Would You Give Albert Pujols a 10-Year Contract?

But I’d go 5 years, $126 million to push the AAV above Ryan Howard’s.

The question is not really what length of contract would you give Pujols - it should be would you give him a 10 year deal or not sign him at all. Unless you are willing to pay a ridiculous amount per year - something like $200/7, you likely need to go to 10 years to get him, so saying that you would give him 5, 6 or 8 years is irrelevant.

I would not give him a 10 year deal, unless I had a big enough team to absorb what will inevitably be an overpay at the end of the deal. I don’t believe that the Cardinals or Marlins are big enough teams to do that.

Maybe with some chance of Performance/Health bonuses. But I would cap a ten year deal at $260 million - start at $30.5 million and decrease by $1 million/year down to $21.5 million in year ten.
If at all possible, I would offer a shorter deal at the highest AAV ever, say a 6 Year, $200 million ($33.3 mil/season) or 7 year, $220 million ($31.4 mil/season). You could add performance incentive option years to stretch it to 10 years.
But I would be okay with any of these three options.

because of this

Pujols. 7 154. Isn’t that Carl Crawford money, I know Crawford didn’t do well, but I think he’ll rebound. I stil believe Pujols is the best player in the game. Pujols’s xBABIP was 30 points above his BABIP. Bradley Woodrum’s Shh says a 173 wRC+. a 173 wRC+ is equal to about a .420 wOBA in this run environment. Using 3 year UZR weighted 5/4/3 I get 2.7. Plugging baserunning, wOBA, UZR and Bill James’ plate appearances projection into Sky Kalkman’s WAR spreadsheet, I get 6.7.

I would think in the Marlins situation, they need to do what my Twins did not when we got the new stadium. They should bring in some high profile players that will help them win a title now! So, YES to Reyes, Heath Bell, and a 1st Baseman….No, becuase I’d go younger with this team and take Prince at a cheaper and likely shorter rate and be VERY VERY happy! Albert 10/$220 or Prince 8/$150 is a no brainer when looking at production, age, length, risk, etc…

Let’s say Pujols really is 31. You’re paying him best-player-in-baseball money until he’s 41. How many DR players produce into their late 30s, let alone early 40s? Especially ones who have been in the league since they were 21. Especially in the post-steroid era.

Now let’s assume he isn’t 31. Now, in 2020, you’re paying a 43/44/45 year old 23+ a year. In what alternate reality would that ever be a good idea? The only teams that could absorb that financial strain and stay above water already have a 1B.

The reality, I think, is that Pujols will be worth the money of his deal for the first three, four, hell maybe even five. Maybe even with some surplus value. But the back end is going to absolutely kill whoever signs him. Although it is likely that Miami could market the absolute stuffing out of him and maybe even turn a profit by the end.

Whatever it takes to get the greatest baseball player of his generation.

Because Pujols will not stick around collecting paychecks as a late-thirties/early-forties mediocrity. I just do not believe that’s his nature. Too competitive, too proud.

Moreover, expecting a normal age-related decline from such an abnormal person (both athletically and, dare I say it, spiritually) is probably misguided. This is an unbelievably diligent, boring, hard-working athlete who has so far surpassed every expectation ever placed on him.

From age 39-41, Hank Aaron put up a cumulative OPS+ of roughly 133, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Pujols matches or exceeds that—-while still providing at least average defense at first base. At perhaps 550 PA’s per season, that’s still, what, a 2.5-3 WAR player?

Honestly, if he wants to go to Miami because they offer the money that’s fine. But there’s a reason they don’t want to give him the NTC. Ask Beckett, Lowell, Cabrera, etc. Loria wants his money and he won’t be free wheeling forever.
But 10 years for Pujols is way too long. 7 with an option would be my max. But sorry, he’s a 1B and mid-size or smaller teams like the Cardinals will need money to lock up pitchers like Shelby Miller, Carlos Martinez and Tyrell Jenkins in the future.

and other solid minor leaguers like Wong and Taveras are exactly the reason you CAN afford a massive outlay to Pujols, while still turning a healthy profit.

Letting an historically great ballplayer walk away because he might, just might, provide substantially less than full $$ value over the final 2 or 3 years of a ten-year deal, would be a self-destructive act by the Cardinals.

To elaborate a bit on the first point: by 2019/20, even guys like Martinez, Jenkins, and Taveras are likely to still be in their MLB cost-controlled years…and there’s no telling who’ll be drafted & developed on top of that between now and then.

The Cardinals should give Pujols his 10 years, and they know it, and they will.

