New York Yankees

Alex Rodriguez believes he is an all-time great, regardless of the PEDs

Published Nov. 15, 2016 3:06 p.m. ET

Chris Bahr

Alex Rodriguez says his overall body of work puts him among the best to ever play the game.

When asked by the YES Network’s Michael Kay whether he considers himself one of the greatest players of all time – no matter how he got there and overlooking the mistakes he made – Rodriguez answered candidly.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

The three-time AL MVP and 14-time All-Star enters his final game with the Yankees fourth on baseball’s all-time list with 696 homers, third with 2,085 RBI and sixth with 5,811 total bases, among many of his notable accomplishments.

But, of course, there’s that PED cloud that hovers over all of his accomplishments. We’ll never know for sure how productive A-Rod would have been without PEDs, or just how much the PEDs aided his statistics. But Rodriguez is confident his numbers would have been just as great.

“That’s really the most disappointing part about some of my unbelievably stupid decisions,” Rodriguez said. “If you think about the arc of my career, arguably you could say that my best two years were at 19 and at 40. And very rarely do you have that in a player.”

Whether that will be enough to sway the court of public opinion and/or Hall of Fame voters remains to be seen.