THAT is borderline treason! Pistols at dawn, sir.
Well, thanks to Albert Pujols for 11 years of the best baseball I’m likely to ever see from an individual player. Congrats on your three World Series appearances and two World Series titles. May you never see another.
I’m not sure what the marginal value of $50 million is when you’re guaranteed $200 million (and have already made that over $100 million), but I guess it’s enough to trade unvarnished adoration and immortality for.
Odds that he ends up hated in Anaheim like A-Rod is in NY?
I always thought the no-trade clause issue was hilarious. Like anybody is going to trade for that contract? That would be like trading for the Vernon Wells contract… oh, wait, the Angels already did that.
The Angels have reportedly agreed to sign C. J. Wilson for $77.5 million over five years. So much for the Marlins being the big newsmakers.
As background on the Pujols deal, I just want to point out that he took a big “discount” in his last contract. He stayed with the Cardinals for $100 million over seven years. If you scroll through this list of biggest sports contracts, you can see a lot of players who got bigger contracts in both absolute money and per-year salary in the years since then. The most glaring example is Jayson Werth’s deal with the Nationals, but Ryan Howard is also coming up on an extension worth $125 million over 5 years, and even at the time, most people thought it was too much. Prince Fielder is going to get a higher salary and more money than Pujols’ last deal even though I get the sense everybody agrees he’ll break down after a couple of years and someone will be paying him around $20 million a year to do nothing. The gist of it is that Pujols wasn’t going to take less than he could get from the Cardinals this time.
He’s not hated. People get annoyed with the constant personal drama that surrounds him and with his mixed record in the playoffs- of course he was huge in '09, which dispelled a great deal of that. Pujols has never been that needy or made a lot of headlines in his private life, and while his World Series record isn’t great aside from the three-homer game, he’s always hit in the playoffs.
Yeah, hated was the wrong word. Let me put it this way - in 11 years in St. Louis there has been, at most 3 or 4 negative articles about him in the St. Louis papers. I don’t know what the LA media is like, but it can’t be that friendly. “Personal drama” is just as often media-created as it is genuine.
Either way, the Angels paid up and they got their man - apparently they took a different lesson from losing out on Carl Crawford than the rest of baseball took.
I’m mildy surprised, but only mildly. I think last off-season is what really cost the Cardinals their shot at keeping him.
Yet…I’m not seeing you present any contrary evidence to my conclusion. It’s sad, but have you seen what they’re signing? :smack:
It will be quite a bit before Big Blue returns to what they should be. In the meantime, the Padres get my provisional and temporary fandom and I’ll watch the Angels.
Dude, when your own team is doing really badly and you decide to select a second team for “provisional and temporary fandom,” one reason is to give you a somewhat better team to root for.
But this requires that your backup team be somewhat less shitty than your main team, in terms of performance. I don’t think that the Padres are going to provide you with much relief.
I don’t actually anticipate them being worse than last year right now, but I wasn’t trying to argue that things aren’t bad. I’m just talking about fan loyalty – a word I feel more comfortable using again with McCourt on his way out the door.
Besides, the Dodgers committing $12 million to Aaron Harang to bring him to LA is at least as exciting as this Pujols character I keep hearing about.
Agreed. The Dodgers are spending over 50 million dollars of their payroll on the players that they just signed (in 2013). You can’t tell me that they aren’t moving and shaking.
Oh and fuck Ned Colleti. Clearly McCourt being a bastard has distracted us from noticing the true villain on the team.
As a Cardinals fan, I’m mildly disappointed, but only mildly. Albert has already given what are almost certainly the best years of his career to St. Louis. The Cardinals should still be in contention in 2012 without Pujols, and in the long run may well be a better team with the money they would have had to pay Pujols than they would be with Pujols himself—though he will be missed as a franchise icon.
At least at this point, I bear Pujols no ill will for his decision and I don’t necessarily assume it was just about the money. If you’ve lived all your adult life in the same city and worked for the same organization, even if you’ve been happy there, it’s natural to wonder what it would be like to try going somewhere else for a change.
I had a similar reaction. The only problem for me, trying to imagine myself as a Cardinals fan, would be to picture Pujols having a wonderful 10 years (including another couple of WS rings) with the Angels, and then retiring. Whose hat does he wear into the HOF?
Is he going to have another great 10 years though? He is listed as 31 though he is likely closer to 34 (or so the rumors say) and while he had a very very good year last year, he is showing signs of decline. Very few players make it past their mid 30s without dropping off. He will probably have another great 3-4 years, but after that is he really going to be worth his price?
I do like that The The Angels Angels look like they are going all in with his signing and the Wilson signing. They still have holes but they also now have some pretty good trade pieces they can use to fill those holes.
It’s very unlikely. However he’s likely to have several more great years, and while that leaves you with a guy who’s being badly overpaid at the end, it might be worth it in the meantime.
Nobody’s ever substantiated that he’s anything other than his listed age.
Something would have probably surfaced during his application to become a U.S. Citizen.
Okay, I’ve come back from off the ledge. My naivete and desire for a storybook ending took the plunge, though.
This is going to work well for the Cardinals. The prospect of that large contract really put a stop to any other moves this off season, and while some FAs have already signed (would have been nice to see you in Cardinal red, Buerhle) there’s still a lot the front office can get done. The Cards need some left handed relief help and some outfield help and now have the money to get it.
I’m sad to see Pujols go, but I didn’t want that contract to hamstring the organization five years down the road.
It also would have been cool to take my kids to see both the Musial and Pujols statues guarding the stadium.
But they are local, and the stadium is nice. 
I like going to baseball games, and if Chavez Ravine is off the list for an indeterminate period, then Petco will be a quite adequate substitute. Besides, my wife likes the Padres and regards my continuing Dodger-itis (a life-long case) as aberrant, to say the least.
Asimovian - McCourt leaving isn’t the same thing as McCourt gone.
Depends on whether you’re counting from the date he arrived on earth or the date he was born on Krypton.