Talk about a short time to enjoy a championship: The St. Louis Cardinals, who already had lost Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa to retirement, will begin life without Albert Pujols in 2012.
Baseball’s best hitter is moving to the Los Angeles Angels, who on Thursday morning agreed to sign him to a 10-year deal worth about $250 million, which reportedly includes a full no-trade clause.
This was a sneak attack, which few saw coming. The Cardinals had been negotiating against the Miami Marlins, but were widely expected to retain Pujols after the Marlins dropped out of the bidding on Wednesday afternoon. They were not believed to have gone much above $200 million, which was where the Cardinals had been since talks on an extension broke off before the 2011 season.
Angels owner Arte Moreno, who previously had been loath to sign players to mega-contracts, losing Carl Crawford to Boston last winter, sensed an opportunity to close the gap between his team and the Texas Rangers, who have won back-to-back American League pennants.
At some point in the last 48 hours, the Angels became a player in bidding for Pujols and closed the deal with an offer made late Wednesday. Pujols called Moreno on Thursday morning, reportedly after praying on his decision overnight.
This is a huge blow to St. Louis fans who believed Pujols would remain with the Cardinals, the team that drafted him out of Maple Woods (Mo.) Junior College and brought him to the big leagues in 2001. The three-time National League MVP had been a tremendous bargain in St. Louis, never once ranking in the top 17 in salaries. He wanted to make up for his previous under-sized contracts, and does it with this deal.
Pujols, who will be 32 next season, becomes the second-highest paid player in the majors, behind Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $275 million deal with the Yankees. Many teams had been scared away by Pujols’ contract demands, citing questions about whether he had passed his prime – his OPS has dropped three years in a row, and he did not seem himself in the first half of 2011 – but the Angels were willing to take a chance. It helps that he can shift to designated hitter if he becomes limited at first base, an option that wasn’t open to the Cardinals.
This did not have to happen. St. Louis owner Bill DeWitt and GM John Mozeliak could have kept Pujols off the free-agent market, addressing his desire for a contract extension before last spring training, when he was only one year away from free agency.
But in their defense, St. Louis is one of the smallest markets in the majors, and it seems reasonable that they were trying to maintain the payroll around $110 million. That was the figure even with Pujols underpaid.
Pujols’ departure from St. Louis unquestionably makes this a successful week for Theo Epstein and the Cubs, even if they depart the winter meetings without adding a single player. Prince Fielder also seems unlikely to return to Milwaukee, which would further flatten the landscape in the NL Central.
Will Fielder be headed to the Texas Rangers? Nolan Ryan has downplayed his interest in adding one of the top free agents but you wonder if Pujols going to Anaheim will change his thinking.
