Wait, wait!
I saw this plot just the other night. Mr. Potter said to George Bailey, "You're worth more dead than alive."

Transpose Randy Levine into the Potter role (type casting) and switch "injured" for dead and . . hmmmm

Are they better off if he doesn’t come back?

Meaningless. There is no insurance for the punitive nature of Budshovism. They'll just end up paying Yankee tax on Rodriguez AND a full time replacement.

Who the hell gave that insurance contract out? Didn't everyone in that business learn their lesson from past insured contracts?

They're definitely better off recouping 75% of the money and having him retire.

Also, stand-up comedians will be reimbursed for all the centaur gags they won't be able to use now.

Fortunately, that's not very serious.

Meaningless. There is no insurance for the punitive nature of Budshovism. They'll just end up paying Yankee tax on Rodriguez AND a full time replacement.

The Dodger tax, you mean.

Who the hell gave that insurance contract out? Didn't everyone in that business learn their lesson from past insured contracts?

You don't know what the premiums are. IIRC, insurance fell out of favor around a decade ago because the premiums tripled, coverage shrank to 3 year cap, and insurers insisted on excluding most likely injuries (ie: repeats of prior injuries, pretty much any arm injuries for pitchers, stuff like that).

I'm insanely curious about the actuarial tables for player injury.

iirc, the Jayson Williams insurance debacle (6 years, $86 million guaranteed in 1999, and he lasted only 30 games before career ended due to injury) altered the landscape of full insurance for these contracts.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=1966345

I wonder how much 'safety net' the Yankees were able to buy

Doesn't MLB offer a central insurance fund, so the teams effectively self-insure? You would think one of the teams, or former employee of them, would have leaked how that works by now.

centaurs are notoriously difficult to get insurance for (weak fetlocks or something..)

You don't know what the premiums are.

You're right. I should say instead that I'm surprised at the amount that's supposedly covered, the length it's covered for, and that a company would insure the contract given A-Rod's age.

I don't see A-Rod retiring. He is an odd duck, but I can see him playng out the string to the bitter end.

If I signed a contract and got hurt at work and was unable to perform my duties I most definitely would want my employer to honor the contract. Why would I retire to save my employer money when I sacrificed my body so that my employer could make money? I don't think there is anything odd about playing out the string if the employer simply doesn't want to buy you out of your contract.

They're definitely better off recouping 75% of the money and having him retire.

If he retires, they owe him nothing, and thus there's no insurance payout. They recoup all the money if he retires, simply by not having to pay him in the first place. But there's NO WAY A-Rod retires. He'd basically be volunteering to get paid nothing, and to stop pursuing the various career milestones he wants to achieve. None of what we know about A-Rod suggests this as a possibility, and much of what we do know refutes it.

He would have to be out a whole year for the insurance to kick in. So, basically, the insurance won't kick in, unless he agreed not to rehab his injury. Likewise, it would only pay as long as he remains unable to play due to injury. It won't pay if he's able to play, but sucks.

So, when it says they could recoup a lot of the contract... They could, if A-Rod agrees to remain injured for the rest of the contract, AND they keep him on the roster (but on the DL), AND the insurer doesn't find a way out of paying for someone who isn't even trying to return to the field.

What the article suggests could happen will not happen. There's basically zero chance of it. It is wishful thinking by someone who wants to believe that the Yankees have a way out of this mess.

A doctor could find about a million different reasons for a player to not get on a baseball field if they don't want the baseball player to play. I used to date a woman whose mother was a nurse at a Philly medical facility that treated a lot of Phillies baseball players for injuries and or drug related problems. She was saying they'd do xrays and scans and such on these guys and all of them were basically held together by string and duct tape. Their bodies get beat up and destroyed and I can't imagine a 37 year old infielder with a history of injuries with a body that wasn't in similar condition to the Philly players.