ANAHEIM -- One day in spring training, when working in the marketing department for the Angels was as gloriously easy as being a meteorologist in Aruba, manager Mike Scioscia sat behind his desk and gave me his definitive plan for how he would handle Albert Pujols. "My goal," he said, "is to have Albert in the lineup 162 times."
The 2012 baseball season had its third Opening Day on Thursday with six pitching-dominated games and one, between the Indians and Blue Jays, that rolled on for an Opening Day-record 16 innings before finally concluding. On Friday, the 13 teams that still haven't launched their seasons will at long last get their uniforms dirty amid a nine-game slate.
Although the western hemisphere's Opening Day isn't for another week, the 2012 baseball season officially got underway in Japan on Wednesday morning when the A's and Mariners played the first of two games in Tokyo, which means it's high time that I update my 2012 awards predictions from November.
TEMPE, Ariz. -- Upon entering the main gate at Tempe Diablo Stadium, the Angels' spring training ballpark, there's a merchandise stand immediately to the right. The only player apparel sold there bears Albert Pujols' name.
As one of the greatest players in major league history, Albert Pujols is just about as irreplaceable as a player can be, but after inking Carlos Beltran to a two-year, $26 million contract to play right field, the Cardinals are in good shape to compensate for his departure in 2012. You see, the Cardinals are coming off Pujols' weakest season, which means that rather than having to replace roughly nine wins above replacement, per Baseball-Reference's WAR (or bWAR), they "only" have to replace 5.4 wins, and at least half of those should come from the return of ace Adam Wainwright, who sat out the entire 2011 season following Tommy John surgery in March.
There are just five shopping days left until Christmas, and for general managers looking to flesh out their lineups via the free agent market, the list of available options is dwindling. Looking at Ben Reiter's Nov. 2 list of the top 50 free agents, eight of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 have found homes for 2012. Here, then, is a look at the top player still available at each position and with which team they would fit best. Tomorrow, I'll examine the best pitchers still on the market.
The liberation of St. Louis begins now.
Don't cry for the Cardinals. Yes they just lost one of the greatest players in baseball history to free agency, but there's life after Albert Pujols in St. Louis. In the long term, the path ahead doesn't include the team spending $254 million for the age-32 to -41 seasons of a single player who doesn't have the benefit of the designated hitter and can't be moved if his defense declines. In the short term, replacing the 5.4 wins above replacement (per Baseball-Reference's WAR) that Pujols was worth in 2011, his worst major league season, isn't nearly as hard as Pujols' iconic status would make it seem.
DALLAS -- Just 12 months ago, Angels owner Arte Moreno, having whiffed on Carl Crawford the same way he whiffed on Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and Paul Konerko, decried the illogic of high-stakes free agency for a team already carrying a $121 million payroll then.
Baseball's Winter Meetings are taking place from Monday through Thursday in Dallas. Follow along here for updates on all the biggest players available.
DALLAS -- Albert Pujols is worth more to the Marlins than to the Cardinals. Sound crazy? Only if you believe in the gilded mythology of an iconic player spending his career with one team. Such franchise icons make for nice narratives, but not always great business sense. Does it make sense for the Cardinals, with no escape hatch of the DH rule, to pay a hitter $25 million a year until he's 42 years old? Only if you believe in the sentimentality of turning Pujols into the next Stan Musial -- forgetting, of course, that Musial never was a free agent. Ask the Twins about the cost of keeping Joe Mauer a Twin for life and the Phillies about Ryan Howard.
DALLAS -- A little after eight o'clock, the Marlins brass descended the tower elevators, having just completed a meeting with the agent for Albert Pujols, and gave no indication of how it went.
DALLAS -- Already the most fascinating team in baseball -- everybody from Albert Pujols to the Securities and Exchange Commission is checking them out -- the Marlins aren't done yet. Having added shortstop Jose Reyes and closer Heath Bell, the newly named, newly outfitted and newly relocated Miami Marlins are prepared to push their payroll past $100 million if it means adding Pujols, according to a team source.
