Getting Your Money's Worth: St. Louis Cardinals

This is a difficult post to write, just because the team has Albert Pujols on it.

Writing objective analysis about Pujols is like critiquing literature when discussing Thomas Pynchon or music when debating Bob Dylan. There are just so many superlatives after all, and they've all been used up. No one reading this doesn't know that Albert Pujols is a fantastic player. They've seen countless studies showing that he far surpasses his peers, year-by-year breakdowns with how he compares to the best first basemen of all time, offensively and defensively. Versus other right handed hitters. Versus the greatest at any position. The universal glow is going to make it difficult to sleep soon. The world doesn't need another one of those articles to be convinced. I'll just let his position on JB's chart speak for itself, and address a couple of other players.

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Best 2009 contract (non-Pujols division): SP Adam Wainright

2009 salary: 2.8 million
2009 Projected Value: 23.31 million
2009 VOC: 20.51 million

This number is actually even better today, as I drew them up before his performance last night against the Padres. Wainwright has now gone 23 straight starts of 6 innings or more. He also will probably pass his career high in IP and pitch counts, and doesn't have that long of a track record as a starter, so the normal injury red flags for the next 2 years still apply. Still, the 4 year deal has looked like a real winner and even if he sat out the next 2 full seasons, he's earned his keep already.

Biggest 2009 Contract Turkey (most certainly a non-Pujols division):

SS Khalil Greene

2009 Salary: 6.5 million
2009 Projected Value: -2.9 million
2009 VOC: -9.48

I appreciate the concept of buying low. Greene came off a 2008 with the Padres with severely diminished offensive and defensive value, and despite being two years off his theoretical peak, looked to rebound with the bat somewhat by avoiding playing in godawful offensive environment Petco Park. Even the 6.5 million dollar pricetag seemed reasonable for a player who most of his career was around a league average shortstop.

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Now the only bright light on his season is the Jeremy Giambi effect. The continued downward trend of his offense (.206/.281/.362) is salvagable and probably due for positive regression due to a healty walk rate, a robust ISO, and a grotesquely unlucky BABIP of .269. But the defensive range is completely gone (UZR/150 of -25.4, 60% worse than last year, his previous career low), and if a position change is pending, he's never made enough contact to justify hanging around on a Major League field. I think he probably has one year left to turn it around, before this surfer dude's tide goes permanently out.*

I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but he's still more valuable than Yuniesky Betancourt, and no one would have dreamed of giving up a good pitching prospect for him.

Pujols Feels Bad For Pitcher's Face, OBPA

"I wish it would have gone somewhere else ... instead of hitting somebody in the face," Albert Pujols confessed Friday, after planting a line drive on Chris Young's nose last Wednesday night.

Seeing the blood spurt from Young's face left Pujols badly shaken, and he couldn't get on base for the rest of the night in good conscience. The remarkably gritty first baseman acknowledged that his OBP had been a downright-insulting .479 for the season.

"I know I've been pretty insensitive to pitchers for much of my career," a regretful Pujols admitted. He currently ranks as the third-best right hander of all time for OBP (minimum 3000 PA) and resides in the top twenty of all time for batters on both sides of the plate, somewhere between Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle.

Even more insulting to pitchers everywhere is Pujols' career slugging percentage (.619) that ranks only behind three of the greatest hitters of all time: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Lou Gehrig.

For one night, he couldn't bring himself to add insult to injury. "It's one thing to mess up his grill, but another thing entirely to rub his OBPA in his face."

Almost a week later, Albert is still suffering from the shock of exploding his opposing pitcher's face and has lost a full .005 off of his OBP. This brings his season OBP down to .474.

[ed: Young's OBPA currently .338]

No More Heroes

Apparently Albert Pujols isn't that interesting.

A-Rod hasn't earned hero status yet. The Yankees average start doesn't have every single one of us glued to our sets. None of this compares to our angelic heroes of the late nineties and early aughts of Bonds, McGuire, and Clemens.

At least that's what Mike Celizic suggests in his latest of innocent baseball musings.

First he waxes nostalgic about the Wonder Years when Kevin Bonds Arnold & Winnie McGuire Cooper were hitting those heroic and clutch-tastic home runs that had us all wondering when Kev's older brother Wayne Clemens would hopefully come in and charge the batter rather than the other way around. Moments we didn't want to miss indeed! Oh yeah, he almost forgot to mention that they "might" have had a 'roid issue.

Good ol' Mike spends the rest of his time realizing his grievous error of ignoring today's gritalicious and clutcherific stories. He does his best to apologize and acknowledge-if-we-have-to: Cliff Lee doing his best Cy Young impersonation, Brandon Webb is getting an 8-and-O-K start I guess, and there might be decent batting going on with some cat named Pujols and his whole getting-on-base-every-other-at-bat thing.

You see, this silly sport just isn't worth watching without our juiced up heroes. Fifty home runs is ho-hum and sitting through a boring complete game shut out is booooooring. Our modern great pitchers can't strike out 20 per game, Mike? Really? The other three times it happened in baseball history must've really impressed you.

And Grandma Maddux is sitting on 250 wins. That's pretty good for an old guy. Wait...you mean THREE HUNDRED FIFTY, right? Right. Blame the fact-checker, I say. We have heroes to worship!