forsberg_us wrote:

Something I didn't realize until I read it in Strauss' chat was that the Angels set an acceptance deadline.  That's not very personable.

god damnit, it was about family.

"So we disagree on Burwell"

Maybe I'm coming around.  After all, his latest work suggesting that Rams coach Steve Spagnuolo could be the next Bill Belichek and that it could be a mistake to fire him despite his 10-35 record (soon to be 10-38) as a head coach is Pulitzer Prize winning material.  Never mind he offers no facts from which to draw his conclusions--Dammit, it could happen.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-firing-the-coach-could-be-a-mistake/article_f758c00e-ca1c-5e41-a739-b0a1db05c6a8.html

Nah, Burwell's still a no-nothing hack.

Last edited by forsberg_us (12/15/2011 6:53 pm)

APRTW wrote:

Is Burwell still doing radio and promoting himself as having a larger then life ego?

God no. He was canned a while ago.

Goddamnit. I wish this stupid Pujols discussion would go away.

Here's the bottom line, all statements of facts. Max, good luck disputing any of this.

1) The Cardinals are a NATIONAL LEAGUE team, and therefore cannot afford a 10 Year//25 million AAV to a 32 year old player with bad legs, and a bad arm, without getting a tremendous overall discount on price.
2) The Cardinals cannot use a designated hitter.
3) The Cardinals do not have a 3 billion television contract from the Los Angeles area that minimizes the risk of $254 million dollars.
4) The Cardinals had to assign a value to Pujols and work from there. Hopefully getting that value for close to that price.
5) After numerous signing attempts with legitimate contracts (both in years and money), they couldn't compete with the pockets of the Angels.
6) Pujols body is showing OBVIOUS signs of breaking down.
7) Pujols stats are declining over the last two seasons.
8) Pujols signed with the Angels, after 11 years of adoration from the city of St. Louis.

The Angels made a massive MONEY offer. It wasn't about commitment or loyalty, and had the risk equivalent of Tiger Woods dropping $1000.00 on a longshot horse. The Angels can easily afford to eat his contract.

Here's another breakdown.
2-3 years, Pujols "It's not about money. It's about winning".
We just won the world series, and are getting back our ace pitcher in 2012.
The Cardinals offered him money, years, lots of it.
He signed for a LOT MORE MONEY.

So looking at that last breakdown of facts, I've seriously about had it with "Pujols had no choice" or the "Pujols was run out of town" or the "It was about commitment" bullshit. There's nothing Burwell or Max is going to be able to do to make me believe a man signed a $254M contract and it was about "the love". 4 million fans "worshipped" the man. Musial thought he was important enough to ask him to stay. None of that love matters to "Mo-Money" Pujols did it Max? Nope, not a bit. Pujols don't give no shit about no fan love!!! He could care less about icon love from Musial!!! what matters to Pujols is "owner love" .... ie money.

If you want to be a Pujols apologist, save it. I have 254 MILLION reasons to disagree with you, all guaranteed.

alz wrote:

Goddamnit. I wish this stupid Pujols discussion would go away.

and yet . . .

alz wrote:

None of that love matters to "Mo-Money" Pujols did it Max? . . . If you want to be a Pujols apologist, save it. I have 254 MILLION reasons to disagree with you, all guaranteed.

Well, that's not very fair.  You ask me a question, and then tell me to save it.

I thought that was funnier as Hitler reacting to the cop who pepper-sprayed the seated student protestors.

But here we go, La Russa, and Strauss--the best of the sports journ's who focus on the Cardinals--nail it:


http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/la-russa-pujols-pained-by-decision/article_b5225138-2a1b-5d5f-898e-7f143da11538.html

Last edited by Max (12/16/2011 2:29 pm)

I gave my opinion that this was 99.99% on DeWitt's shoulders.  Others can come to different conclusions.  I think La Russa was spot on when he said Pujols had made a mistake by saying it wasn't about money.  Rather, what he likely intended, was that back in 2009 he was open minded about taking something other than the highest offer.  But also like La Russa said, "there might be something to that" notion that the Cards fumbled this one by not sealing this up long ago.  Also, note La Russa, the Cards FO wanted to find out Pujols's market value, and that pretty much made this all unavoidable.  Frankly, I don't think Pujols wanted to know that value as badly the Cards FO did.

The owners are a bunch of assholes, IMO, but not because they offered $210.  Look, Alz:

#1) they are professional businessmen, Pujols is a professional athelete.  The owners bear a much higher burden for the timbre of the negotiations, IMO.

#2) ever break up with a serious GF/wife?  Does the break-up mean everything sweet and tender thing you or she said was hypocrisy?  Or might it mean that times change?  Or that the two of you reached a deeper, less compatible, understanding of each other?  If Pujols was a money grubbing, run of the mill, hypocritical asshole, then why in Hell did he spend so much time investing in Cardinal traditions?  Like getting to Know Musial?  Like putting down serious roots in St. Louis?  All of that shit convinced most GMs that Pujols was going to stay, and drove teams out of the market (and this drives his value down).  It doesn't make sense to me.  What makes sense is he is a sincere guy, but sensitive and proud. 

I ain't askin' nobody for nothin', if I can't get it on my own.
If you don't like the way i'm thinkin', you just leave this long-haired suburban boy alone.

Last edited by Max (12/17/2011 1:05 am)

forsberg_us wrote:

"Frankly, I don't think Pujols wanted to know that value as badly the Cards FO did."

You're free to think that. Personally, I disagree. A person who doesn't want to find out his free agenyt value doesn't insist on becoming the highest paid player over 10 years and set random deadlines for negotiating.