DALLAS -- With the ultra-aggressive Marlins agreeing to terms with the multitalented Jose Reyes on a $106-million, six-year deal that establishes them as a major winter player, the first superstar is off the board. So where do the rest of the superstars and stars stand now as the Winter Meetings officially begin? Here's an update:
This week, SI.com will analyze the offseason plans for each team in a division-by-division format. Wednesday will preview the National League and Thursday the American League. Teams are listed in order of finish in 2011.
Yankees ace CC Sabathia used the threat of his opt-out clause Monday night to increase his contract from $92 million to $122 million and stayed with the Yankees. Sabathia's call to remain in pinstripes aided New York and deprived a star-infused free-agent class of a bit more glitz, but the group still contains three other players with a chance to receive deals for at least $20 million per year. Prince Fielder and Jose Reyes have an excellent chance to top the $20-million-a-year mark, and the iconic Albert Pujols, the top guy on the market, actually has been shooting to get into the $30-million-a-year range.
ARLINGTON, Texas -- The Great Albert Pujols added to his incredible legacy with his five-hit, three-homer performance for the ages in Game 3. But is there any chance this is the final Cardinals chapter of the iconic star's amazing St. Louis story?
Short of an injury, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong for the Rangers in Saturday night's Game 3. Their pitchers were awful, their defense committed three errors, they were victimized by an awful blown call by first base umpire Ron Kulpa -- and they lost 16-7 putting them on the wrong side of the recent history in which the winner of a tiebreaking Game 3 went on to win 16 of the last 18 World Series that were tied after two games. Still, the Rangers could have shrugged that off as one bad loss if not for one thing: Albert Pujols. He turned in the greatest single game performance by a hitter in World Series history in Game 3, going 5-for-6 with three home runs, six RBIs, four runs scored, and 14 total bases, tying the World Series records for hits, homers, RBIs, and runs, and breaking the Series record for total bases.
ST. LOUIS -- Cardinals superstar Albert Pujols is helping his free agent case with his huge postseason, and the Cardinals may be helping their chances to keep him beyond this year, too. Neither Pujols nor the team is talking much publicly about what promises to be the most-watched free agent case since Alex Rodriguez four years ago, and they also promised not to talk to each other throughout the Cardinals season, which is lasting a good deal longer than anyone expected.
MILWAUKEE -- Tony La Russa concluded his pregame remarks late Monday afternoon with a gentle reminder that while the Brewers have this season experienced great offensive success at Miller Park -- where they were, at the time, 61-24, due in large measure to a home output of nearly 4.9 runs per game -- his Cardinals can produce runs as well. In 85 road games, in fact, St. Louis had averaged more than 5.0 per game, and this season they had scored more runs in Milwaukee -- 45 -- than any team but the Brewers. "We hit here, too, and we like hitting here," La Russa said.
The Cardinals are said by major league sources not to be overly confident that they will be able to retain superstar first baseman and free-agent-to-be Albert Pujols beyond this year -- although, the Cardinals are still seen by others as the favorite to sign Pujols, and that remains their clear No. 1 goal.
When Wilson Betemit ran into Albert Pujols last Sunday, breaking Pujols' right forearm, the Royals' infielder changed the course not only of the 2011 baseball season, but perhaps the offseason to follow.
Five reactions to Monday's news that Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols will miss the next 4-to-6 weeks after fracturing his left forearm in a collision at first base with the Royals' Wilson Betemit:
At this point, with a third of the season in the books, it's fair to start taking performances seriously. The stat-head warning -- "small sample size" -- is a bit less ominous as we get through 200 plate appearances for hitters, double-digit starts or 70-80 innings for pitchers. You can, frankly, start judging guys; maybe you cut slack for injuries -- Joe Mauer and Chase Utley get passes for now -- but if you've been in the lineup and your OPS looks like my credit score, you're getting called out.
If Jose Bautista is the game's biggest positive surprise this year, then Albert Pujols is its biggest negative one. The 31-year-old first baseman, who hit the ground running on Opening Day 2001 and has never had a season in which he finished outside the top 10 in NL MVP balloting, is hitting .261/.330/.407 as we near the one-third mark of the 2011 season.
Three major league general managers said they believe superstar Albert Pujols, who can be a free agent at year's end, will return to the Cardinals and sign a long-term deal with them after the season. Although none of the three professed to possess any inside information on the subject, their sentiments would appear to be the prevailing belief in baseball now.
JUPITER, Fla. -- Some folks around baseball saw irony in Cardinals manager Tony La Russa claiming without evidence that the baseball players union was influencing Albert Pujols not to take the team's offer (which according to people familiar with the talks was for more than $200 million over nine years). That's because those people see La Russa as potentially having the exact opposite effect on Pujols.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- If the St. Louis Cardinals are not prepared to pay Albert Pujols more than the Phillies pay Ryan Howard -- that's $25 million per year - then they never had a shot at keeping their iconic player in St. Louis and he is as good as gone.
JUPITER, Fla. -- One purpose of Albert Pujols' self-imposed deadline was allegedly to keep distractions to a minimum.
WASHINGTON -- After experiencing what he called the most thrilling day of his life, Hall of Famer Stan Musial sat at a Washington airport Tuesday feeling confident that the man who is his heir apparent as a Cardinals legend will finish his career where it all began, just as Musial himself once did almost half a century ago.
You shouldn't be allowed to clinch the pennant in December.
The biggest obstacle between Albert Pujols and a contract extension with the Cardinals is age -- and more specifically, what clubs know about how players age in the Testing Era. Pujols will play next season at 32, so an Alex Rodriguez-styled 10-year deal would pay him boatloads of money through his age 41 season. Look around baseball: The days of the superstar player in his late 30s are over.
Here are the questions baseball executives are wondering about with regards to the Albert Pujols contract situation: Can the Cardinals lose the Great Pujols? And can they afford to?
Superstar Albert Pujols and the Cardinals are so far apart in negotiations that people familiar with the talks say there is virtually no chance for a deal before the three-time NL MVP reports to spring camp Feb. 16.
Albert Pujols' decision, via agent Dan Lozano, to set a deadline of spring training for a new multiyear deal with the Cardinals, could be a sign things aren't going all that well in the negotiations. But it could also be an attempt to force a deal.
With the Baseball Writers Association of America awards as well as the first season of my Awards Watch column in the books, it's time to take a (very) early look at who might be the favorites for these awards in 2011. In stark contrast to the accuracy of my final Awards Watch of the regular season -- I correctly identified 17 of the 18 top-three finishers in the six player awards, missing only the third-place finisher for American League Rookie of the Year -- what follows makes no presumption of being a perfect projection of next year's voting. In fact, it is about as close to picking names out of a hat as you can get, but if you're looking for the odds-on favorites going into the 2011 season, these should be the top three candidates for the three major awards in each league.
The Baseball Writers Association of America awards will be announced over the next week and a half, starting with the Rookies of the Year on Monday and continuing through the American League Most Valuable Player on Tuesday November 23. Here, then, is a look at who is likely to win the four major awards in each league (or who likely has won given that the votes were cast more than a month ago, before the playoffs began) as well as who, in my opinion, deserves to win.
With just two weeks left in the regular season, there is still surprisingly little decided with regard to the major awards and a solid chance that the final two weeks do little to clarify matters. One of the questions readers of this column might ask is, "Where's Tulo?" The Rockies' Troy Tulowitzki has been on another planet this month, hitting .351/.407/1.000 in September with 14 home runs and 34 RBIs. Tulo's 14 homers and 31 RBIs over a recent 15-game stretch marked the most impressive 15-game outburst in September in baseball history, passing Hank Greenberg's 12-homers, and 32 RBIs in 15 games in September 1940. Tulowitzki, however, has not cracked my top three for National League Most Valuable Player.
The National League Triple Crown and Most Valuable Player Award are up for grabs in these final 20 days of the season. Carlos Gonzalez of Colorado, Albert Pujols of St. Louis and Joey Votto of Cincinnati, in some order, rank 1-2-3 in OPS, slugging, total bases, runs batted in, runs created and the odds of taking their place next to Ducky Medwick and Kenesaw Mountain Landis in baseball history.
Joey Votto and Albert Pujols are stubborn men. They are more willful than you are. They work harder than you do, they prepare more diligently. They own a form of relentlessness that's peculiar to great hitters.
Triple Crown fever has struck the National League as Joey Votto and Albert Pujols, the matched set of big-hitting first basemen in the formerly compelling NL Central race, both rank among the league leaders in each of the three Triple Crown categories (batting average, home runs, and RBIs). So who has the best chance to win baseball's first batting Triple Crown since 1967 and the first in the National League since 1937?
First basemen Albert Pujols of St. Louis and Miguel Cabrera of Detroit are perpetual MVP candidates, having received MVP votes seven years running and combining for 11 top five finishes in those 14 elections. There is one big difference between the two reliable sluggers: Pujols has won the vote three times and Cabrera not at all.
The Cardinals are 2-0 with Albert Pujols batting cleanup, therefore the decision to move him out of the No. 3 spot he had been in for almost seven consecutive years was a success.
If Albert Pujols is as proficient a scout and talent evaluator as he is a ballplayer, the rest of the National League could be in trouble. Pujols thinks this Cardinals team is special, way better even than they have performed so far. And so far, they haven't been too bad at all.
Albert Pujols, Adrian Gonzalez and Prince Fielder were surely pleased to hear about Ryan Howard's five-year, $125-million extension. The number isn't absurdly high -- in fact, it was right on the mark in my estimation (more on that below) -- but it does provide another comparable deal for the trio of first-base stars who are scheduled to be free agents after the 2011 season.
I must admit: I do get a kick out of overmanaging. Sure, mostly it's like a kick to the sternum... but there's something utterly human about overmanaging that I can appreciate. A baseball manager has so little he can CONTROL on a baseball diamond. He can't design a play -- hit and runs and wheel plays don't satisfy. He can't make halftime adjustments. He can't substitute players in-and-out or change up his lines. You don't think about this much -- or I don't -- but perhaps the biggest thing is that a baseball manager can't even put his best player in position to make the big play. In basketball, you get LeBron to take the last-second shot. In football, you have Tom Brady throw to Wes Welker on fourth down. In baseball, sure, you can put in your closer. But you can't just send Albert Pujols up there with the winning run on third base. And even if you DO happen to be at Pujols place in the lineup, they will walk him.
JUPITER, Fla. -- Tony La Russa was on his cell phone Tuesday morning as he walked off the field and toward reporters for his daily give-and-give-more with the media. He seemed particularly engaged with the phone call. Reporters waited patiently until he hung up.
JUPITER, Fla. -- Baseball executives agree on a couple things regarding superstar Albert Pujols, the Cardinals and their future together.
PLAYER OF THE DECADE: Albert Pujols, Cardinals Look at these numbers: .314 batting average, 40 doubles, 34 homers, 127 RBIs, 118 runs. Those numbers make up Pujols' worst season this decade. Pujols' story is already legend. He was a 13th-round pick of the Cardinals in 1999 ... meaning he was even passed over 17 times by his hometown Kansas City Royals. Eighteen months later, he began one of the great rookie seasons in baseball history (.329, 37 homers, 130 RBIs, 129 runs). He has found something to improve every season -- he cut down his strikeouts, he honed his home run swing, he improved his defense, he worked on his baserunning. In 2009 Pujols stole 16 bases, walked 115 times and hit 47 homers -- all career highs. It seems impossible, but he's getting better.
OK, I have this idea based on Albert Pujols winning his third MVP in five years... it starts with this: I think Pujols at age 29 is a Hall of Famer right now. To me, it's done. True, you have to play 10 years in the big leagues to be eligible for the Hall, and Pujols has only played nine, so technically he is not yet eligible. But my point is not that old "he retires tomorrow" argument. No, my point is that in my eyes that no matter what he does on the field from this point on, the rest of his career, he has already locked up Hall of Fame status.
When baseball gathered in St. Louis for the All-Star Game last July, the spectacle to honor the best players in the game evolved, appropriately, into a love-in for just one man. Albert Pujols -- the homer-hitting hero of the Gateway City who would later admit that he had to keep from getting emotional at the tsunami of affection that washed over him every time his name was announced -- was the biggest attraction all week, more than the game itself, more than any of his decorated fellow stars, even more than the President of the United States, who threw out the first ball to him before the game.
So, it looks like I spent another sports year feeling pre-agitated about things that did not come especially close to happening. Zack Greinke won the Cy Young Award ... he won it rather easily. There was no sudden and overpowering push to get Jack Morris into the Hall of Fame while Bert Blyleven writhes in baseball limbo. The Cleveland Browns did not hire Eric Mangini.
In each installment of Diamond Digits over the last two regular seasons, we have anointed the players with the titles of Best and Worst Stats of the Week. When making these selections, we look only at the previous seven-day period stretching from Monday to Sunday, and in virtually every case, season statistics play no factor. This edition is a little different. In the final installment of the season, we looked not just at the last week, but at the full bodies of work over the course of the past six months. Instead of doing best and worst, we skipped the negativity and broke the yearly honors up into the best position players and pitchers.
Albert Pujols was explaining, in no uncertain terms, that he is not a home run hitter. He is a line-drive hitter who happens to be strong enough (thanks to the gifts God gave him) to drive a few pitches over the fence. But he's not a home run hitter. And, it was pretty clear -- from the tenseness in his voice, his glare -- that he resented the insinuation.
The team of the aughts will be decided this postseason. The Yankees have the most wins this decade and the most World Series appearances, but the Red Sox have the most world championships and are looking for a third when no one else has two. The Cardinals could get into the mix with their second world championship this decade.
I live in a nice part of Chicago. Saul Bellow wrote some of his best novels while living here. Barack Obama represented the neighborhood in the Illinois Senate. My apartment is around the corner from the site of the first sustained nuclear reaction and one of Frank Lloyd Wright's more beautiful houses, and, more impressively, right down the street from Bill Veeck's old digs. Neither Mr. Sammler's Planet nor the fission reactor nor the exploding scoreboard can, though, quite rate with Hyde Park's greatest contribution to world culture: The Latke-Hamantash Debate.
Over the past two days, if you believed the hype, Albert Pujols was supposed to accomplish a number of things: He was supposed to destroy his seven competitors in the Home Run Derby. He was supposed to win a new car and a 65-inch flat-screen TV for a fan from Philadelphia by hitting a homer where the fan predicted that he would. He was supposed to coax President Barack Obama into hurling a strike over the heart of the plate with the All-Star Game's ceremonial first pitch. He was supposed to ensure the National League's string of 12 consecutive All-Star games without a victory would be broken, single-handedly if necessary. If, along the way, he Heimliched a bunch of choking kids in the stands and thwarted a terrorist plot or two, well, it kind of seemed as if he was supposed to do that, too.
Tonight was supposed to be Albert Pujols' night, but Prince Fielder and Nelson Cruz had other ideas.
"Starting in K.C. he just said, forget about it," Cardinals center fielder Rick Ankiel said of his teammate Albert Pujols last week in the visitors' clubhouse at Citi Field. The Friday before, against the Royals, Pujols had begun one of those stretches -- five games, three home runs, 12 RBIs and eight hits in 19 at-bats -- that lead people, his awestruck teammates included, to joke that there must be something not entirely hominid beneath his flesh.
JUPITER, Fla. -- Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt liked what superstar Albert Pujols said upon arriving at camp about winning being more important than money to him when it comes to his next contract.
It may be in just a few days, it may take weeks. But the inevitable truth is CC Sabathia is going to become the 17th player in the history of Major League Baseball to sign a multi-year contract in excess of $100 million. And depending on how the dominoes fall, Mark Teixeira and Manny Ramirez (for a second time) could be close behind him.
One thing that has always baffled me is how baseball scouts missed on Albert Pujols. The baffling part is not that Pujols was a 13th round pick in the 1999 amateur draft -- hey, there are quite a few late-round success stories in baseball. Jim Thome was a 13th round pick too. Ryne Sandberg went in the 20th. Heck, Mike Piazza lasted until the 62nd.
Albert Pujols had 28 walks, 14 home runs and 32 RBIs in a record-setting April last year. Before Sunday, the Cardinals' slugger had exactly five walks and one homer this season. He had all of two RBIs. And both of those came in one game. He was hitting .158.
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