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Did Alex Rodriguez Tip Pitches While With The Rangers? A Look At The Numbers

So, did he or didn’t he?

In Selena Roberts’ pulpy biography of Alex Rodriguez, which reads like a hardbound version of US magazine, the accusations come fly fast and furious. Stuff like his (lousy) restaurant tipping habits, his visits to strip clubs, his vanity and his insecurity. Pretty clear, he’s not a great guy.

As far as baseball goes, there are only two details from the book that I care about: The accusations he used steroids (which Rodriguez has acknowledged) and the accusations he conspired with other players in a quid-pro-quo pitch-tipping scheme. Rodriguez, the book alleges, would tip opposing batters, usually middle infielders, to what was about to be thrown once games were out of hand. He expected them to do the same for him. Call it slump insurance.

The first accusation makes him a cheater and it doesn’t matter whether it was in Texas (as he acknowledges) or throughout his career. But, based on information that continues to leak out, it wouldn’t make him that unusual; there appear to have been lots of guys out there who were willing to cheat to win.

The second, however, would make him something of a ringleader of gang of guys determined to cheat the integrity of competition, too.

Bad stuff.

The problem with all this is that Roberts tosses these allegations out there, quoting some unnamed sources, then runs off to the next prurient detail. No delving into the possibilities it could happen, no possible accomplices, no statistical (albeit circumstantial) evidence of any changes in performance.

In other words, it was just a random accusation. Since publishing house Harper Collins apparently spent its budget for the book on leaking salacious excerpts, others had to step up. The New York Times looked into the overall numbers and found no huge changes. We took it upon ourselves to have interns Morgan Lineberry and Ryan Jones research every game Rodriguez played in Texas and how his and opponents performance might have changed depending on the situation in the game.

What they found:

There were three cases in which both Alex Rodriguez and an opposing shortstop saw marked improvement when games were out of hand (which we defined as a lead of five runs or more).

Surprisingly, the player who had the biggest jump was Omar Vizquel, who was with Cleveland at the time. Vizquel hit .356 against Texas from 2001-03; .319 when the score was within five runs, but .500 when the margin was plus or minus five runs. During that time Rodriguez hit .369 against Cleveland, but .471 when the margin grew to five or more runs.

Here is the problem that caused by Alex Rodriguez’s vanity. It causes curious onlookers to investigate just to see what might be real and what might be fraudulent. And then it drags possibly wholly innocent – and in the case of Vizquel, those considered consummate pros – to be asked some unsavory questions.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said anything more than ‘Hello,’ to Alex,” Vizquel said when asked about the statistical anomaly. “Nobody has ever asked me to do something like that and I’ve never asked anybody. I heard about a lot of things in my career, like corking the bat and steroids, but those were guys cheating to win. This would be guys cheating the game. That’s bad. It doesn’t matter how close a friend you have on the other team; he’s not my friend during the game.”

Vizquel laughed when the numbers were presented to him.

“Imagine how well I would have done if I had known what pitch was coming,” Vizquel said.

Vizquel wasn’t the only shortstop who, in addition to Rodriguez, saw his stats against the Rangers improve greatly when the game was out of hand.

Miguel Tejada, then with Oakland, hit .350 overall against the Rangers, but jumped to .472 when the margin was at least five runs either way. He had nine homers in 36 at-bats when the margin was at least five. Rodriguez, who hit .284 against Oakland overall, hit .333 when the score was five or greater.

Seattle’s Carlos Guillen, a teammate of Rodriguez’s for three seasons with the Mariners, went from .307 to .318. in “out of hand” situations. Rodriguez, however, jumped from .264 to .391 against the Mariners in those situations.

Rangers manager Ron Washington, who was with Oakland at the time, was once called to a staff meeting because an A’s coach suspected Tejada was tipping pitches to opponents.

Washington listened to the accusations, then got up and left the meeting, even after being told to stay.

“That was all I needed to hear,” Washington said. “I told them to back off that and leave it alone. When they didn’t, I got up and left. That stuff never happened. Miguel won way too many games for us for anybody to be thinking he was helping another guy do good against us.”

Washington never thought about it again.

But the Cult of Rodriguez and the unsubstantiated allegations made in the book make everyone reconsider every possibility. Rodriguez’s actions and Roberts’ gossipy whispers make everybody a suspect simply by association.