El Mercenario

Albert Pujols is taking his talents to South Metro Los Angeles.

I'm sure this news is startling to you, as the media has been pretty silent about the topic, but apparently, Albert Pujols signed a deal with the Los Angeles Angels, better known as "that team that was good that one year Darin Erstad decided to not be terrible for once."  His contract, which will ensure that for the next decade he will not be playing for the defending champions of baseball but rather a team which seems destined to become also-rans with the emergence of their divisional rivals in Texas, is worth $254 million over the next 10 years.

But it's not about the money.

Rather than go back to St. Louis, which I won't argue has the best fans in baseball because it's an arbitrary term but certainly has good fans, and likely get a statue built in his honor, he's going to go to the second most popular team in its own metropolitan area and play in the suburban eyesore known poetically as Angel Stadium of Anaheim.  Rather than play for a defending World Champion who is re-adding one of the ten best starting pitchers in baseball to be their unquestioned ace, he's going to play for a team whose most notable achievement in the last decade, aside from giving out terrible contracts like they're pedophiles giving out popsicles, was having one of its best players suffer a career-altering injury on a walk-off home run celebration.

But it's not about the money.

Rather than get the biggest free pass in baseball since Mickey Mantle, being able to do no harm for adoring fans, to joining a team in the second biggest metro in the country which will be as scrutinized of a team as there is in baseball this year.

Screw it.  It's about the money.


And the thing is, I don't really fault Albert Pujols for chasing after the money.  I know he makes a ton of money, but I can't argue with an additional several million dollars.  I won't even use the overplayed notion of "the few extra million don't matter to him", because although this is probably true, I don't know that.  Here's the thing--I work at a job that I'm generally content with.  At least I don't spend my whole life whining about it.  I would categorize my company loyalty as "some."  But if a competitor came in with a fairly similar job and was offering me several millions dollars more, you better believe I would take it.  That's essentially what Pujols did.  However...

I will freely admit I'm in it for the money.  Most people are.  I don't care how much you make--it's your right as an American to be in it for the money, and while I question the story that a man who attended Glenn Beck's rally because he was told it wasn't political actually aced his citizenship test, Pujols is an American who is allowed to do as he pleases.  But if I got the millions of dollars in raises, I would at least be freaking honest about it.  I'd go into work tomorrow and tell my boss "I'm leaving because I'm gonna make a few million more elsewhere.  I know you guys can't match it, but you and I both know I can't pass this up."  And I can say with 100% certainty that my boss would understand.  But the point is that I, in this hypothetical, made it very clear--while work conditions and my personal happiness are important, my main prerogative is the money.  And the same applies to Pujols.  Through this, he has made the same idiotic and pointless mistake that Alex Rodriguez made in 2001.  You can't leave your obsessive fan base on a strong team for a less tolerant bunch on a weaker team and successfully argue that you aren't in it for the money.  Just do it for the money.  Everybody else is.

But for the Cardinals fans bemoaning the loss as a death blow for the organization (which, I must admit, is an impressively low percentage of fans), the Cardinals won nine World Series titles without Pujols.  We're getting Adam Wainwright back--the difference in wins Pujols gives us versus the wins Waino gives us is, like, maybe three.  Lance Berkman can play first and Allen Craig can play right field once he gets healthy.  And now we don't have to pay $25 million-plus to a guy who for the latter half of the deal will be wildly overpaid.  This is actually a huge benefit for us--once we get Lohse and Westbrook off the books and the rotation is headlined by Adam Wainwright and a seasoned Jaime Garcia/Shelby Miller, things will be looking up.  And unlike when we were going to be paying $42 million for two players (one of whom, and this can't be stressed enough, is the softest player in the history of a St. Louis Cardinals outfield that once included J.D. Drew), we can afford to keep them.

Life is good, Cardinal nation.

P.S.--This title, a Spanish translation of The Mercenary for those of you who are very stupid, is a blatant ripoff of the blog El Maquino (Spanish translation of The Machine, which I guess is slightly less obvious than El Mercenario), which you should read.  http://elmaquino5.wordpress.com/