHADES OF GEORGE
Rodriguez has no problem with rich teams spending like rich teams. His problem is the ones that could and don’t.
“The Dodgers have run this franchise like George used to run the Yankees.” — [38:02]
“I always think it is great in sports when the titans behave and act and spend like titans. What I don’t like is I don’t like titans trying to play small ball and try to pretend that they’re the Marlins or the Rays, because they’re not.” — [39:48]
And he gives Andrew Friedman real credit for how the roster actually gets built, not just funded.
“The one thing that a guy like Andrew Friedman doesn’t get enough credit for is the kind of personnel he’s brought in. These guys play every day, they understand winning, and there’s no shortcuts.” — [40:03]
Still, he argues the spending gap across the league is a structural problem, not a free-market feature, and he’s skeptical big spending alone is destiny, pointing to his own career as the cautionary tale.
“There were empty calories, because we were in last place every year. I won an MVP and I felt like a hollow MVP.” — [43:42]
So would Rodriguez ever try to run a team like that himself? Ownership, yes, and it wouldn’t be the first time. He’s already co-owner of the Timberwolves and Lynx, and he tried to buy the Mets before Steve Cohen beat him to it in 2020.
The dugout or the front office, no. Citing his fellow athletes who’ve taken a shot at those roles, Rodriguez says he’s not cut out for either.
“I probably wouldn’t have the patience. I don’t know if I would be any good. Honestly, I don’t have the patience for some of the nonsense I see today... I’ve spoken to Michael Jordan about this a little bit because he was in basketball and I think his patience ran out a little bit, and I saw Derek take a run at it with the Marlins.” — [32:11]
But talk to him about the possibility of a work stoppage after the current collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 1, and the prospective owner’s voice disappears entirely. Rodriguez knows firsthand how damaging a baseball labor stoppage can be, the 1994 players’ strike that erased the World Series, and he said a shutdown this time could be even more damaging.
“I’ve spoken to dozens of people from both sides and they’re both dug in like I’ve never seen before in 35 years of being around the game of baseball, the major leagues.” — [45:06]
He argued the stakes are different now too, in an attention economy competing with every streaming platform, pointing to last year’s World Series as proof of what’s at risk.
“We cannot afford to have any games missed.” — [46:26]
He wasn’t far off on the numbers, either. Game 7 of the 2025 World Series drew an estimated 51 million combined viewers across the U.S., Canada, and Japan, a record for the sport.
Comparing baseball’s uncapped structure to the capped NFL, NBA, and NHL, Rodriguez argued the lack of a cap hasn’t translated to bigger paychecks for players.
“The salaries have been flat for 10 years. The average salary today in 2026 is no greater than it was in 2016. But yet in this league that has no cap, the salaries are flat.” — [48:36]
The 2026 Opening Day average salary hit a record $5,335,966, up 3.4% year over year and up 28% over the life of the current five-year CBA, according to the Associated Press. The leaguewide number is not flat. Whether the middle class of MLB rosters experiences that growth in its own paychecks is the harder question, and one likely to sit at the center of the coming negotiations.
But for all the business talk, dollars and payrolls, strikes and salaries, the interview kept circling back to something money can’t touch.
THE VOICE
His praise for the late John Sterling, the longtime Yankees radio voice who died earlier this year, sounds like more than a tribute to a broadcaster.
“John is an American patriot. This guy is just everything that’s right about the game of baseball.” — [54:03]
It’s a reminder that, despite the fractures in his own Yankees story, Rodriguez still hears the franchise as home.