Where Would You Draw The Line With Albert Pujols?

In the earlier part of this deal, we would be losing some of the benefit of having Smoak, so we either have to trade Smoak for good value, or move one of them to DH.

In the later part of this deal, Pujols probably becomes a DH eventually, and is no longer worth the cost of his backloaded contract.

It would be exciting but I dont know that it would be better than other ways to spend that money.

I’m surprised how even the vote is for the other 4 options.

I would just worry that this kind of deal might put the Ms in the type of situation the Rangers had with ARod. If they are paying $30 million a year for Pujols it might be tough to hold on to the young talent they have, or afford the other pieces they would need around him to win.

I know the back end of the deal might hurt, but the DH should help towards the latter years. Felix is in his prime, Pineda is coming up soon and Ichiro (despite what we all hope) will not be Ichiro forever. With guys like Ackley and Smoak hopefully ready to make the jump over the next couple of years I could see a window of opportunity in 2012-2015 and with Pujols on board that opening would get much wider. I’m usually scared of overpaying in dollars and years, but with Pujols, I’d be totally fine with it.

The M’s don’t have the ability to absorb the contract and still be competitive if Pujols gets hurt.

But after reading some of your arguments, I think I would have to make that deal. Assuming he could be traded if

Just like Griffey did.

Though seriously, I’m pretty torn on this one. For me the most important thing is making sure that the Angels don’t get him.

so I would only be willing to give up one of my balls, one of my kidneys, and 25% of my liver. (You can survive with %75 of your liver, right? Long enough to see Pujols in a Mariners uniform, I figure!)

My first thought was that 41 is too old to be giving money to…then I thought he could be a lot like Edgar. He’s so good! Now I’m thinking “Barely Yes”.

And declining by 0.5 WAR per year, with 5% inflation, then he earns this contract, its about even. He is positive value early on and then is a bit of a liability later.

I guess I change from Barely no to Barely yes.
My main concern is what would we do with Smoak. But assuming Z can trade him for fair value then I think you sign Pujols. Of course, it wont happen, but it would make sense to try.

My money is on Pujols

Using the poll above as a gauge, if ~50% of fans of teams who can afford an contract like this would sign Albert to a 10 year/ $300M contract, doesn’t that mean that he’ll likely get a bunch more than that in free agency? If more than a couple teams come to the table with offers like this, I could see teams reaching an extra 10% or more into their pockets to get him.

If you’re willing to spend $30M, why not $33M?

I might be in the minority here but I don’t think his body is going to hold together all the way into his 40’s, though I admittedly am basing that belief on not much evidence. He may not have missed that much playing time in his career, and his performance certainly hasn’t suffered much despite them, but he’s had a fair amount of persistent, nagging injuries for a 31 year old that would at least give me some pause before handing him a contract through age 41.

There might be an interesting repercussion to all this. If one of the greatest hitters of all time started to have a drastically reduced homerun rate, I wonder if the M’s, given such a large investment, and a potential record breaker on the roster, would move in left center just a bit?

He’d obviously be hurt a bit by that, particularly the power when he gets a little older, one would think.

He’s also getting a slight boost on his career numbers by having very close to half his career AB’s against the NL Central: .335 BA / .425 OBP against NL Central; .326 BA / .420 OBP against everybody else. Also, if you lump the Nats into that “AAAA” NL Central club, the numbers skew slightly more: .337 BA / .427 OBP vs. .324 BA / .418 OBP. Either way, holy cow is he ridiculously awesome, but he’s still benefiting a little from his division.

Would be nice to have a legitimate right handed hitter though. I guess, for me, it would come down to how much he’d be projected to lose thanks to Safeco and how much that insurance would cost on his contract, as I assume that would have to be factored into payroll as well on top of the contract.

I’d lean towards no though. I’m reasonably optimistic about Smoak, and he’ll be cheap for a while. And signing Pujols to that contract is an awful lot of eggs in one basket for a team that needs more than one more basket to contend.

By some forecasts, he’d be worth 60 WAR over the next 10 years. Even if you assume NO inflation, that’s $300m in value. If you argue that that’s an optimistic performance forecast, you’ve got to admit that’s a damned conservative $/WAR forecast. The point is: I think it’s likely that whatever forecast you care to develop, and whenever you move him to DH, he’s likely to be worth it. So then there are really a couple of questions to deal with – how quickly will he decline, and what’s his true talent right now?
The guy’s so good that I don’t think it matters all that much…he’s going to be good enough for long enough, and inflation will exist enough that I think he’d be worth it, and I think the team would be able to deal with the budget implications of that decision. But I understand how someone could make an argument that given X, Y and Z, it’d be too risky.

But in imagination land, I’d still take the deal, but I’d front-load it and have some type of opt-out clause based on injury. The idea being that even though we’d overpay per WAR, it won’t be much of an overpay, and if he keeps hitting well he’d be a bargain later in his contract. If not, there would be some way to get out of it. Recognizing that this is massively unrealistic, this seems like a better way.

Also, new franchise player that actually hits well would be oodles of fun.

We don’t just want to pay Pujols because he is good and his WAR valuation says he might deserve that much money. We want to pay to watch him play baseball. That is why baseball exists. I want to be entertained. I’d like to be good and win the world series but truthfully I’d rather build a team that I’d enjoy watching with a 2% chance of winning the world series than a more boring team with a 3% chance of winning the world series.

If Babe Ruth or some other great player was alive and available I would happily overpay them to play as a Mariner because the chance to watch greatness is worth something to me. Pujols is probably the greatest player of my lifetime. To have the chance of watching him play baseball 162 games a year for my team would be amazing.

There is a whole class of players who are special and that is why we watch the game. Sure a WS ring would be nice but the season is long and I would be happy with a team in contention late into the season full of fun players to watch.