Albert in La-La Land

Player movement in baseball

  by D.R.

JUST six weeks ago the St Louis Cardinals won their tenth World Series title. They were led by Albert Pujols, the superstar first baseman who is by common consent the best player in baseball, who hit three home runs in the contest’s third game. The club’s 2011 championship flag should probably start flying at half-mast now that Mr Pujols has signed a ten-year, $254m contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, which will expire when he is 41. The deal is the second-biggest in the game’s history, eclipsed only by the ten-year, $275m pact the New York Yankees gave to Alex Rodríguez in 2007. Mr Rodríguez’s contract is now seen as an ill-advised excess taken by the game’s richest club. Can the Angels, who generate barely half the revenues that the Yankees do, possibly afford to take such a costly risk?



The decision by Jerry DiPoto, the Angels’ new general manager, and Arte Moreno, their big-spending owner, may not be as rash as it first appears. First, baseball players are worth more now than they were when the Yankees handed over the family jewels to Mr Rodríguez. The game’s revenues have increased from $6 billion to $7 billion during the last four years, making all players roughly 17% more valuable. Second, Mr Pujols is a year younger than Mr Rodríguez was when he signed his last deal. And Mr Rodríguez’s performance has deteriorated a bit more precipitously in recent years than could reasonably have been expected following his phenomenal 2007 campaign. Mr Pujols’s best years are surely behind him. But he is just as likely to age as gracefully as did, say, Stan Musial, another Cardinals icon, as he is to fall hard and fast like Mr Rodríguez has.
Back in February I calculated that Mr Pujols would be worth some $220m to the Cardinals from 2011-20. The Angels will be getting Mr Pujols a year later, which would reduce his value to just under $200m. On the other hand, they also play in a far bigger market than the Cardinals do, and must compete for fans with the crosstown Los Angeles Dodgers, increasing the importance of fielding a winning team. All told, the Angels will probably be paying Mr Pujols a few million dollars per season more than his play will be worth. But if suiting up the game’s best player offers them any significant off-field value by strengthening their brand—a variable that is extremely hard to measure—then they stand a decent chance of breaking even.
Where does this leave the Cardinals? Getting their fans to forgive them for letting the hometown hero go—although Mr Pujols spent his early years in the Dominican Republic, he attended high school in Missouri—will take some masterful public-relations work. (Bill DeWitt, the club’s owner, said he was “disappointed” and said the team “tried our best to make Albert a lifetime Cardinal”.) But provided they spend the money they had set aside for Mr Pujols wisely, they stand a decent chance of defending their crown. The club managed to win the title last year even though Adam Wainwright, one of its top pitchers, missed the season while recovering from Tommy John surgery. He is expected back next year. Mr Pujols’s departure will allow the team to move Lance Berkman, an aging power hitter, to the newly vacant first-base position, where his defensive shortcomings will be minimised. And there are plenty of free agents, such as Jimmy Rollins and Carlos Beltrán, remaining on the market who could jointly replace Mr Pujols’s production, if not his sizzle.
If Mr DeWitt wants to placate St Louis fans with a flashier signing, he has one further intriguing option. If Mr Pujols had not revealed his decision today, the biggest headline in baseball would have been the announcement on the blog of Yu Darvish, the Japanese-Iranian star pitcher for Japan’s Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, that he plans to play in the United States in 2012. American scouts have long drooled over the 25-year-old Mr Darvish, who has dominated hitters both in Japan and in international competition. He has long maintained that he preferred to stay at home. However, now that he is getting divorced from Saeko, a Japanese actress, he has shown a newfound enthusiasm to compete on the game’s biggest stage.
There is no guarantee that the Cardinals can sign Mr Darvish. They would first have to win a sealed-bid auction for the exclusive rights to negotiate with him, and then offer him enough money to pry him away from his current employer. And most highly touted Japanese starting pitchers have either flamed out after early success in America or failed to make an impact at all. Daisuke Matsuzaka, whose combined $51m auction fee and $52m contract were a record for a Japanese import in 2007, is now reviled by Boston Red Sox fans as a bust. But Mr Darvish’s record in Japan is better than those of any of his predecessors. And he offers greater star power than just about any baseball player this side of, well, Albert Pujols.