Arod v. the Yankees and MLB. It's tough to decide who to root for in this match up of greed vs. hypocrisy.
Arod's lawyer believes that MLB and the Yankees have conspired to force the Yankees 3rd baseman out of baseball. The benefits to both are obvious. Every day that Arod is suspended is one more day the Yankees don't have to pay him his ridiculous salary and MLB can claim victory in the war on PED's.
The heart of the dispute is the 211 game suspension given to Arod by Bud Selig. Arod hasn't denied using PED's, it's the length of his suspension that has his lawyers going to the mattresses.
MLB was lucky with it's PED suspensions this year. Presumably, they were able to negotiate with the suspended players who agreed to the length of the suspension, mumbled something that sounded like an apology and went away, like Ryan Braun.
No such luck with Arod, whose lawyers are saying, "we're not going away, we're going to arbitration." His lawyers are threatening a lawsuit claiming that MLB and the Yankees are conspiring to force Arod out of baseball.
Baseball has a major league problem to overcome in the Arod arbitration. Can you say Anthony Bosh? He is the fringe character who ran the Biogenisis Lab where the alleged juicing happened. Until Bosh started to cooperate with them, MLB characterized him as no better than a lying drug dealer who provided PED's to athletes from a phony lab in Florida. But then a funny thing happened, according to MLB, Bosh saw the light and has agreed to testify for MLB.
I don't know if MLB has evidence independent of Bosh but even in a non-legal setting like an arbitration they will need more than Anthony Bosh. Witnesses like Bosh come with baggage that turns into believability issues. Their testimony doesn't just smell badly, it "stinks on ice."
Arod believes that the Yankees want to get rid of him to get so they can stop paying him. The irony is that Arod is hitting and the Yankees, at least for now, need him.
So, here is my prediction. Arod's suspension will be cut from 211 games to somewhere around 100 games. The last thing MLB and the Yankees want is to get involved in a law suit with Arod, not because they conspired (who knows) but because they desperately don't want Arod's lawyers to be given the opportunity to look at their financial books and records. All parties to this fight are very good at leaking to the press when they think it helps them. The last thing the Yankees or MLB wants is for its finances to be revealed.
This is Arod's ace in the hole and it's a good one. The Yankees will pony up serious money to Arod in order to settle his claims. After all, they agreed to pay him the hundreds of millions. If nothing changes, even if his suspension is unchanged, he shows up in 2015 and collects his pay for the remaining years of his contract.
