Being a Cardinal fan who had my nose bent out of shape when Pujols signed with LAAoA, it pains me to say this, but he’ll get better.
Pujols has often been a streaky hitter (although 44 games is a long slump), plus he’s facing all-new pitching. Of course he’s pressing, which doesn’t help things.
I’m not ready to say Nyah-nyah to Angels fans yet.
He did fine against the Mariners last night. No surprise. Sigh.
So does everyone. 
THIS year, it’s far too early to tell if the contract is a disaster. Pujols could still have a very good season, and may yet have SEVERAL great seasons. I won’t be a bit surprised if he does.
But over the LONG run? Definitely a disaster. There’s absolutely no way Pujols will have ENOUGH great seasons to justify the money he gets.
My Yankees have a LOT of bad contracts like this one- A. Rod’s, most notably. Both A. Rod and Pujols will be collecting huge checks LONG after they’re remotely desrving.
The fact that they are going to keep getting paid after their productivity falls off doesn’t make the contract a disaster. There’s no other way to get that player for the earlier, strong years, so that’s part of the price of the deal.
I think the point is:* then don’t get the player.*
I thought it was a bad deal at the signing, and would still think so even if he was hitting at 2009 levels right now. Even money he’s playing for the Yankees in 2017.
That’d be a workable strategy if everybody agreed not to give free agents these kinds of contracts, but since they don’t…
Paying $25 million a year for a long time after a star player has gone downhill may be standard operating procedure these days, but it’s STILL a lousy deal.
If everybody agreed to not give these contracts, it would be collusion and the owners would get sued into oblivion. What is needed is for market forces to act, and if Pujols and those like him keep tanking their big contracts, maybe that will start to happen.
I was speaking of the teams deciding individually and not colluding, but yes, that’s the only way these deals would go away - if practically everybody was convinced they were not worth it and that there is a better way to do business. In recent years more and more teams have locked up their young stars very early with longterm deals- the kind Tampa has given Longoria and others and Baltimore is about to do with Adam Jones. Those deals make much more financial sense, but when a bigger, more established star hits the open market, they’re going to ask for more money than the young bucks are getting. So there we find ourselves. It’s hard to see this going away unless a lot of things change.
For whom?
Again,* it depends what you’re buying*. If your intent is to win a championship right now, within the next 2-3 years and to hell with what happens in 7 years, maybe it’s a good deal. It’s Arte Moreno’s money. If next year Pujols rebounds, hit 40 homers, and win the World Series MVP award, Moreno may well consider his money well spent no matter what happens when Pujols is 40.
If what you wanted was long term value, no, it’s probably not a good deal. But maybe that isn’t what they wanted.
No, not everyone invests $250 million into one guy. For the same amount per year, you can get several very good players; none are likely to be as good as Pujols individually, but than can collectively provide just as big an improvement, and the risk is drastically reduced.
This is true as far as it goes, but the problem is that all these guys who say they’ll spend whatever it takes to win do not in fact have infinite amounts of money, and all the fans that say they’ll happily mortgage the future for the present can just opt not to go to the park in the lean years.
It was Tom Hicks’ money, too, and he insisted that the A-rod deal wouldn’t hinder him from adding complementary players … three years later, all of a sudden it was a different story. The Cubs haven’t signed any big contracts since they gave Soriano zillions. The Phillies said they could afford big contracts for Howard and Halladay and Rollins and Lee … but a couple bad months and they’re talking about breaking it up (if anyone will take them). A year ago the Nats were all about doing “whatever it took” to get Jayson Werth to come here … now they quietly admit that big contract will hinder them them from adding players around Harper and Strasburg.
It’s fine thing to say they don’t mind losing money, but in the end, they always do.
Yeah, if they win a championship in the next few years, it’ll all be worth it: but the odds are they won’t, and the odds they won’t even if Pujols hits .320. In return for the slightly raised chance of success in the next 3-5 years, they significantly lowered their chances of a championship in the out years of the contract, because whatever Moreno says now, he’s not going to keep spending money to put a team together in 2017 if they’re drawing 30k a night. They’ll dump him to the Yankees if they can, and if they can’t it’ll be Albert and eight guys named Sam.
“It’s Arte Moreno’s money” is true, but it seems to me you’re acknowledging that, from a purely BUSINESS standpoint, he made a dumb decision.
Now, I know sports aren’t EXACTLY like every other business. To some extent, sports franchises are toys for very rich people. Some owners look at the bottom line, while others are like kids who squeal, “Screw the bottom line, I wanna WIN!”
To use a crude analogy, a McDonald’s franchise owner typically aims first and foremost at making money. If a given franchise owner decides that it would be REALLY cool to get into the Guinness Book of Records, and gives away a billion free cheeseburgers to do so… well, maybe the thrill of getting into the record book is so great for him that he doesn’t regret all the money he wasted. But there’s no way you can call that a GOOD investment!
Simiularly, if Pujols has just two great years and gets Arte Moreno a World Series title… well, MAYBE Arte will be happy as a clam. But there’s no way you can tell me he made a wise business move.
I didn’t think we were talking only about contracts worth precisely as much as Pujols’, which is $240 million. There are plenty of similar contracts: the Reds just gave Joey Votto $225 million for 10 years, the Tigers gave Prince Fielder $214 million over nine (a bad deal), Teixeira with the Yankees, Crawford and Gonzalez with the Red Sox, Werth (sweet Jesus)… and that’s only counting contracts signed in the last couple of seasons. So no, not everybody is doing it, but it’s not unheard of either.
The last time we had this discussion, RickJay pointed out that A-Rod deal did not stop the Rangers from adding other players. They went out and got other players who sucked, and at that point it no longer made sense to have A-Rod because they needed to start over.
I’m not acknowledging that because
A) I really don’t know a great deal about demand for Angels tickets and how it responds to the team’s success,
B) I don’t know Moreno’s business model, and
C) Frankly, I don’t know his business objectives. Not every business seeks profit maximizing.
My point is merely that it is not axiomatically true that a contract of X years needs to be useful for X years to be worth it. As others have said, the last five years may simply be the going price of getting the first five.
I’m not saying any contract is worth it by virtue of being signed; I think it’s obvious that some big contracts did not work out (Mo Vaughn, Darren Dreifort) and some did (Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux.) But the worth of the Pujols contract isn’t necessarily tied to how well he does when he’s 41.
Why not? If the franchise owner succeeds in his business goal, the investment he made to get there is, by definition, a good one. He has maximizes his utility.
Not everything we invest in has to make money to be a good investment; it has to make UTILITY. I don’t make a penny from buying “Diablo 3,” but it’s still a good investment.
It’s been the trend the year or so, yes. I am skeptical that it will keep up, because my bet is that in five years, at least 6 of those 7 deals will be universally seen as having been bad ideas (I think we’re pretty much already there with Werth, and fans are getting antsy on others).
The Yankees and to a lesser extent the Red Sox are exceptions, because to a first approximation, they DO have an infinite supply of money. But IMO the rest of those contracts are going to be cautionary tales along the lines of Mike Hampton. It’s a lesson that has to be relearned every few years…
Albert is a money-maker in the short term. Long term may be bright too if he bounces back
Bolding mine.
I am told that Pujlos’s jersey is the most sold in Angels history, but I cannot confirm this yet.
The Pujlos deal helped that a bit, I think.
It goes back further than that, really. The Rays started locking up their younger players four or five years ago, I think, and other teams have followed suit. There have been some long, huge contracts for big name free agents for years and TV revenue for teams appears to only be going up- at least for the teams in big markets. I don’t know if a few busts are going to change that.
Way too early in the season and in the contract for that matter to write off Pujols. El Hombre has a long track record of consistency, and while he may never be as great as he once was, I am pretty sure that by the end of the year he will still put up a line around .290 with 34 HR and 100 RBI. Worth his contract? May be not, but then it’s not my money.
Locking up young players is a different story: signing a 25-year-old to a seven year deal has risks, but the odds are very good you’re getting the guy’s best years. Evan Longoria might stagnate or decline in his late 20s, but the odds are very much against it.
What distinguishes the Pujols deal and the other big contracts of the last year, IMO, is that teams are signing guys who are past their peak to contracts that run until they’re 36, 38, 40. They’re buying high, and paying for the guy’s decline years.