Readers can select the components of their best contract offer to soon-to-be free agent Albert Pujols.
Let’s fast-forward to the fall of 2011. St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols has reached the free market as a free agent. He is looking for a new contract that begins with his age 32 season in 2012.
You have been charged by Cardinals ownership to put together your last shot at securing Pujols’ future services. Your bid needs to be aggressive enough to get your man but not so large that it hamstrings the remainder of your operation for years to come.
Your challenge is to assemble that winning offer by making the selections from the menus below.
Note: Please ensure you scan all the questions before you begin voting as your earlier answers may be affected by the later selections and vice-versa.
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I will ensure this thread is remembered come fall and winter and we can look back to see how well we did in assembling a winning bid.
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Nice little gem, would have been fun before talks got cut off. At what point in time am I making the offer (in the 5 day window) or after he has hit the market?
The assumption I stated in the post is that he is already a free agent.
In that case, I probably don’t bid. By that point I’ve moved on. My worst fear is the team will be paralyzed while being held hostage by team Pujols over the Winter. If Carpenter has a good but not great season (say, similar to last year) can the team really make a good decision on whther to exercise his option w/o knowing what is happening with Pujols. Are we going to let other FA’s sign elsewhere while we wait on Pujols?
Not me!
You get a special mention for thinking outside the box, but a demerit for not playing along. The assumptions are that ownership asked you to assemble a winning bid for them. You are not ownership, but are an employee, so you would be fired for insubordination.
I guess I could have posed a deadline question. As in, “Would you give Pujols a limited time to accept this offer and then walk away?”
I have also since thought of a related timing question. “Would you wait until Pujols has all other bids to make your final offer or would you do it as soon as the season is over?”
Would folks like to see either or both of these questions added?
I chose 8 years, 26-29 million, 10 % or less deferred, ownership stake after retirement, bonuses for both games and awards, one vesting year and front loading the offer.
All of this assumes TLR is not the manager right?
Hey, that would free up another $3 -$4 million right?
So you are going to give him that much + an ownership stake?
Yes, unless the ownership stake is tiny, that deal seems very (overly?) generous, crdswmn…
Oh, I though we were just giving out our starting offers.
That previous post was meant to be a joke by the way. Actually I was thinking that my offer was high but I was assuming that Pujols wants to make more money than God.
Nice idea, Brian.
Thanks. Part of the reason I did this was to help people realize there is more to a bid than just dollars and years. Yet that overly simplistic view often seems to be what the knee-jerkers rely upon to draw conclusions.
I expect the votes to be all over the map, so I encourage voters to specify your choices as crdswmn did. It gives the rest of us something to criticize, er comment about…
Criticize away kimo sabe.
Some team is going to give him a better deal than me, you can bet on it.
Oh, and my offer is winning so far by the way, smarty pants.
IMO, your bid either strongly devalued or completely ignored the financial value of the ownership stake or the stake was so small it had only a symbolic value. I am not sure if other clubs would be as willing as StL might be to consider such an option. However, we also don’t know how/if Pujols would value it. If simply more $ and years than A-Rod is all that matters, then it is easy to compare bids – 10/276 would be the minimum.
I once worked for a boss whose mantra was “OPM” – other people’s money. She always wanted to find someone else to fund her projects. This exercise is clearly an OPM effort!
It is possible that Albert will want more than 10/275 + record breaking incentives – that is really what ARod got so if it is about the ego, I think he’d want that.
Right – it is possible. We have no way of knowing what Pujols would hold to, but I imagine many people think that the Cards would not beat that offer on pure dollars and years. Yet, both 10 years and $30 million are receiving votes above, though we cannot tell if they are coming from the same voters.
Kemo sabe!!!
Here’s my offer: Five guaranteed years at $24-25M, 10% deferred, ownership stake now and significant (to make up for lower AAV), bonuses for games/awards, front-loaded (maybe as high as $28M the first year, to beat A-Rod) and 3+ years of vesting options.
Agree with CC’s point about not waiting too long on him… no only due to Carp, but if the team loses out on the free-agent bidding, waiting too long will make it more difficult to find a player or players in the market to back-fill his production… if that becomes necessary.
You are living in la la land if you think Pujols will take only 5 guaranteed years. I don’t care what else you load it up with.
