On Albert Pujols

I saw someone say recently that if Albert Pujols doesn't sign with the Cardinals before Spring Training of this year, and therefore hits free agency next off-season, the Mets would be among the favorites to sign him. The logic is obvious: there's considerable doubt as to whether any teams will be able to afford Pujols and also 24 other players who don't suck; the two teams with the most financial resources, Yankees and Red Sox, are already going to be heavily invested in their own All-Star-caliber first basemen; and the Mets, in addition to being right behind those two behemoths financially, are going to have a whole lot of money coming off the books next year, especially if they avoid having Francisco Rodriguez's $17.5 million vesting option invoke. Now, Albert Pujols is clearly the best player in the game right now, so I sort of feel like, as a Mets fan, I sort of ought to want him on the Mets. But I don't, and not just because he went to Glenn Beck's rally last year, although that's part of it.
First of all, it's not like the Mets don't have a perfectly good first baseman of our own. Now, okay, I know that Ike Davis is not Albert Pujols, nor is he likely to be. No one is Albert Pujols. However, he is seven years younger, so while it is not at all impossible that Pujols might decline a little bit from his ungodly dominance over the course of his upcoming massive contract, Ike really ought to keep getting better for quite some time. Moreover, while it is clear that Ike is not Pujols, I'm not sure how convinced I am that he isn't Adrian Gonzalez, or at least Mark Teixeira. In their first full seasons, Ike and Teixeira were 23, and Gonzalez was 24 (and had played a bit in the two previous seasons, unlike the others). Ike went .264/.351/.440, with 147 G, 601 PA, 19 HR, 71 RBI, 72 BB, and 138 K, and either +4 or +13 fielding runs. Teixeira was .259/.331/.480 over 146 G and 589 PA, with 26 HR, 84 RBI, 44 BB and 120 K, and either -6 or +12 fielding runs. Gonzalez was .304/.362/.500 over 156 G and 631 PA, with 24 HR, 82 RBI, 52 BB and 113 K, and either +8 or +2 fielding runs. Overall, 2.5 WAR for Ike, 0.2 for Teixeira, and 2.9 for Gonzalez. So I'm not sold that the Mets should consider themselves much less settled at first base than the Yankees or Red Sox. Also, note that Ike was 23 in 2010, whereas Teixeira was 23 in 2003 and Gonzalez was 24 in 2006. Ike is younger than either of them. He ought to keep getting better, whereas Teixeira at least might begin declining soon. (I hope!)

What I am sure of is that, especially during the period that would be covered by the Pujols contract, Ike Davis will be one hell of a lot cheaper than Pujols, Teixeira, or Gonzalez. Ike's still per-arbitration eligible, which means massively cheap. All three of the others have or will shortly have massive contracts. So the Mets have an opportunity to have a player not necessarily categorically worse than Mark Teixeira or Adrian Gonzalez for substantially less money than them. And while he's not as good as Pujols, he might be a better value, since the Mets don't have to pay him fair market value for quite a few years yet.

And let's address that bit about building a team, not just signing Albert Pujols. One thing the Mets can do with the money coming off the books after next year is sign Jose Reyes to a long-term extension. I'm not convinced that Reyes does a whole lot less to help out his team than Albert Pujols (somewhat less, but I'd like to see if one could do a study like the one Nate Silver just did about basketball for Reyes), but he will be a whole lot cheaper. And of course, what the Mets would do if they signed Pujols would be to ditch Reyes, not to get rid of David Wright. Ditching Wright would make a whole lot more sense: he's a Pujols-type hitter who isn't as good as Pujols, whereas Reyes is something completely different, and we have several third baseman types who are blocked by Wright, like Daniel Murphy and Nick Evans. But I don't really want the Mets to ditch either of them. If one is not the Yankees, then there is such a thing as bottling up too much money in one player, even if that player is the best player the game has ever seen, which means that the overall gains from signing Pujols are ambiguous. And since the pragmatic, sentimentality-be-damned approach is inconclusive at best, I feel perfectly free to follow my feelings: I like Jose Reyes. I don't want the Mets to get rid of him. I think that a team centered around Reyes is a very exciting team to watch.

Now, I have also heard that Sandy Alderson has read some stuff about how importing big-name stars from outside can have an adverse effect on team chemistry, and will therefore be wary of doing so. I applaud that attitude. The Mets have a really, really good team developing, Thole/Davis/Tejada/Reyes/Wright/Bay/Pagan/Santana/Pelfrey/Niese/Dickey/Mejia/Parnell. I don't think they need to make a "splash" like signing Pujols to be competitive. Maybe the calculus would be different if he were available this year, but he isn't, he's available in 2012 (maybe), and by 2012 the Mets just might be contenders again.

So consider this Mets fan to be still hoping the Cardinals re-sign Pujols. The Mets don't need him, I like our current team better than a Pujols-centric team, and after all, the worst thing would be for the Yankees to do something like signing him and making either him or Teixeira DH.