Screw the Mendoza Line…Pujols (.194) has fallen below the dreaded La Russa Line (.199).
Pujols remains in regular contact with his former manager, Tony La Russa, who retired from the organization little more than a month before Pujols signed with the Angels. Pujols confided in La Russa before, during and after contemplating a decision that several times brought him to tears. La Russa describes he and Pujols as “close and friends forever.”
“He’s not accepting this or tolerating this any more than at any other time when he’s not himself,” La Russa said. “But (the contract) is a distraction. If you care at all — and he cares — it’s a distraction.”
During a speaking engagement last week La Russa told a crowd that Pujols is bothered deeply by the time spent away from family, which is in St. Louis until school is out for the summer.
“I don’t think he wants sympathy,” La Russa said. “I just have an understanding of what he’s going through.”
...La Russa readily acknowledges that playing for a contract is far less taxing than trying to justify one after the fact.
“Without a doubt the year after is much more distracting,” said La Russa, who returns to St. Louis this week for the retirement of his No. 10 before Friday’s game against Atlanta. “The year before is survival. You have no guarantees. Then, all of a sudden it’s you against everyone else. Now you have responsibilities to everybody: an owner, new teammates, fans. It’s like a 180. One is much more normal. Survival is an instinct. Forcing something is different.”
Repoz
Posted: May 05, 2012 at 02:45 PM |
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1. G.W.O. Posted: May 05, 2012 at 03:19 PM (#4124286)The being away from family explanation makes a certain amount of sense, but Pujols specifically chose to do it that way. So boo hoo.
Leave it to Strauss to not know the difference between an object and a subject.
He could have been happy in St. Louis, and been given a pass through his decline years. But now he'll never get that.
Besides, the Cardinals weren't just second in the running for Pujols, they were at least 3rd. The Marlins had a huge bid as well. The Cardinals were only in the running because of the extensive emotional ties Pujols had to the city. Financially, they were blown out of the water by everyone else.
Albert Pujols will eventually get through this.
Not necessarily.
It's all relative. I passed up a job that would have paid me 50% more than what I am making now because I didn't like the location and it would have meant a lot of time away from my family.
Albert could have taken 100 million less and STILL gotten a 200 million dollar deal on top of the 104 million he has already made. He will never have to worry about money again for the rest of his life, and neither will his kids, or grandkids at least......and thats if everybody is a dumbass.
It wasn't about money. It was about being the highest paid player in the game, about being respected, about not wanting to give in to the team he felt he had given his all to for his entire career. It was about pride and vanity.
Those types of choices rarely end up with a happy result. Yes it was his right, and to those with a more simplistic view of money issues, it seemed like a no brainer. But obviously, it wasn't.
10 years is a long time though. He would have been happier in St. Louis.
EDIT:
Albert since beginning of 2011, which includes his slow start, rebound, and now this slow start
174 G, 765 PA, 687 AB, .282/.346/.498 .844 OPS 37 HR 104 RBI, 67 BB, 73 K
If you take it to his last 1001 PA's, dating back to Aug 3, 2010 you get .294/.370/.535 .904 OPS
You'd have said no, of course.
Stop it. You don't and can't know this. You're privy to nothing.
As I said above, I HAVE said no to a lot more money in my career due to family concerns, and also personal job happiness. Guys, you don't HAVE to take the most money to be happy in your life.
Well, From the story:
So I'm privy to that. And I am certainly not wrong when I say that the people of St. Louis would have been far more forgiving of a Pujols decline than the people of Anaheim. They are already booing him for crying out loud. It's not exactly the height of speculation to think these things could or would influence his happiness.
You guys are so myopic with your "ANYONE would take the most money", line of thinking,. Tell that to Jered Weaver.
There is more to life then making the most possible money out of any situation.
The one primary goal the Players' Union has left is to push the salary curve as high as it can possibly go, as fast as they possibly get it there, before the teams finally get truly smart and manage to figure out that these kinds of contracts don't make any sense at all.
Sure, but $100M is an entirely different world in terms of money, and baseball is a very different sort of career. I don't think you can really compare a career in professional sports to any sort of normal life.
