I just recieved an e-mail and a comment about my letter to Gene Orza. This is the comment to which I'm referring:

I'm sorry, I disagree with your position on this, Dave. Read Joe Sheehan's column on BP today, I think he hits the nail on the head.
Why should A-Rod be held to a different standard then the owners with whom he's negotiating? He's being asked to forfeit something like 50 million dollars; you think Tom Hicks and John Henry got to where they are today by walking away from that kind of money?
A-Rod shouldn't be allowed to tear up his contract in the same way that Tom Hicks shouldn't be allowed to. Just because things didn't work out quite the way the Rangers wanted doesn't leave them room to just abandon the contract. I don't think it's such a slippery-slope argument that this would drastically change the balance of power in labor negotiations. If A-Rod can negotiate away terms in his contract under pressure from the Red Sox, this gives teams plenty of leverage to demand concessions from players within the contract period. I think that's key here: A-Rod HAS a contract, and he should be protected by it, even from himself.

The Baseball Prospectus Article is here. Joe Sheehan spells out the slippery slope argument:

After reading that e-mail, I started thinking about it, and I realized that this is why the union gets involved. If a player renegotiates his contract to accept less compensation, the benefit of that accrues entirely to the player's owner. All the other issues, the reasons why the player might do this, are tertiary to this one. Alex Rodriguez is essentially giving money back to Tom Hicks, and I do see the interest of other players not having that become standard operating procedure.

If Rodriguez, to use the likely case, drops the player options in the years 2008-10 from his deal and forfeits somewhere between $30 million and $80 million depending on things we can't know, then all players become fair game for this kind of action. The balance of leverage would be shifted in favor of management, which could start pressuring players to lower their compensation in all kinds of situations. Once the first one happens--especially a high-profile one like this--the next one becomes easier, and the next one, until you have a relentless downward pressure not just on the market, but on existing contracts.

We saw this, only with less subtlety, when MLB basically extorted more road trips from the Expos by threatening to go Rachel Phelps on them if they didn't agree to another 22 games in Puerto Rico. Is it that hard to see, if this deal goes through with Rodriguez taking $20 mil., $30 mil., $40 mil. less, a future where teams actively alienate their superstars in an effort to push them into trades in which they have to take less money to get out of town?

I appreciate that there's an argument that Rodriguez would gain some non-monetary benefits by accepting this deal, but I don't think there's any way you can spin things to satisfy the CBA clause. There is no way that giving up as much as $81 million in guaranteed money "actually or potentially provides benefits to the player." This isn't a free agent changing teams for a few dollars more, or you deciding whether to take $70,000 in Denver versus $82,000 in Memphis. This is tens of millions of dollars, and a bellwether for future attempts by management to get out from under contract obligations.

So I think the union is again forced to defend an unpopular, not easily explained position, but one which is ultimately right.

What I find hard to believe in this argument is that A-Rod and his agent would be willing to give up that kind of money. If that is indeed the case, then I agree with the union. But I don't know what the terms of the new contract would be, and I find it really hard to believe that Rodriguez and Boras would agree to such a potentially large loss of money. For all I know, the options could be tied to the free agent market at the time; the Red Sox can only refuse to recognize the option if Alex isn't the most highly paid player at the time. More risk for Alex? Sure. But maybe not unacceptable to him.

I'm not as convinced as Joe and the other commentors yet. I hope we find out what the deal really is so we can know how much A-Rod really wanted to give up.