Tonto — Five years with a $25M AAV is exactly what the Phils gave Howard, who is one year older than AP. And no, this ain’t la-la-land… it’s God’s Country!
Pujols = Howard That will get you Pujols’ respect!
CC — Well, that’s $25 AAV as a base with perfomance incentives and team ownership thrown in, which makes it AP > RH.
Bottom line, if AP has to be the highest-paid tool in the drawer he’ll likely end up elsewhere. I don’t think StL can afford to put 25% of the payroll into one player and still field a competitive team around him and Holliday.
The Cubs don’t want AP……….the Cubs don’t want AP in the division…….. The Cardinals will make likely make a 6/180 type of offer…defiantly under 200 million……the Cubs for one will bid just over 200 million…………. the winner, likely Washington or the Mets, will be in the 220′s……… for effect the Cardinals might sweeten to 7/196………but will stay in 4 place all the way….. thats your future.
The Cardinals 8th round pick in the 2010 draft was Daniel Bibona. He had very goods stats for a first year player at Quad Cities yet I don’t find his name on any of the various prospect lists. Does anyone have a scouting report on him or know why he is not thought more highly of? Thanks
Bigsnick, welcome to the blog. Your timing is eerie.
I did not get to see Quad Cities when Bibona pitched, but our Scout.com national prospect expert placed Bibona #6 on his personal Cardinals list. Bibona also appears in his overall Scout 300 (top prospects across all 30 systems) which is debuting in the FOX Sports Fantasy Baseball Guide/Scout Prospect Guide set to hit newsstands this week.
I am in the midst of a Q&A session with our expert, Mark Anderson, and one of the questions I asked him was about what he sees in Bibona. I haven’t received his reply yet. If you subscribe to The Cardinal Nation, look for that article in the next week or so.
I will also check with my local writer who covers QC to see what he has to say about Bibona.
Thanks Brian
Jon Popham emailed me with this:
“Danny was only here for a few starts. I saw a lot of potential in him but he was lacking consistency much of the time. The one thing that REALLY impressed me last summer was at a game in Clinton he had a truly horrible second inning. We were all sure that he was done for the night but he came back in the third and fourth innings and retired the side in both innings. He went on to have a rough game overall, but the mental fortitude that it took to get back on the mound and dominate Clinton for a couple of innings was impressive. I don’t remember specific pitches, but as I recall he had a fastball that was low 90′s and at least one other pitch–I think his was a well-controlled curve. He’s one of the guys who I hope is back here for a while this year.”
So far I have more people in agreement with my offer. And I only offered 1 vesting year.
Here’s a new one on how the Cards could structure an offer. Extend his existing contract in such a way that the it exceeds A-Rods. ie, without going 10 years from now or $300M from now.
“Well, someone asked if the Cardinals could make an offer so that the past five years would be included in the contract. In other words, could the Cardinals offer Pujols a five-year deal that, combined with the last five years of his current contract, would total $300 million and get him the record that he apparently craves (without having to stretch out for 10 more years).
OK — do you know how much money per year the Cardinals would have to pay Pujols over the next five years to make that happen? Take a stab in the dark. … Pujols over the last five years — including this year, which is a club option year — will have made $84 million. To get him to $300 million, the Cardinals would have to offer him a five-year, $216 million deal — or $43.2 million per year.”
http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/02/16/cashing-in-without-the-yankees/
Posnanski’s example, 5 yrs at $43.2 per is absurd, but perhaps the concept could be used some how, add more years on to the existing $100M+ contract.
Creative, but a few years too late. At this point, they’d need to find Mr. Peabody and Sherman and throw everybody into the WABAC Machine.
BB…….if the Cards offered 8/240………….he would sign immediately……..they aren’t going to…
The commissioner is at work here……… he is wielding incredible power with his discretionary fund.
The Tex firing of SB, along with the Gonzales delay……….tells me that there is some gaming going on here………… Cardinals aren’t in it.
I agree that both MLB and MLBPA both benefit enormously if NY and Boston are players. I also agree that Tex and Gonzales present issues that would make it difficult but not impossible for their teams to step up. With that in mind, the Boras firing and the Gonzales extension backpeddle should not be counted as coincidence, I agree with that. They may be, but they may not be.
As to the Cards, DeWit will not offer $30M a year, I agree. Whether Albert will end up staying, I don’t know, but I think that Mrs. Pujols will likely decide.