1. I have no problem with how much money players make. None. Whatever they get is fine. The owners are rich in baseball, the sport is healthy, the careers are short and the skills are unique.
I might argue against the Yankees giving Derek Jeter big money or doing the same with Rafael Soriano. But I am merely talking about proper deployment of the dollars, not begrudging what players ultimately make.
So if Albert Pujols does end up becoming the first $300 million man, great. You can make a pretty good case that he is the best player in the sport. Still, if I ran the Cardinals I would not give him that kind of contract. I would offer something like five years at $160 million and understand that even though I was about to making him the highest-paid player per annum – by far – in major league history, he was probably not going to take the deal.
Like with Jeter and the Yankees, I think teams have to stop paying for what players did and concentrate on what players are likely to do over the course of a contract. And the likelihood is that Pujols will stay a special player for how much longer: Three years? Four? Five? It almost certainly is not going to be the eight to 10 that would be necessary for the Cardinals to retain him. Anything beyond five years is simply a tax for who Pujols has been for the club. Should the Cardinals recognize not that in an offer? Of course. Just like with Jeter, a team should put some price on what the player means historically and what he means to the fans and what he has meant overall to the franchise value. But that price cannot potentially debilitate payroll/roster flexibility down the road. Respect is one thing. Stupidity in the name of respect is another.
If Pujols walks away from the Cardinals it is a bad day for the franchise. He is the best player the organization has had since Bob Gibson or maybe even since Stan Musial. His first 10 seasons have been historic, arguably better than any other offensive player ever. But there is no way – ZERO – that the next 10 years will be as good. So to honor the first 10 years, do the Cardinals really have to make a bad deal for the next decade? And it is not as if Pujols has played for free to this point. He will top the $100 million mark in career earnings this year. He has been a comparative bargain, but it is still $100 million.
Look, when the Cardinals drafted Pujols in the 13th round in 1999 do you think they would have signed up for this proposition: You will get the best 11 years of his career, but at the end of that period you will lose him to another team and receive only two draft picks in return. Well, that is what they face if they don’t sign Pujols by the deadline today (if that deadline is really honored). I think teams have to be more comfortable with the idea about what they have received from the player and, say, “wow, that was great whether he stays or leaves.” Especially if you know that keeping him means that at some point he is very likely to become a financial sinkhole to a very finite payroll.
I get it that Cardinals fans will be furious. But Packer fans were furious when Brett Favre left. On that day, how many thought a Super Bowl was in the near future? But it was because the organization was doing a tremendous job of player procurement, specifically by drafting Aaron Rodgers. Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners for the largest contract ever with Texas after the 2000 season, and in 2001 Seattle won a staggering 116 games without Rodriguez.
Yes, it would be painful to lose an icon. But Pujols begins this season at 31 and so would start an extension in 2012 at 32. Again, I imagine that he has five pretty strong years left and the Cardinals should seriously overpay for those five years to try to keep him. And I think $32 million – which would be $5 million more a year than the current high average salary – is right. Pujols will not accept that. So the Cardinals, after the 2011 season. The lessons from Favre and A-Rod should tell the Cardinals that would just mean the end of the relationship with a superstar, but not the end of the franchise – as long as they keep doing a good job in player procurement.
2. My friend, Ken Davidoff of Newsday, as always wrote this strong column on Joba Chamberlain. Joba can deny it all he wants and say he has added muscle from working out. But Yankee officials have all told me that he is over his prescribed weight and the eye test does not see much additional muscle with Chamberlain. It sees a wider girth.
With that said, the early word out of camp is that Chamberlain is throwing the heck out of the ball. Now, it is always caution at this time of year. We are talking about essentially getting up on a mound and throwing to a catcher. No game. No hitter. No tension. Still, word is the ball is coming out of his hand easy and hard, and if he can do that consistently than he could probably waddle around for all the Yankees care.
But one other item is equally clear: The Yankees do not trust Joba. They acquired Kerry Wood late last season to pitch the eighth inning and bestowed the largest contract ever for an eighth-inning guy on Rafael Soriano this season.
In that frustrating way Joe Girardi has of offering sunshine in place of complete truth, he talked the other day about how great Chamberlain was the last two months of last season. And from Aug. 1 on, Chamberlain did have a 2.36 ERA and .200 batting average against in 28 appearances. However, those numbers were meaningless to Girardi when it came to trust. Because what followed that strong stretch run was Girardi turning Joba into a mop-up man in the playoffs. Girardi did not use Chamberlain once in a late-game, close situation. Girardi did not use Joba at all in the Division Series. In the ALCS, Chamberlain twice entered in the fifth inning with the Yankees down five runs, and entered once in the seventh inning with the Yankees down three.
So regardless of what Girardi might say publicly, Joba’s first job actually might not be to lose weight, it might be to gain his manager’s confidence.
3. I wrote this column about the Yankees’ latest attempts to find consistency out of the inconsistent A.J. Burnett. As I pointed out in the piece, when Burnett talks about himself or others talk about Burnett, it sounds like the words are about an inexperienced pitcher. Burnett still is nowhere close to mastering his mechanics, an ability to separate on and off the field problems, and he remains a failure at recalibrating his focus in pressure spots and/or after he has made a bad pitch or produced a poor outing.
Of course, Burnett is no kid. He is 34. And as I scanned AL 40-man rosters, I came across something surprising: Burnett actually has the fifth-most career starts. Boston’s Tim Wakefield is first (440 starts), the White Sox’s Mark Buehrle is second (334), C.C. Sabathia is third (322), Detroit’s Brad Penny is fourth (284) and Burnett is fifth (277).
If you are looking for something encouraging about Burnett to show growth in any area, it would be that he has found a formula for staying healthy, which was not true earlier in his career. He has started at least 33 games in each of the past three seasons, joining a small group to do so that features: Sabathia, Buehrle, Bronson Arroyo, Matt Cain, Dan Haren, Ubaldo Jimenez, Derek Lowe, James Shields, Justin Verlander and Randy Wolf.
Of course, Yankee fans probably would argue that letting Burnett start so many games last season was a huge mistake.
But as I scanned AL 40-man rosters, I came across something surprising: Burnett actually has the fifth-most career starts. Boston’s Tim Wakefield is first (440 starts), the White Sox’s Mark Buehrle is second (334), C.C. Sabathia is third (322), Detroit’s Brad Penny is fourth (284) and Burnett is fifth (277).
