Alex Rodriguez.

So not only is front-loading contracts intelligent, but so is bidding against yourself.

Christ - you'll revolutionize contract negotiations. The Steinbrenner clan needs to get you on the phone yesterday.

Letting the best player in baseball even sniff free agency is a much better idea...

He picked the loosest purse-strings in the league to set the market price, now he'll find the team he really wants to play for?

Sabathia, Texiera, Burnett, Jeter, Cano, Soriano, Swisher...

Do we have to keep playing this game? Y'know, the one where an agent has a significant amount of negotiation leverage and convinces a team to structure a contract that's favorable to his client rather than a contract that comports with virtually every single other contract on the roster?

You're actually proving my argument for me pretty nicely here.

Maybe winning the WS increased their revenue projections and made it more feasible to bring Pujols back? The fact is, players wait to get to the open market unless they are bludgeoned with a ridiculously good deal.

It absolutely was.

By all accounts, Lozano was requiring 10 years and $275 million to re-sign without testing the market.

Yeah, the Cardinals really ****ed up by not giving that to him.

You are really really bad at this.

You just said no one is signing people to front loaded contracts and I bring up the one player you can even compare to the situation Pujols is in right now and you completely ignore it.

Thanks for playing.

Keep acting like the Cardinals are a better team without Pujols.

You mean like 10 years, $275 million?!?!?!

Stupid ass Cardinals - I don't know why they didn't just bend over backwards to give Albert whatever he wanted.

Maybe not today, but four years from now I'd be willing to bet they would be better off.

If they had an extra $30 million a year to spend, they certainly could be.

I'm not ignoring it at all, in fact I directly addressed it.

Those contracts were as a result of the player having leverage over the team and the team refusing to call the player's bluff. In exchange for a reduced AAV, the team front-loaded the deal.

This isn't hard to understand. You only frontload the deal if you're paying a significantly reduced overall $$ figure. Now if the Marlins were offering 10 years and $250 but he Cardinals only want to go 10 years/$210, then they'd have to front-load the contract to increase it's real-time value.

But again, that's manipulating the overall value of the contract to deal with market pressures.

It has nothing to do with what you're discussing.

But keep on covering yourself with glory here, chief. You're doing a bangup job of making yourself look like an idiot.

The Cardinals are a better team without Albert Pujols at that contract, yes.

And ultimately it looks like they're going to get him for a hell of a lot less than that. So yeah, they're a better team for calling Lozano's bluff.

Short term they'd be okay.

It would hinge on Adams development at 1B in the long run.