What if the Red Sox had pulled off the A-Rod trade?

Rodriguez had just won the 2003 American League MVP on a last-place Texas club when Boston and the Rangers agreed on a framework in December: A-Rod to the Red Sox for Manny Ramirez, pitching prospect Jon Lester and cash, reworked along the way after the Schilling trade used up the pieces Texas originally wanted. The deal needed Rodriguez to restructure his record 10-year, $252 million contract, and the players association's staff, led by Gene Orza, rejected the restructure because it cut the contract's remaining value voluntarily. No restructure, no trade.

Seven weeks later Aaron Boone wrecked his knee in a pickup basketball game, and the Yankees stepped in: A-Rod to New York for Alfonso Soriano and a player to be named later, with Texas eating a reported $67 million of the $179 million left on the deal. He moved to third base for Derek Jeter. Boston kept Ramirez, added Curt Schilling anyway, went 98-64, and won the 2004 World Series. That is the receipt everyone brings to this bar argument.

So we asked the engine the narrow version: his real 2004 through 2016 New York seasons, the ones he actually played, in a Boston uniform instead. Same career, same health, Fenway Park instead of Yankee Stadium, fifty runs, every game played out. One honesty receipt first: replaying him on his real Texas-and-New-York path, the engine lands about 13 percent light on home runs against his real 507. One disclosure for the record: an earlier version of this run filled his 2014 suspension year with a phantom 163-game synthetic season and carried a career home-run median of 324; that version was invalidated and the full fifty-run ensemble re-simulated, which is the 297 median published here. Every number below is that engine's conservative floor.

The real 2004 Red Sox did not need him, and that is what makes this the best what-if in modern baseball history: the bar is a championship, not a rebuild. In the runs, the 2004 club with A-Rod added wins a median of 98.5 games, against the real 98, and in the median run it goes 97-66 and wins the World Series anyway. The curse dies either way. What changes is who is holding the trophy in the photos.

Two honest limits before anything else. The engine adds A-Rod. It does not remove Ramirez, whose contract was the trade ask, so this page answers A-Rod-in-Boston, not the full trade topology. And he plays third base here, the same move he made in real life, but the engine does not price the defense of the swap yet.

The 2007 season is the peak of the peak: a median of 47 home runs and 102 Boston wins, against the real 96-66 champions, and a median run that goes 112-51 before losing the World Series. The engine is not sentimental about good teams. Add the best player alive and October still eats you.

Across 2006 through 2008 the median club wins 90, 102 and 97 games against the real 86, 96 and 95. The real Red Sox were already great in this window; the runs say A-Rod does not break them so much as make the good years routine. Boston reaches the playoffs in a median of 10 of the 13 seasons, against the real seven.

In real life 2009 is A-Rod's October: ALCS MVP, a World Series title, the season that rewrote his story. In the runs, Boston wins a median of 95 games in 2009 and the Yankees, playing without him, win the World Series in only 26 percent of them. The single most interesting receipt on this page is not in Boston at all: the veto's biggest measurable cost lands in the Bronx, where the real 2009 title depends on him in three of every four runs.

By 2011 and 2012 the real decline is showing, and the transplant inherits it honestly: medians of 13 and 14 home runs in his age-36 and 37 seasons, and a 2012 Boston club that wins a median of 86 games against the real 69-93. The engine never has to invent a comeback, because his real seasons stopped providing one.

The 2013 season replays at its real 44 games, five home runs in the median, and the median run still ends with a Boston World Series title, the same one the real club won. The what-if and the history agree for once, which is the anti-climax this series occasionally produces and should.

2014 has no real season. He was suspended for the year, so the engine benches him, zero games, zero everything, the same discipline it applies to every season a player did not actually play. Boston still wins a median of 81 games without him. The 2015 bounce-back, 26.5 home runs at the median, and the 51-game 2016 send-off follow his real file to the end of the run.

The 50-run median has him at 297 home runs in a Boston uniform across the thirteen seasons, a .261 average, and the club at three World Series titles with a median of 10 playoff trips in 13 seasons. Boston wins at least one title in every single run. The floor with A-Rod is a championship, which the real club needed no help to win three times.

The honest reading is that the veto changed the Bronx more than it changed Boston. In the runs, the Yankees without A-Rod reach the playoffs a median of five times against the real nine, win a pennant in the median run, and win the World Series in only 26 percent of them against the real one. The real 2009 title, the one he carried, is the receipt the union office never priced.

The team numbers carry the same salt as every page in this series: the engine lets one all-time hitter tilt its leagues, and its whole run environment scores lighter than real baseball, with the replay gate about 13 percent light against a Ruth-era anchor of 1.6 percent under. The subject line is the reliable receipt, and it says what the vetoed trade was: the best player alive, in his absolute prime, for a franchise that won without him anyway. The Yankees are the ones who needed the union's no to be yes.