A-Rod tells Barry Bonds, ‘I want to take your record’

The 2015 version of Alex Rodriguez is either trolling us all or he’s delusional. Heck, maybe it’s a mixture of both.

A-Rod has already said he believes the New York Yankees’ starting third-base job is his to lose (you know, even though the Yanks just paid Chase Headley $50 million). And now, we’ve learned that A-Rod told Barry Bonds that he’s coming for his all-time home-run record. 

Bonds and A-Rod were training together recently (what a pair!) and Bonds recounted this choice quote to the San Francisco Chronicle:

“He was funny,” Bonds said. “He said, ‘I want to take your record.’ I said, ‘That’s OK. If that’s what you want to do, we’ve got a lot of work to do.’ I was excited he wanted to do it.”

Let’s ignore for a minute that many fans feel Bonds isn’t the *true* home-run king. Let’s ignore all the PED stuff, actually, and just talk about the numbers, inflated or not. A-Rod has 654 homers and needs 109 more to pass Bonds. If this were 2007 A-Rod, sure. But in 2015, he’s entering baseball after a year’s suspension, at age 39, with two surgically repaired hips and only so-so results the last time he played consistently. 

Let’s do some calculations.

In his last three seasons, A-Rod played in 265 games and hit 41 homers, which works out to one homer per 6.5 games. Using that rate going forward (which is generous, considering he’s been off for a year), it would take A-Rod 708 games to hit 109 homers and pass Bonds. That’s not happening, folks — no matter how much A-Rod is motivated by those $6 million milestone bonuses.

If you made this far, you may now head down to the comment section and tell us why Barry Bonds isn’t the true home-run king.

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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz