2011-12 MLB Offseason Thread: Tigers are really stupid

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Arles

Ironically enough, one of the sticking points with the Miami deal is the Marlins giving Pujols a complete no-trade from year one (something they didn't do for Reyes).

We'll see how serious Miami is if they end up doing that (and killing the chance of their "win for 2-3 seasons and then firesale" archetype).

This seemed like a popular Twitter comment today but I don't really see why it's a big sticking point. Plenty of guys get a no-trade and end up waiving it. If the Marlins need to get out of $200 million of that deal, they wouldn't give him $5 million to waive it for a deal to Chicago or somewhere similar?

[Dr. Sak]

There's a mystery team now in on Pujols...last year we all remember when that mystery team pulled in Cliff Lee.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Someone I know just asked me when Jeff Conine is going to pop out of this thing. Now I'm watching this nonstop to see if Jeff Conine pops out.

[Logan]

Mets traded Pagan to SF for Andres Torres and Ramon Ramirez. Signed Frank Francisco to a 2 year, $12 million deal and gave Jon Rauch $3.5MM for one year.

Watch out.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Someone I know just asked me when Jeff Conine is going to pop out of this thing. Now I'm watching this nonstop to see if Jeff Conine pops out.

I'd rather see Chucky Carr. But that's only because I love mustachioed black men.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by Logan

Mets traded Pagan to SF for Andres Torres and Ramon Ramirez. Signed Frank Francisco to a 2 year, $12 million deal and gave Jon Rauch $3.5MM for one year.

Watch out.

Some really good small deals for the Mets. I've been reading Fangraphs go on and on about how Francisco's advanced stats compared very favorably to Papelbon's for the fraction of the price - I forgot that the Mets have a sabermetric front office so am happy for the acquistion.

[RomaGoth]

So now the Cardinals are rumored to be offering Pujols over $220 million over 10 years.



This is a very bad move.

[Ksyrup]

What's the difference between 9/$198M and 10/$220M, really? If you're going to the 9 year offer, the 10th isn't that far of a leap to keep him. Which is what he's counting on, of course.

[DeToxRox]

The Tigers top minor league writer has heard from other teams that the Tigers will not lose out on Cespedes. Giving him 60 million is going to be an epic disaster.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

What's the difference between 9/$198M and 10/$220M, really? If you're going to the 9 year offer, the 10th isn't that far of a leap to keep him. Which is what he's counting on, of course.

I don't see how St. Louis can afford to eat all that money when Pujols' inevitable decline hits in a few years. He can't be hidden at DH like he could in the AL either.

[Ksyrup]

I don't necessarily disagree, but my point is that if they are already in for $198M, so what's another year? If this contract sinks them, it will be because of years 5-9 most likely, not simply the additional 10th year that takes it from decent deal at 9 years to disaster because they added the 10th year.

[Logan]

Why not 11 then?

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

So now the Cardinals are rumored to be offering Pujols over $220 million over 10 years.



This is a very bad move.

I endorse this 100% Horrible move.. he will be eating off the Denny's senior menu by the time his contract is up.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

I endorse this 100% Horrible move.. he will be eating off the Denny's senior menu by the time his contract is up.

I guess it depends.

I doubt the Cards would have won 2 world series in 6 years without Albert and I doubt they win one within the next 5-6 years without Albert.

No point in worrying 5/6 years down the road anyway. By that time the Cards will probably have to rebuld anyway in which they will have plenty of money sitting around where they can overpay Albert.

Option B is send Albert to the Yankees in 4-5 years and have them take on the backend of that contract. They tend to make desperate moves at times.

[ISiddiqui]

I don't see the issue with a 10 year deal to Pujols either. Think of it in 5 year chunks. Decide what to do 5 years down the road with the 2nd part of the contract. If you want to win another World Series (or even make the playoffs for the next few years), you have to keep Pujols.

[Logan]

I just realized that as a Mets fan, I should be rooting very very hard for Pujols to re-sign with the Cards for compensation purposes, right?

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Logan

Why not 11 then?

Because at this point, they don't need to add an 11th year to retain him.

[Ksyrup]

I'm not saying I like any of the contract offers, I'm just saying that if you're already committed to giving him 9/$198M, how could the 10th year possibly create that big an issue? If the contract is bad, it's going to go south well before year 9 anyway. It's not like you're expecting value up until year 9, but then nothing out of him in year 10.

[Crapshoot]

Yup. Over the life of the contract, Albert Pujols will provide 220M in value - of course he's not going to be worth it on the downside, but you look at the contract as a whole. The Cardinals got a sweetheart deal last time. In addition, the marginal value of going from a 6th to 7th win out of a given player is higher than 0 to 1; you're optimizing roster spots.

[Ksyrup]

Actually, I'm not sure he's going to provide that kind of value over the life of the contract. What the Cardinals have that the Marlins don't, though, is a previous contract where they got way more value out of him than they paid for. Plus 2 championships. So I bet if you combine the 2 contracts and tally up the value and the money for that 17ish year period, they might be even, or maybe a little bit ahead.

[Arles]

I would much rather have it be 35,35,30,25,25,20,15,15,10,10. But, if it's 22 for 10 years, it ends up costing less with time value of money. If they can win one more WS during the contract, it's a win IMO.

[jbergey22]

In addition, Albert provides much more than awesome numbers. Some dont like to believe it really exists. But he is their team leader and him being the #1 guy takes a lot of pressure off of Holliday and Berkman to do what they do. I dont believe for a second that Holliday or Berkman would be as effective without Albert taking pressure off of them.

Albert was also the first one to jump in defense of Carpenter this year when Nyjer was acting like a fool. I am sure the whole team looks up to that type of leadership which leads to good team chemistry.

I guess all I needed to say was Albert's intangibles cant go unnoticed in this deal.

[Logan]

For the love of god people, keep on posting so we can get to a new page and that GIF stops slowing down my work computer.

[korme]

With the contract offered I'm not even upset if Pujols re-signs with the Cards. What a terrible deal! Thank you Marlins for being looney and forcing StL's hand

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

I guess it depends.

I doubt the Cards would have won 2 world series in 6 years without Albert and I doubt they win one within the next 5-6 years without Albert.

No point in worrying 5/6 years down the road anyway. By that time the Cards will probably have to rebuld anyway in which they will have plenty of money sitting around where they can overpay Albert.

Option B is send Albert to the Yankees in 4-5 years and have them take on the backend of that contract. They tend to make desperate moves at times.

The Cardinals aren't the Yankees though, and I don't see how they can afford a contract this size for a player that is no longer the best at his position, let alone the best in the league. I see no reason why anyone would give a 32 year old (or however old he really is) a 10-year contract. Especially for an average amount of $22 mil/per season.

Another thing that people are forgetting here. Tony LaRussa is gone and the Cards will have a rookie manager this year. I was no fan of LaRussa but he managed personalities pretty well (much like most good MLB managers). How is Pujols and company going to respond to the new manager?

I just can't shake the feeling that the Cardinals are going to rue the day they signed Albert Pujols to a $220/10 year deal.

[korme]

Jon_Heyman Jon Heyman



#marlins already in pursuit of prince. Signs indicate cards likely to get pujols

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by korme

With the contract offered I'm not even upset if Pujols re-signs with the Cards. What a terrible deal! Thank you Marlins for being looney and forcing StL's hand

Again, I still don't understand what has changed. A 9/$198M offer has been out there for over a year, right? It's not like they were going to negotiate DOWN from that, or decide to pull the offer altogether and let him walk. Adding the 10th year really doesn't do much more other than add several pebbles on top of the sizeable boulder already on the Cardinals shoulders. The Cards were likely sunk when they decided they had to re-sign him.

[korme]

The perspective I took when writing that was on the basis that as of yesterday it seemed like MIA had made the best offer and was the favorite. Now St. Louis is the favorite again.

Ksyrup, we get it thank you please post the same thing one more time

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

The Cardinals aren't the Yankees though, and I don't see how they can afford a contract this size for a player that is no longer the best at his position, let alone the best in the league. I see no reason why anyone would give a 32 year old (or however old he really is) a 10-year contract. Especially for an average amount of $22 mil/per season.

Like Arles sort of mentioned above. The 22 million today isnt going to be worth 22 million in 10 years.

But to answer the question.
By paying him that amount today you keep a huge part of the World Series run together. You dont know when/if you will get another chance at a championship.


Its not great to have these huge crappy contracts on your books but its still possible to put a decent team out there and recover from them if they go extremely bad. The Blue Jays did alright in clearing out the Rios/Wells mess.(This was meant to go at the end but I screwed up my editing and I cant get it to cut/paste for some reason)

The way I look at paying him 5-6 years from now is. As soon as Albert starts falling off of a cliff they are going to be looking at rebuilding. You usually rebuild with younger cheaper players. These younger/cheaper players arent sucking up a lot of salary so they should be able to easily afford to overpay Albert at that point.

I am not saying it will go that way but that is how I would look at it from a Cards perspective. I wouldnt throw away the current situation by trying to predict what could happen in the future.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by korme

The perspective I took when writing that was on the basis that as of yesterday it seemed like MIA had made the best offer and was the favorite. Now St. Louis is the favorite again.

Ksyrup, we get it thank you please post the same thing one more time

I don't think Pujols was ever seriously considering the Marlins on the basis of 1 year and $22M, but that's just me.

Lozano needed one team to extract more money from STL and he found them. Theo wanted to play the rival bastard to make STL pay more, but he got pushed to the side by Miami.

[korme]

Yes, that is just you. 22 more million dollars in the pocket is a lot, and if you have a television or the internet you would have known that as of yesterday Miami was the front-runner.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I don't think Pujols was ever seriously considering the Marlins on the basis of 1 year and $22M, but that's just me.

Lozano needed one team to extract more money from STL and he found them. Theo wanted to play the rival bastard to make STL pay more, but he got pushed to the side by Miami.

Agreed..

[Arles]

Originally Posted by korme

With the contract offered I'm not even upset if Pujols re-signs with the Cards. What a terrible deal! Thank you Marlins for being looney and forcing StL's hand

You guys will be signing Votto to a much worse deal next offseason, so don't get too excited Plus, as was said above, the Cards were already offering 9/198 last spring. I'm not sure what the difference is between 9/198 and 10/220. And if you look at what Vernon Wells ($26), Texiera ($23), Howard ($20), Bay ($18) and A-rod ($32) have gotten recently, $22 mil for Pujols is a pretty fair price. IMO, he's worth 7-8 years @ 25-30 mil per, they are just backloading the payments to a 10-year at $22 per.

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

The Cardinals aren't the Yankees though, and I don't see how they can afford a contract this size for a player that is no longer the best at his position, let alone the best in the league. I see no reason why anyone would give a 32 year old (or however old he really is) a 10-year contract. Especially for an average amount of $22 mil/per season.

To me, the contracts that kill you are the "3-year all stars" who sign for a bunch and fall back to earth. The Barry Zito, Jayson Werth, Vernon Wells, Alfonso Soriano and Jason Bay deals are examples of those. If you extend top tier players - they usually pay back most of the investment (ie Jeter and Sabathia, Halladay and Utley, Lincecum, Haren, even Todd Helton hasn't been awful for Colorado). The only "bad" examples usually involve injuries (A-Rod, Mauer and now Howard). But even in those cases, there were warning signs with all 3 (esp A-Rod and Howard).

At the end of the day, I expect Pujols to earn his contract for the next 3-4 seasons and then be somewhat over paid for the next 3. At that point, you've gotten what you expected and if he's serviceable the final couple years it's gravy. As some of the posters said above, he is the life's blood of this club house and led marginally talented teams to 2 titles in 5 seasons. I also think there's also some value in having a Tony Gwynn/Cal Ripken/Derek Jeter guy who is a superstar and plays for your team his entire career.

One final comment is that the cards really don't have a lot of bad contracts. The Holliday contract is basically a 5/80 mil deal at this point, Carp's got a year and an option for around $15 mil, Lohse and Westbrook are on their last year, Berkman just has one year and Wainwright has 2 more seasons. No one else makes more than $5 mil on the team. In two years, the only big salaries on the books will be Holliday ($17m) and Pujols ($22m). They will still have some flexibility looking ahead after already taking care of Molina and Garcia.

[korme]

I would prefer we trade Votto right now for either OF help (Bautista makes the most sense) or pitching.

[jbergey22]

Originally Posted by korme

I would prefer we trade Votto right now for either OF help (Bautista makes the most sense) or pitching.

You would give up Votto for Joey Bats?

[Arles]

This according to SI.com (Jon Heyman) 2-3 weeks ago:

"Despite rumblings that reigning NL MVP Joey Votto could be available this offseason, Reds GM Walt Jocketty says the team will hold on to the first baseman. Jocketty indicated that the Reds will try to lock Votto up to a long-term deal within the next year."

I would look at what Fielder and Pujols get and figure Votto in that mix. I'd expect to hear about a 7-10 year deal proposed to Votto for around $20-23 mil per.

[DeToxRox]

Buster_ESPN Buster Olney
Source: Hanley Ramirez's rep asked the Marlins for a restructured deal. MIA upset with this, will now be looking to trade Hanley (more).

[stevew]

Glad to see the Pirates were able to re-sign a former all star, gold glove center fielder. If he takes AB away from Pressley or Tabata, I pledge to voodoo curse Clint Hurdle.

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

Buerhle to Marlins, 4/58.

Like a lottery winner.

[stevew]

I like that the Pirates spent 4.5 on Bedard. Doubt he stays healthy, but i think there's some value to be had.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2

Buerhle to Marlins, 4/58.

Like a lottery winner.

I hope this is true. Marlins won't sign both Buerhle and Wilson, and this would pretty much mean Wilson to the Angels.

I'll take a rotation of Weaver-Haren-Santana-Wilson-whoever any time.

Of course, the rumors are out there that there is interest in Santana if the Angels sign Wilson, which makes me ask "why?"

[Ronnie Dobbs2]

What happened to the Nats?

[DeToxRox]

Sounds like Rollins has resigned with the Phils. Not much of a shock if it turns out to be the case.

[DeToxRox]

Jon_Heyman Jon Heyman
Guess what? I'm told marlins still trying for wilson even after landing buehrle (and reyes and bell). Talking to prince too

[jbergey22]

I guess that Marlins arent quick learners.

Havent they tried this same type of spending spree twice before?

Nip it Marlins. You already have a bunch of decent young players. Dont get too crazy.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Originally Posted by stevew

Glad to see the Pirates were able to re-sign a former all star, gold glove center fielder. If he takes AB away from Pressley or Tabata, I pledge to voodoo curse Clint Hurdle.

It takes a lot to anger me, and this move angers me. The Pirates got rid of McLouth and he became terrible. He's been terrible ever since, and now they decide to bring him back? I hope his only role is defensive replacement in right field and he never gets an AB.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

It takes a lot to anger me, and the hate for Zach Parise on this board angers me.

fixed

[Honolulu_Blue]

Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2

Buerhle to Marlins, 4/58.

Like a lottery winner.

Originally Posted by DeToxRox

Jon_Heyman Jon Heyman
Guess what? I'm told marlins still trying for wilson even after landing buehrle (and reyes and bell). Talking to prince too

Originally Posted by jbergey22

I guess that Marlins arent quick learners.

Havent they tried this same type of spending spree twice before?

Nip it Marlins. You already have a bunch of decent young players. Dont get too crazy.