The Ryan Howard/Albert Pujols Trade Rumor, Parsed
We won’t lie: Seeing Ryan Howard traded — this year, no less — would make us and lots of other people very sad. And while lots of fans can point to stats they don’t like about Howard’s performance last year, we like to consider all of that bumps in the road. Still, though, one of the hottest maybe-it’s-a-stories to emerge from spring training is a rumor about how the Phillies might like to trade Ryan Howard for the St. Louis Cardinals’ slugger/city hero, Albert Pujols. Whoa. You could spend days listening to people on WIP blather on about this, but the best, most clear-headed thing we’ve seen on this thus far is this blog post by Dan Levy. Levy’s take? Interesting, but the Phils would never spend the A-Rod type of money that Pujols would want. And that pretty much makes it the end of the story for Levy. The Phils’ payroll is currently already the largest it’s ever been, argues Levy, and now isn’t the time to go even higher. We’ll take that, and a Xanax. And maybe a hot dog. But not a black taco. No, not now. It just wouldn’t seem right.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Most of the takes I’ve heard say the Pujols trade is a non-starter, but there’s a chance Howard will end up going if he asks for Pujols type money on his soon to end contract, which he might.
March 16th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
What happened to the guy who used to do your sports column?
March 16th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
If we traded Ryan Howard for Albert Pujols, I would weep tears of joy. I would also be convinced that the St. Louis front office is even dumber than the Mets, which is really saying something.
Of course, we’ll just have to wait and see if the Matt Holliday deal was somehow worse than the Jason Bay deal.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Come end of season Howard will be gone and the Phils will spend a pretty penny on Werth. He will demand it after another great year and it just makes sense. He is more consistent and is not a power hitter who tends to strike out a lot. Whats more is that players like Werth have a longer lifespan since they are smaller and more athletic preventing the injuries that usually come with big lumbering power hitters.
March 16th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Ryan Howard is signed till the end of 2012. The idea is that Howard doesnt want to come back to Philadelphia once the 2012 season is over.
So the Phillies faced with the decision of losing him “for nothing” trade him in 2011 to his hometown Cardinals for Pujols.
The theory there is that St Louis can not afford Alebrt, but would be willing to pay $30-$50 million less to Ryan Howard. Who would love to come back home. In theory The Phillies then ante up and gamble the franchise on Albert.
Let’s just worry about that NEXT YEAR – we arent even outta spring training yet!
March 16th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
re: The idea is that Howard doesnt want to come back to Philadelphia once the 2012 season is over.
That’s also why I was surprised they traded Lee.
Hamels doesen’t want to come back when his contracts expires in 2011.