New article has Jocketty saying “we thought we were going to get [Pujols]” in 2012

[RED VAN HOT]

Hard to defend WJ on this one, but I can note that in the post-steroid era, MLB had not fully come to grips with the fact that production drops off when a player reaches his late 30's.

[Tom Servo]

Hard to defend WJ on this one, but I can note that in the post-steroid era, MLB had not fully come to grips with the fact that production drops off when a player reaches his late 30's.

Yeah this is a good point. At the time you were only a few seasons removed from guys like Bonds and Sheffield and other old sluggers still putting up big numbers, and you still had guys who were 40 like Chipper Jones and Jim Thome and guys in their mid 30s like Lance Berkman, David Ortiz, Paul Konerko, and Carlos Beltran still putting up numbers. I think the general consensus was that while the contract would eventually turn sour that Pujols would still be good for another several seasons of MVP level production. Instead the production almost instantly fell off a cliff.

[Cooper]

He played 33 innings at 3rd -the prior year...15 innings the year before that --there's no way he could have played 3rd with any real value on defense. He hadn't played 3rd with any regularity in 10 years. His body had changed and if he had been able to play 3rd at all --as a regular -they would have put him there -seeing how it's much more difficult to find a good 3rd baseman than a good 1st baseman.

I think it's a really good point, re the WAR value of players decreasing wrt steroids.

[JFLegal]

everyone keeps talking about how bauer wouldn't have helped the reds in 2013. how bout how much he would help this year? and next year?

not worth a one-year rental of choo, imo.

but the fact that jocketty went after pujols hard tells you everything you need to know. walt was the king of paying players for past performance, and not for future projections.

[Wonderful Monds]

everyone keeps talking about how bauer wouldn't have helped the reds in 2013. how bout how much he would help this year? and next year?

not worth a one-year rental of choo, imo.

but the fact that jocketty went after pujols hard tells you everything you need to know. walt was the king of paying players for past performance, and not for future projections.

Who cares? They weren’t acquiring players for 2018-18 all the way back in the winter of 2012. They were trying to win in 2013, like they should have.

Yeah if they had the hindsight we have now you could make that judgment, but that’s obviously not how it works, so that’s a bad and dumb criticism of that trade.

[RedsBaron]

Yeah this is a good point. At the time you were only a few seasons removed from guys like Bonds and Sheffield and other old sluggers still putting up big numbers, and you still had guys who were 40 like Chipper Jones and Jim Thome and guys in their mid 30s like Lance Berkman, David Ortiz, Paul Konerko, and Carlos Beltran still putting up numbers. I think the general consensus was that while the contract would eventually turn sour that Pujols would still be good for another several seasons of MVP level production. Instead the production almost instantly fell off a cliff.

Even before the PEDs era there had been a few great players who maintained their HOF level at play for several seasons after reaching age 32, Pujols reported age in 2012. Willie Mays lead the NL in HRs with 47 at age 33 and had a MVP winning season at age 34 when he hit 52 HRs; Mays was still the best player in the NL at age 35 before he finally began to significantly decline. At ages 35 through 39 Hank Aaron had HR seasons of 44, 38, 47, 34 and 40 [having Atlanta as his home park helped]. Mike Schmidt won three HR titles and a MVP award after age 32. Ted Williams hit .388 at age 38 and won another batting title the next year. Pete Rose won a batting title and his only MVP award at age 32 and was still a very good player through his age 38 season.
The thing is, those guys were the exceptions, not the rule. There were a lot of other great players who declined markedly by the time they were 32. The odds have always been against even a great player maintaining his greatness into his mid-30s.
The other thing is the Reds had no position available for Pujols.

[Cooper]

The guy that really held his value after age 30 season was Clemente. You could make a good case that he was more valuable (WAR) after age 30 than before 50 WAR .vs 44 WAR. That's extremely rare. He increased his BABIP after his age 30 season to .361- that's over a 7 year period -he also kept up his defensive value over the last half of his career. He must have been a very special player. There's no one else that really has been able to sustain that level of production (above the 80/20 rule) unless they played in the steroid era.

[mamell]

I've often thought about the steroid era, but steroids had been around a long time before the general public was even remotely aware of them in sports. After the fact it's easy to say the long gone greats didn't use them, but we'll probably never really know and the old greats now with their likenesses in the HOF very few if any will ever come out to admit they used them and probably even fewer will come forward to accuse them since nobody is going to dig up their graves to find out.. I like to think they didn't use them, but then I put on my naivetivity (sp) glasses on and think, yeah....all just a bunch of purely upright and honest guys who never knew the word "cheat".. lol

[Todd Gack]

Would the World Series appearance or win been worth 5-6 years of awful Pujols?

Yes

[JFLegal]

Who cares? They weren’t acquiring players for 2018-18 all the way back in the winter of 2012. They were trying to win in 2013, like they should have.

Yeah if they had the hindsight we have now you could make that judgment, but that’s obviously not how it works, so that’s a bad and dumb criticism of that trade.

that just, like, your opinion man.

yeah, we're not going to change each others minds here. let's move on.

[JFLegal]

Even before the PEDs era there had been a few great players who maintained their HOF level at play for several seasons after reaching age 32, Pujols reported age in 2012. Willie Mays lead the NL in HRs with 47 at age 33 and had a MVP winning season at age 34 when he hit 52 HRs; Mays was still the best player in the NL at age 35 before he finally began to significantly decline. At ages 35 through 39 Hank Aaron had HR seasons of 44, 38, 47, 34 and 40 [having Atlanta as his home park helped]. Mike Schmidt won three HR titles and a MVP award after age 32. Ted Williams hit .388 at age 38 and won another batting title the next year. Pete Rose won a batting title and his only MVP award at age 32 and was still a very good player through his age 38 season.
The thing is, those guys were the exceptions, not the rule. There were a lot of other great players who declined markedly by the time they were 32. The odds have always been against even a great player maintaining his greatness into his mid-30s.
The other thing is the Reds had no position available for Pujols.

key phrase: pujols' reported age. there has always been talk that he was a couple years older than his "birth certificate" said.

and since walt came from the cardinals, he should have known that. instead, he wanted to pay pujols for what he accomplished in the past. that's walt.

frankly, the reds should have known there was a good reason a smart organization like the cardinals did not want jocketty running their baseball ops any longer.