Pujols Signs With Angels

[sighyoung]

I've just been playing this song on repeat for 72 hours.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsV_7XPI ... re=related][/youtube]

The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself" would have been more enjoyable.

[skmsw]

I have not looked all that closely at Albert's "decline," but on the surface, I'm not ready to declare him as over the hill -- or even necessarily cresting it.

Defensively, his 2011 is maybe 4-6 runs worse than his pre-2009 average (assuming that if he is showing a muti-year decline, then 09, 10, and 11 are off of his previous trend line). Not a blistering loss of value ... we're talking a drop from 1.5 to 0.9 defensive WAR.

Offensively ... even less.

63 (rookie)
60
93 (career year, at age 23)
78
70
69
57
76
77
73
43 (2011; injured forearm; offense down throughout baseball)

2011 was certainly an off-year (whether age, random down year, injury, better pitching, combos of those things, or something else), but personally, I just don't see it as some continuation of an irreversible loss of ability. I reserve the right to dive deeper into the data and change my mind, but on the surface, it looks like one down year on the heels of three straight similarly fantastic ones.

[OmahaCard79]

This whole thing sucks. I just put my finger on it. It has the surreal feel I had when I was ten, didn't know wrestling was fake, and one of my heroes turned heel.

Right now, I have the same feeling I did when Macho Man turned on Hulk Hogan before Wrestlemania 5.

I'm waiting for Jose Pujols to have Bobby the Brain Heenan be his manager next year and Albert will then hit Matt Holliday with a steel chair.

[ThatGuy]

Steve is highly skeptical of the Cardinals.

[Fat Strat]

stuff that steverino said

Just like with an earlier post of yours, I don't have much to disagree with in regards to your argument. The problem I have is that we're dealing with unknowns. We don't know how Albert will age. We know what models might suggest. We know what other superstars have done. We can't apply that to Albert with any real level of certainty.

You keep saying that the Cards were "risk averse". I keep trying to put myself into the Cardinals shoes and I can't seem to get over the commitment issue -- the very issue that seems to be the greatest sticking point for the Pujols'. He very well might have earned his money over his contract, but I am not willing to sacrifice what I would have had to sacrifice to get Albert to sign. I know that we could have had him for less than the Angels offered, but even then it's more than I could personally stomach to commit to one person.

Maybe this is all just me. I have found in the last two years -- while rebuilding an organization from the ground up -- that the benefits of flexibility and short-term commitments should not be undervalued. I simply can't forecast out enough months or years to justify locking my organization into one or two significant longterm commitments, no matter how stable and valuable that commitment has been or appears to be. We have core values and principles that guide how we operate. We have committed absolutely to those values but have left the specific "how" part of executing those values very fluid. It gives us the freedom to respond when we need to and jump at other opportunities as they arise. And I've been very pleasantly surprised at how much the opportunities that I could not have planned for and was able to jump at have been better than the ones I originally planned and projected for.

That's not a perfect parallel with running a baseball team, but I think the same principles can apply.

[bronx_bird]

everything about this is really so damned sad.

[ManEatingTarp]

This whole thing sucks. I just put my finger on it. It has the surreal feel I had when I was ten, didn't know wrestling was fake, and one of my heroes turned heel.

Right now, I have the same feeling I did when Macho Man turned on Hulk Hogan before Wrestlemania 5.

I'm waiting for Jose Pujols to have Bobby the Brain Heenan be his manager next year and Albert will then hit Matt Holliday with a steel chair.

Gotta say that this sums it up better than anything else I've read so far.

[JohnnyJay]

For all of you local people...

Channel 5 (KSDK) will be having an "exclusive" one on one interview with Albert and his wife tonight at 10 CST.

Sorry if this has been posted already.

[jagtrader]

Channel 5 (KSDK) will be having an "exclusive" one on one interview with Albert and his wife tonight at 10 CST.

Not local. If watching was an option, I'd find something more appealing. Like sticking a fork in my eye. Nothing against Pujols and his wife. Just don't want to hear about it any more.

[JohnnyJay]

Actually, you can watch it here:

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/290819 ... e-St-Louis