When Teixeira ended up with New York, it reverberated through a Red Sox organization that was forced to do some soul-searching. The switch hitter’s role in helping to baptize the new Yankee Stadium with a title in 2009 — he hit .292/.383/.565 and led the American League with 39 homers and 122 RBIs — only seemed to deepen the wound.

In many ways, Teixeira represents a marker somewhere near the end of the insanity that prevailed in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry last decade. At a time when both organizations perennially outspent the rest of baseball, Teixeira arrived in free agency after the 2008 season at a time when both teams coveted him as the missing piece of their championship ambitions.

Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira announced Friday that the 2016 season will be his last. With his eight-year, $180 million deal concluded, the 36-year-old plans to retire.


But over the span of his deal, Teixeira became a symbol of something more than the Yankees’ financial might. He became a reminder of the transitory nature of the primes of players’ careers, the typical erosion of skill and durability that makes it so hard for players who receive nine-figure contracts to sustain the level of performance that earned them their megadeals in the first place.

Over his eight seasons with the Yankees, Teixeira owns a .249/.345/.481 line with 201 homers, good for a 120 OPS+ that suggests a player who provided considerable offensive impact over the life of his deal. However, this year, he has been a major part of New York’s offensive struggles, posting a dismal .198/.287/.340 line. He will conclude his Yankee career having averaged fewer than 100 games per season over his final five years.

Over the eight years of Teixeira’s contract, Red Sox first basemen have posted a combined line of .271/.357/.457 with 185 homers. Their Yankees counterparts have launched 242 homers, but even with that power, they’ve produced marks of .245/.336/.457.


None of that detracts from Teixeira’s broader body of work. He has 404 career homers (55th all-time), is a three-time All-Star, three-time Silver Slugger winner, five-time Gold Glover, and finished in the top five of MVP balloting twice (including second in 2009).

That said, both Teixeira — and, in his own way, Adrian Gonzalez, the player whom the Sox identified as the necessary alternative to Teixeira one year after being spurned — offer a reminder of the diminishing returns of long-term deals for slugging first basemen.

No matter how painful it is to lose a player who is coveted, there is almost always another way to replicate the production of even a top-of-the-line first baseman.

Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexspeier.