You can tell we’re starting to get antsy. Over the weekend, Jayson Stark of ESPN.com caused a media pile-on by inadvertently originating a now-ubiquitous report: That Albert Pujols and His People—namely Dan Lozano, his agent—are looking for a 10-year, $300 million contract, the richest in the history of professional sports. That’s plausible speculation, but since Stark began speculating about it, an avalanche of secondary coverage has reported it as though we actually know the demand to exist.
Go back to the beginning—pull all the SEO-oriented reports-on-the-report from the top of the pile—and you’ll see an ESPN story that begins by noting that they’ve had “no leaks” and “no details” from the Cardinals or Pujols. It turns out that $300 million figure began as a figure supported only by “scuttlebutt from other clubs,” who presumably aren’t looking any harder for leaks than Jayson Stark. That it’s being reported as a real leak only illustrates just how anxious the baseball world is for news that still hasn’t broken.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be, but it’s how it is: Just a few weeks before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training, and the Cardinals and Pujols cut off negotiations for the season, we’ve got nothing but this kind of guessing to go on. Pujols’ agents could well be angling for a $300 million contract; if they are, the Cardinals will be hard-pressed to find a business case for paying him $30 million a season at 41. But that’s all hypothetical.
I remain convinced—since there’s not anything out there about which I can be convinced or skeptical, maybe “optimistic” is the right word—that the Cardinals and Pujols will compromise. Pujols is as good as Alex Rodriguez was when he became baseball’s first $25 million man, but he’s also six years older; a contract that’s the richest ever on a year-to-year basis without going Rodriguez’s 10 years still seems like the right move for both parties.