I would sign Pujols for ten years if I were the Cardinals. I don’t know if this is at all an accurate assumption, but he seems like a loyal player who cares about winning and would allow the team to defer parts of the contract if it ended up being an absolute disaster for catastrophic health reasons or something like that. That’s really the situation that could cripple a franchise, but I think that the risk of that is less with Pujols, especially for the Cards.

The difference between offering and not offering ten years is, as one commenter noted, the difference between signing him and not signing him. With Pujols being who he is somewhat offsetting the risk for catastrophically bad outcomes, the loss of fan good will and ability to compete would, for me, offset the idea the merely kind-of-bad situations (which would be, basically, paying the 2008-2011 version of Jason Giambi somewhere in the range of $16M per year in today’s money for four years, which is basically paying four or five times too much).

Were I a fan of a team that needed (or realistically wanted) Pujols, I do think that a ten-year deal would be in the cards. Quite simply, if that is the only way to bring Pujols on-board, it seems like it would have to be done.

In an ideal world, the deal would be front-loaded to a significant degree. As an example:

2012 - $30 MM
2013 - $30 MM
2014 - $30 MM
2015 - $25 MM
2016 - $25 MM
2017 - $20 MM
2018 - $20 MM
2019 - $15 MM
2020 - $15 MM
2021 - $15 MM

Ten-years, $225 MM. Throw in incentives for home run and hit milestones, perhaps add in deferred money after the deal. I don’t know how realistic such a deal is, given the nature of the economy and year-to-year inflation, but I think it would make sense for both sides. Money up-front, assuming a reasonable and prudent investor, is worth more than money in the future … and it isn’t like he’d be a pauper in years eight through ten, either.

I would only do 10 years if I had as loyal and consistant of a fan base as the Cardinals do. They will consistantly draw 3 million per season as long as Pujols is there. The Cubs could probably do it as well. The Marlins, will regret it. There is no history of the steady attendace required to justify his contract.

One of the issues that separates baseball fans from real world business evaluation of contracts is a fixation on the salary figure for each year. This is understandable because of how baseball payrolls are set annually, but it’s unfair to the players. The important thing to remember is that a contract is not a loser just because a player is not worth the money being paid to him in the last years of the contract. If the player brought significant surplus value in the early years of the contract, the contract can still be classified a winner for the team. A player has to eat through all the surplus value he generated early in the contract during his later under-performing years before the contract is truly a loser. For instance, I suspect Carlos Beltran’s contract was a win for the Mets even though Beltran was hurt much of the last three years and under-performing his annual salary. To me, Pujols seems likely to generate surplus value in Years 1-3 of the contract, be appropriately paid in Year 4 and 5, and then start under-performing in Year 6. It’s hard to know how much WAR he’ll have to generate that far into the future to earn his annual salary, though, because baseball contracts are not immune to inflation.

Also, most baseball contracts are back-loaded to take advantage of both inflation and the time value of money. A dollar 10 years from now is worth a lot less today than a dollar next year. A front loaded contract would be a big win for a player, not the team, as the player gets his money sooner and can take advantage of investment opportunities yielding a rate of return higher than the rate of inflation.

A). Getting the most per year average
B). Getting the biggest deal ever
C). Getting 10 years
D). All of the Above

All of these deals have AAV’s in the 22 mil range. 10-220.

In 2007 Alex Rodriguez, then 32, signed a 10 year at an AAV of 27.5 million per year. (10-275).

Pujols is now Age 31, he’s had an equal (or better career) up to this point. If you think he’s taking 50 mil less to sign than A-Rod, I think that you might need to rethink the #s.

I think something around 10-250 (25 mil per) to 10-280 (28 mil per) is completely reasonable for him to seek. Whether a team wants to go that high is up to them, but that might be the price of admission

that the Marlins are out on Pujols. They’ve “emotionally moved on.” I"m not sure what that means to emotionally move on, but the smaller the group of teams, the better a deal the Cardinals get when they re-sign him for 10 years.

Years without dollars means nothing. A 10 year deal for $220 million seems about right.

You will get surplus value in the first few years of the contract, and even value midway through, most likely. Even if you come out on the negative at the end, you get the best player in baseball for a few years, and if you are a team like the Cardinals, set up to compete for World Series over that time period, that’s invaluable.

If the value of a win continues to increase as the economy recovers, even the later years of the deal may not look so bad compared to the expected production.

You have to pay a premium to get a player like this, and it gives your team a lot of options considering you have so much production in one lineup spot. (Granted a lot of risk too)

I mean, the AAV of all these hypothetical 10 year deals are less than what Ryan Howard will be getting over the next five years. Now it’s obviously not the contract you’d want to compare to, but you have to take Pujols for 10 years over Howard for 5 at his rate, right?

Something in the 10 year and 200-220 million range seems at least fairly reasonable to me.

so sayeth Tim Brown.