Should the St. Louis Cards sign Albert Pujols, or risk losing him to the Cubs?

As a Cubs fan. I certainly hope they have learned their lesson on offering 10 year contracts to players who will be turning 32.
 
The Cardinals can't afford to pay Pujols the 300 million he wants because for whatever reason, they decided that Matt Holliday was worth 120 million over seven years. Not even the Yankees could afford to invest 420 million in two players, and if they can't the Cardinals sure as hell can't.

There are really only 4 teams that would be able to take on his salary in 2012, and those are the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and (assuming they get their finances worked out) the Dodgers.
 
Any team that signs him for that much would financially kill themselves. STL is in a bad situation. I would let him go... getting paid is one thing, but MLB doesn't need Pujols at this cost...
Dad, what happened to my favorite player? We couldn't afford him son. If the players union were sensible they would set a max salary for one player to ensure a middle class of players. A demand like this one takes their money too.
If Pujols needs this much to play... he shouldn't be playing.
 
300 million is rediculous. No team should sign him for that much. If he really thinks he needs that much, let him sit out until he takes something less.
 
As a cubs fan I sure hope the Cardinals sign him. He probably has 5 years left in him and then you're stuck with another Soriano for 5 years. Plus I would love to have the Cardinals wrap up 50% of their payroll in 2 guys, and have the Cubs steal away Carpenter in 2 years when he's a FA to replace Z and Demp.
 
5 yr. 150 mil....... If he wants a longer deal or more money the Cards need to move on. Same goes for the Cubs.
 
As much as I would love to see Pujols wearing a Cubs jersey next year, $30 million a year is insane. If I was a GM, I think my thoughts would be that two $15 million stars might help the team more than adding one $30 million superstar. I'm not sure anybody is worth $30 million a year.

But then again, the Cubs do like to overpay on big contracts. Will be interesting to see what happens.
 
JonDMiller said:
You really think he's just turning 32?
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This is interesting. As I understand their are inaccuracies on birth certificates that go both ways.

Some players had thiers altered to be older so that they could sign contracts at an earlier age. Others had thiers altered so that they could appear younger to make them look like they had more of an upside and would improve (Danny Almonte).

Are you speculating he's older than 32 or younger?
 
hawkfarmer said:
As a cubs fan I sure hope the Cardinals sign him. He probably has 5 years left in him and then you're stuck with another Soriano for 5 years. Plus I would love to have the Cardinals wrap up 50% of their payroll in 2 guys, and have the Cubs steal away Carpenter in 2 years when he's a FA to replace Z and Demp.
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So you want a 35 yr old, injury riddled starter? I'd say 2 years is about all he has left. Sounds about right for the Cubs, I guess. If the Cards get 5 more good years out of Pujols, that will be 5 more good years than the Cubs got from Soriano. So we get a pretty good player for 5 more years who is still making the club massive amounts of money....I will take that.

Now if you stole Wainwright after 2013, this would make sense.
 
I'm not sure we'll see Albert sign a straight 10 year deal, but it wouldn't be terribly unreasonable. I'd imagine a 7-8 year deal with a couple of very friendly option years. He's the type of player that is likely to remain very productive into his late 30's.
 
As a Cardinals fan this is difficult for me. He's the best offensive player on the team and they will struggle to score without him. On the other hand, they often struggled to score runs as it was this past season. As much as it would suck to see him in another teams uniform they can't handicap the team by taking on that much salary for one player, especially after what they payed for Holliday last year.
 
GravyJones said:
This just includes his on-field contributions and doesn't take into account the huge financial impact of merchandise, ticket sales, etc. Albert Pujols is definitely worth more than $30mm to a baseball team.
Albert Pujols Statistics Batting | FanGraphs Baseball
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While that's certainly true your argument only holds water if the Cards have only two options 1) Spend 300 million on Poo-holes or 2) Don't spend 300 million.

The reality is there resources are most certainly somewhat limited and thier payroll ceiling is likely to be fixed (in the neighborhood of 100 million) regardless of whether or not they sign him.

One could certainly argue that financially they would be better off using that 30 million to sign 3 quality players and continuing to win versus spending 30 million on Albert, 70 million throwing up a relatively inexpensive lineup around him, and playing consistently loosing baseball.

Go ask the Texas Rangers if selling a bunch of A-Rod jerseys made up for the fact thier average attendance plummeted from 2.8 million in 2001 (which was only up roughly 30,000 from 2000) in A-Frauds first year to 2.3 million in 2002, and 2.0 million in 2003 (revenue losses of 14 and 24 million respectively if you figure an average of $30 in revenue per fan) when the fans knew they weren't going to field a competitive team because thier salary was all tied up with one player.
 
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