Draft MVP Blog

I’ve been obsessing about this whole Albert Pujols thing.  He is the best hitter in baseball right now, and maybe one of the best right-handed hitters ever.  And he is AVAILABLE?!  Why this isn’t even bigger news than it already is, I’m not sure.  Probably because he comes off as a soft-spoken low-key mild-mannered guy (he’s boring?).  This isn’t Manny Ramirez or Derek Jeter.  But when was the last time the best player in a sport was to become imminently available?  Ok, it was just last year with Lebron James.  But Pujols is already one of the best to ever play if he stopped playing right now.  I’m not sure if that’s the case with Lebron. 

And Pujols is still peaking isn’t he?  Last year, he led MLB in Runs and led the NL in HR and RBI.  The year before that, he led MLB in Runs, HR, Total Bases SLG, OPS.  His maddening consistency has become monotonous.  Two MVP’s in the last 3 years, and he was 2nd in MVP voting last year (probably because people tired of voting for him).  Will fantasy baseball players tire of picking him 1st in their drafts this year?  Um, no, he’s still ranked #1 in ADP.

Anyways, as a sports fan, with all the recent free agent betrayals (by players as well as teams), it’d be nice to see a top-tier player like Pujols be able to stay with a historical and traditioned team like the Cardinals.

Joe Posnanski has written some good stuff about the Pujols situation, so check out his blog:
http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/02/pujols-and-cardinals.html http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2011/02/cashing-in-without-yankees.html

I also really like some of the analysis done at Fangraphs, especially the simple WAR graph used here really puts things in perspective:

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-pujols-contract/
http://www.fangraphs.com/community/index.php/rationalizing-the-next-pujols-contract/

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