from Amazon
Friday, December 08, 2006
How much for Pujols as a free agent?
Using the handy dandy chart introduced here, let’s take a quick stab at it.
He’s a great hitter (+6.0 wins above average), an above average baserunner, and an excellent fielding 1B. Let’s call him +6.5 wins above average. He’s at his peak, and so should show modest decline over the next 8 years. So, a +8.5 WAR today, with an aggressive 0.50 win decline per year gives us an 8 year three hundred million dollar contract. Using a 0.25 win decline per year gives us a 9 year, 400 million dollar contract.
Buying out his arb and free agent years may be the biggest bargain of all-time. Pujols has 4 years left, plus a club option (that will certainly be exercised if he can walk) for a total of 79 million$. If he never signed that deal, he would have been a free agent today. He would have been able to sign a 5/181 deal. Therefore, the Cards have a 102 million$ gain in this asset. That is, they are paying 79 million$ for something that someone else would pay 181 million $. I guess Pujols never believed that he may become the greatest ballplayer of all time.
Bobby Orr was once offered an 18% stake in the Bruins. How would you make a similar calculation for Pujols?