If I were a baseball player making an eight-figure salary, my home city would probably be relatively unimportant. I'd have an apartment in Manhattan and a big house somewhere in southern California on the beach, and I'd stay primarily in high-end hotels during the season. Either way, I'm not spending tons of quality time with my family or non-baseball friends during baseball months.
That's very different than getting a 50% raise from my current job to move across the country. I'd be giving up a tremendous amount and I'd end up spending more than that 50% extra distracting myself and/or flying back to see people I missed.
I've taken jobs with lower salaries myself (When you're looking for a postdoc, salary is much less important than the quality of the problems you'll be working on). But I won't take a job where my employer is offering less than he could, especially if he's offering less because he doesn't think I'm worth full price. Taking an offer like that is betting against yourself.
OTOH, if LaRussa is right and Albert Pujols is devastated over not being able to tuck his kids into their beds in St Louis, then Pujols is simply an idiot: wouldn't this have occurred to him? I don't think Pujols is an idiot, so I reckon LaRussa's comment is BS.
There's a meme somewhere here that Bad Players' Union is forcing tender-hearted family guys to turn mercenary and betray their families and fans, which I suspect is also BS.
Actually, I suspect that Joey B. isn't far from the truth on this one, insofar as MLBPA probably *did* exert some pressure on Pujols to take one of the two leading offers. Of course, wouldn't he have gone to the Marlins if he was just looking to get paid?
The Cards simply didn't make a competitive offer to Pujols. He probably did feel insulted and upset that *his* team and *his* city didn't "respect" him with an at least competitive offer. I honestly don't know - I remember there being different stories at the time: what was Pujols offered by the Cards?
Apparently, the Cards pulled their offer way down. 5/130 just isn't competitive with the deals the Angels and the Marlins had on the table and Pujols seems prideful enough to have taken that as an insult. Then again, if Albert didn't take the 9/198 deal offered prior to the 2011 season...
It landed in the left fielder's glove about 40 feet shy of the wall.
The Union forces players to behave that way.
I suspect most people would take the most money and then, on the flipside, be less happy in their new surroundings than their old - happens all the time. But, like you I don't understand why all nuance must immediately be stripped out of every discussion of salary (and steroids and many other topics) around here. Are we such free market warriors that we must all absolutely decline to discuss the fact that occasionally in life there is a tradeoff between money and happiness?
It's not that it's "ANYONE would take the most money", which is not what I - or what I'd say most here - are arguing.
It's that judging the character of Jose Reyes and Albert Pujols as deficient when they don't accept shittyass offers from their current team with a thankful smile is ridiculous.
And the "hometown discount" for Jered -- "hometown" is the key word. He grew up here, he pitches well here, his family lives here, and the park and roster construction maximize what he does well as a pitcher and minimize what few flaws he has.
Thanks, this is what I am trying to highlight.
Albert turned down a 200 million dollar offer, and then received a lesser offer a year later, which as it probably turns out, was anything but shitass.
From the perspective of a Cardinal fan, it's hard to hold Pujols' decision against him--money aside, SoCal is a far better place to live than St. Louis, particularly if you've got money--and it's impossible to fault Cardinal management for not choosing to match Anaheim's offer. Wish he could have stayed, but it was clear from the numbers and the naked eye that he wasn't the same player in 2011 that he'd been before: expanding the strike zone, cheating on fastballs, and a lost step around the bag. Signing on for ten years of continued decline--even MVP-level decline for the first few seasons--isn't a wise strategy for a team that can't shrug off the Wells contract as an unfortunate but unimportant decision. But the page is turned, and with Miller, Wong, and Taveras due up in the next couple of years and Matheny at the helm, looks like we can forget about Pujols until it's time to retire #5.
Haren, Isringhausen, and Pujols. All the Angels need to do now is snag Rolen and bring Edmonds out of retirement and the cycle will be complete.
Only if you've got money. St. Louis is one of the nicer places to live in the country if you don't have much money--far nicer than Southern California just because of the difference in housing costs alone.
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