Cardinals and Pujols. Can it keep going?

It’s so hard to relate to contracts in sports.  I have a contract but in no way can relate to the contract issues of Albert Pujols.

Albert’s contract expires after this season. There is no question that he is the best player in baseball. But how do you structure his contract? How much longer will he be able to put up the numbers that he has in the past? There is evidence that he is already slowing down. So we look at Alex Rodriguez’ $27 million per and begin there. If Rodriguez gets $27 million than Albert has to get more. Really? Albert is 31… or 33…… or 35, hell no one is really sure.

Reportedly he is asking for 10 years and $300 million total. He thinks that the $30 million per is about right. Wow.  Pujols has about 3-4 years left of big numbers and then they will put him in the lower part of the top ten in the game very quickly. And the Cards would still be on the hook for $30 million per? Ridiculous.

I don’t understand why these players think they should be paid forever for performance in the past.  In baseball the union pushes players to get every penny they can out of every negotiation. They don’t want the bar being lowered. Supposedly they were never happy with Tony Gwynn taking less than he could have gotten if he had left San Diego. Most people forget that Alex Rodriguez agreed to be traded from Texas to Boston before he signed a big free agent contract with the Yankees. The union wouldn’t allow it because he would have actually taken less money than he was being paid at the time by the Rangers.

Just because one team overpays for a player doesn’t mean that every team after that has to use that contract as a benchmark. At some point the demands will be such that there will be no bidders. Orioles’ GM Andy MacPhail put it best when he recently said that it’s a game of musical chairs and at some point the music will stop and some player will not have a seat.