But You Owe It to Us For Allowing You to Take a Real Good AAA Team to a World Championship…
By Tony LaRussa’s decision to embarrass himself looks even more embarrassing right now:
According to Ken Rosenthal, a source told him the Cardinals offered Albert Pujols roughly $20 million per season before contract negotiations failed to create a new deal on Wednesday. The offer was probably eight or nine seasons.
If true, there are three possibilities:
1. For some reason, management really thought it would be fun to insult Pujols and aggravate his agent, or
2. the club’s really not all that interested in retaining Pujols’ services after this season, or
3. the Cardinals really don’t believe that Pujols just turned 31.
For context Jason Werth — coming off one season as an outstanding player in which he still couldn’t carry Pujols’s jock — is getting $18M a year for 7 seasons. Somehow, I’m guessing that the union goons that exist in LaRussa’s head didn’t have to exert themselves very much here.
What’s amazing is that if Pujols walks people will actually blame Pujools rather than the relatively high-revenue team that won’t come close to paying him market value. Seattle fans spent years booing A-Rod although the Mariners’ offer was even less serious than this one (and that team was also bringing in money hand over fist.) In Montreal, they booed Larry Walker’s return although the team wouldn’t offer him a contact. But you’d have to be crazy to blame Pujols for not touching this.