When Will MLB Ever Learn?

Not a baseball fan in the USA is unaware of the name Albert Pujols.  Pujols, who plies his trade for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (known by everyone but the team's owner as the "LA Angels"), is a 36-year-old player, formerly of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Pujols was a Hall-of-Fame-caliber ballplayer with the Cardinals, spending eleven years there, from 2001 through 2011.  During that time, he performed at a level few in the history of the professional game could match.  As a hitter, one is best measured by his ability to do two specific things well -- get on base (i.e., not make outs) and get multiple bases with the hits he gets.  Those two attributes more effectively correlate with team runs far more than any other offensive statistic.

We have all now likely heard the term "OPS", meaning "on-base percentage plus slugging average", which is a rather artificial number used to combine the two most relevant offensive statistics, albeit a bit crudely.  You may less likely have heard the term "OPS+", which is a statistic that weights OPS with ballpark effects, and gives some  rationality to the number.  A player with an OPS+ of 100 is a league-average hitter.  Simple as that.  An OPS+ of 130 means "30% better than league average", and is definitely an All-Star-level hitter.

In Albert Pujols's first eleven years, all spent with the Cardinals, he recorded a composite OPS+ (i.e., for all eleven years combined) of 170.  Combine that with his excellent fielding at first base (also borne out by modern fielding metrics) and you have a player, the likes of whose first 11 seasons were almost historically unparalleled.

During the 2011 season, however, all of which was spent at age 31, one aspect of Pujols's baseball life took precedence.  His contract was expiring, and he would be a free agent after the World Series.

Despite his age, the Cardinals were anxious to sign him to a multi-year contract, one that would cement his status as one of the two greatest Cardinal position players ever (there with the sainted Stan Musial), and recognize his singularly positive relationship with the St. Louis fan community.  He was loved, admired and respected there, and the Cardinals wanted him to stay.

Except for one little thing.  Pujols wanted a ten-year contract, one that would put him on the field through his age-41 season.  And the Cardinals, no matter what his past performance and how well-respected he was, were not stupid.  Pujols had been a horse for eleven years, nearly always playing 150 games or more, and rarely injured.  But a ballplayer's peak years are from age 26-30, and it simply did not make economic sense for any team to commit huge dollars to putting a now-age-31 player on the field past age 36 or 37, let alone at 41.  Far, far too many bad things can happen.

So the Cardinals made a very attractive offer for a very attractive number of years, but it was not "ten."  And Pujols wanted ten years.  This dispute played out in the media, and while the Cardinals took some flak, they are an organization with a marvelous history and a credible one that is thought to operate at a high level.  The fans ultimately wanted to keep Pujols in St. Louis but, it being the Cardinals, many came to look at Pujols's demands as beyond reasonable.

Ultimately, the Cardinals held to fewer years, and Pujols indeed got a ten-year offer from the Angels, at $24 million per year, where he plays now.  The Cardinals have not suffered; in the four seasons since they were first in their division three times and second the other; averaged almost 94 wins per season and made the playoffs every year, including a trip to the World Series.  


And let's look at the Pujols numbers, shall we?  Pujols is four years into that Angels contract.  Has he performed at that level of 70% better than league average?  Well, not so much.  At 40% better?  Er, no.

For his $24 million per year, which LA will be paying through 2021 no matter what happens to him, Albert Pujols has in the first four years accumulated an OPS+ of 126, or about 26% better than league average.  Now that is good, for sure, and had LA signed him to a four-year contract and been done with him now at age 36, they wouldn't be all that regretful.  But it surely is not worth both the $96 million they have paid to date and the $144 million they still have to pay him, again, no matter what.

I remember thinking in 2011 that the whole contract issue with St. Louis was going to come back and bite someone and, although I'm not a Cardinals fan, I hoped it would not be they, and I hoped either that Pujols would sign with them for 6-7 years, or that he would sign with another team I either rooted against or didn't care about.

I wanted to see St. Louis's approach, which I thought was more than reasonable, result in a lesson.  And surely it has.  The Angels are burdened with six more years of a contract for which they will be lucky to get an average of 100 offensively productive games from Pujols.  Pujols is getting paid, sure, but his reputation is immensely diminished from what it would have been had he stayed in St. Louis and had his career slowly mature (i.e., decline) but as a city icon.

In effect, the LA Angels are paying Albert Pujols the value of the productivity that he had as a St. Louis Cardinal.  Except, of course, that productivity was as a Cardinal, a younger one, and he is now an Angel.  And the Cardinals are paying him nothing, as they polish the two World Series rings they earned while he was there.

I would like to hope that every team in major league baseball is evolving its view on long-term contracts for players over 30.  I say that because, as a conservative, I applaud fiscal responsibility wherever it takes over an institution, particularly one I care about as much as I do baseball.

It is interesting that the only team in baseball this off-season that has not signed a major free agent has been, of all teams, the New York Yankees, the long-time kings of profligate spending -- and who are still on the hook for a few inane contracts, such as the one paying Alex Rodriguez into his forties.  Perhaps if the Yankees, of all teams, have seen the light, there is hope for the rest of the game.

Albert Pujols could have played out his career as a Cardinal hero, rather than being regretted by Angels fans, who were really never able to see the player at his best.  Maybe the teams are so flush with cash that the tragedy of the Pujols situation isn't that of the Angels but, rather, that of a player whose career could have granted him a status to which few in baseball history could compare.

But his career is now split irrevocably into two parts -- historic and beloved in St. Louis, where they don't have to pay for his decline; declining and regretted in Anaheim, where every few points of OPS+ his bat loses each year will be met with contempt.

I hope and pray that lessons will be learned by owners and players alike.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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