Ai-yi-yi. Do you want to discuss this, or quibble over unsubstantiated/incorrect assertions?  How do we know what he insisted upon, and the deadline wasn't random, unless he randomly came up with the first day of spring training.

forsberg_us wrote:

Having had a little over a week to digest this, here's my take. Pujols wanted to test the market, not necessarily because he wanted to leave, but because he thought the Cardinals would respond to it. The Cardinals had a figure they were willing to pay 9/198. As I said in an earlier post, I suspect they were willing to do anything between 5/130 and 10/210, so long as the AAV decreased as years increased. IMO Pujols' camp expected the Cardinals to say, "we were willing to go 10/210, the Angels offered 10/254, let's meet in the middle at 10/230."  If that had happened, Pujols is probably still a Cardinal. What Pujols' camp didn't count on, IMO, was that the Cardinals were serious when they said, "here's our offer." They made a business call as to how far they were willing to stretch their payroll, and they weren't willing to move just because someone else did. At that point, IMO, Pujols' pride, and probably Didi and Lozano's chirping about commitment got the better of him and he accepted the Angels' offer.

That is some meat and potatoes, but I think it's addressable.  For starters these are hypotheses, in theory hypotheses can be disproven, but they can't be proven.  And in the real world, mostly people assemble evidence to support or refute a given hypothesis.  Your hypothesis, that Pujols intended to bounce a high-ball offer off of the Cardinals to get them to up their 10/210 bid can almost be disproven.  Is there any evidence that Pujols or Lozano went back to the Cards with the Angels' offer and asked them to bump the 10/210 offer?  If not, how can you seriously maintain this hypothesis?

forsberg_us wrote:

What the Pujolses seriously misjudged is that the average fan has become more sophisticated. They understand that it's foolish to tie up a significant percentage of payroll to one player. They understand how guaranteed contracts can handcuff a franchise when performance doesn't match salary. They understood that the only way Pujols was going to remain a Cardinal was if he yielded in his position. Pujols' biggest mistake was telling the fans he would do exactly that. In contrast, all Dewitt ever said was that the team would make "its best effort" to keep Pujols a Cardinal for life. Pujols is losing the PR battle because most people think 9/198 and 10/210 represent a fair "best effort". In that sense, Dewitt kept his word--Pujols didn't.

Sort of.  Didn't the Cardinals FO make noises about the ideal time to extend Pujols's contract being well before January 2011?  If that is true, then it's a bit disingenuous to say that DeWitt kept his word and Albert didn't.  I prefer to trust La Russa on this count, and think there is something to the notion that the Cards FO fumbled their best opportunity to extend back in 2009.  And as for TK's ludicrous comments about how stupid that would have been, and how that's not they way things are done, I refer back to the statements of the one-team HOFers: they never even got close to FA.

forsberg_us wrote:

You talked about the other one team Hall of Famers. I bet if you go back and look, they were rarely the highest paid player in baseball, and probably didn't have a contract longer than 5 years (particularly after reaching 30).

None of which explains why the Cards didn't even make an offer in 2009 or 2010, when Pujols said he was willing to work for a few million less  than top dollar per season.

forsberg_us wrote:

One last point, and I'm through with this. You've referred to Pujols as the "face of the franchise."  He isn't and wasn't. The face of the franchise is Stan Musial. Pujols was trying to attain that level. Go back and read your story about the other one team Hall of Famers, and read what Gwynn said about being "the guy" in San Diego. Schmidt probably has similar stature in Philly. Pujols just put together the best 11 year run ever put together, but still wasn't considered by many to be the greatest Cardinal. He may (probably) have attained that level, but wasn't there yet. The Cardinals weren't under any pressure to treat Pujols like an icon, because the franchise has many others who hold that title. The franchise's history is deeper than Albert Pujols.

The face of the active players.  Fine. Glad we're done with this.

Last edited by Max (12/17/2011 9:30 pm)

alz wrote:

Max, then why on earth should I ...

Why on Earth should we argue about this anymore?  I blame DeWitt, you blame Pujols.  Done.

I liked your argument that it doesn't matter what the truth is, enough people believe Pujols is at fault that it becomes truth.

ROFLMAO!!!

I had the same concept, "never hit a girl" drilled into my head by my grandfather.  It took all of 7 days at the police department to lose it.  It's Christmas Day, and we pull up to a fight-in-progress call where an entire family has broken into a full blown brawl.  There had to be 25 people involved, and the fight had spilled out of the two bedroom apartment where it started and into the lawn in front of the apartment building. 

Being only a week out of the academy, I'm still riding with a training officer and we're one of the first two cars to arrive.  As we're pulling up, my training officer sees the scene and tells me to hold tight until we get more cars on the scene, so I simply step out of the car and wait.  I'm standing there maybe 10 seconds when this woman, who's about 4' 11" in every direction and clearly intoxicated, comes running at me with her fists raised.  As she gets close, I step out of the way and she can't stop and runs face first into the side of the police car just behind the back door.  She bounces off the car, and now her forehead is bleeding.  Four other family members see her bleeding, naturally assume I caused the bleeding and start heading my direction.

At that point I learned that the only rule in a street fight is "Never kick a woman in the nuts--unless she actually has a set--in which case they're fair game."

"this woman, who's about 4' 11" in every direction and clearly intoxicated, comes running at me with her fists raised.  As she gets close, I step out of the way and she can't stop and runs face first into the side of the police car just behind the back door.  She bounces off the car, and now her forehead is bleeding."

One could argue that the presence of a much taller police officer intimidated her, inducing a mindset that required her to take action, that while on the surface would appear offensive, was actually defensive. Add the alcohol component and the anxiety inherently created by the arrival of law enforcement and it could be further argued that this woman had every right to rush the officer.
A clear-cut instance of police brutality. Next case, your honor.

(Hope with that girth she didn't dent the car ...)

Last edited by artie_fufkin (12/20/2011 9:14 pm)