A Quarter Billion Dollars Worth Of Hype
By Matt Hamm
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Here at Keeping It Heel we strive to give you the very best in University of North Carolina Tar Heel coverage. But sometimes the world of sports just does something so utterly stupid I’ve got to blast it. The Los Angeles don’t call us Anaheim anymore Angels gave 31 year old Albert Pujols a 10 year $254 million contract. Pujols who will turn 32 before the season will spend the majority of this contract as the Angels designated hitter.
What? So your giving a 32 year old guy $25.4 million a year to sit in the dugout and hit a few times a game? And your doing this for a decade? Wow! What a stupid move Mr. Arte Moreno. Tell me sir do you wish to be broke and filing for bankruptcy like the Dodgers? Did you not watch the last 2 Alex Rodriguez contracts blow up in the faces of the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees?
Why This WILL Blow Up In The Angels Face After The Jump
It’s obvious the Angels are trying to do exactly what the Marlins are doing by spending a boat load of money on free agents this off-season. But butts in the seats, sell tickets, generate some revenue. You’ve got to spend money to make money right? Well yeah sort of but look at this objectively, do the Angels really think Albert Pujols is going to change the landscape of the LA market so much that HE makes baseball relevant in LA again? NO! LA is not and never will be a baseball town. “But the Dodgers do pretty well Matt” I get that, they are the Dodgers, the fan base is much stronger. This makes my point only stronger, LA is not a baseball town, it’s not big enough for 2 teams.
I know the Angels don’t exactly play in downtown LA but that’s the market they are trying to capture. Thus the dropping of Anaheim from their name. This is a desperate attempt to make a major splash now and revive the franchise. Nice try, it isn’t going to happen. Pujols has dropped in every major offensive category over the last 3 years. He’s getting older not younger, don’t expect anything to change.
As Pujols declines this contract is going to look more and more like the Rodriguez contract. The Yankees are stuck with A-Rod through the 2018 season at $27.5 million per year average. With each passing year A-Rod slips more and more away from his superstar label and further and further into decline. The Yankees have all the cash in the world, the contract they gave A-Rod won’t sink them at all. They can afford to plug him into the DH spot and move him down the order as they need to. This isn’t the case with the Angels.
So say hello to your new #3 hitter for the next decade LA. Expect Pujols to decline below the 30 HR per year mark in about 3 or 4 years. By then he’ll be hitting around .265 or so, he’ll be a decent player, a guy that you can put at first base on occasion. The only problem is he’s going to be 1/2 your payroll by that time. The Angels are old, they don’t have very good pitching and that won’t change much with the addition of CJ Wilson. They won’t win a World Series with Pujols, they won’t build a huge fan base, they will self destruct. The only thing that can save the Angels now is if they have a couple awful seasons as a team and Pujols lights it up. Then maybe just maybe they can pawn this guy off on the Yanks, Red Sox or Phillies. Good luck, my gut tells me they won’t be buying.
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