Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. Because that city has opened the door to me and my family like no other city is ever going to do … People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they’re jealous that we’re in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable … It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it. It’s about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way … It’s about being in a place to win and being in a position to win. If the Cardinals are willing to do that and put a team every year like they have, I’m going to try to work everything out to stay in this town. But if they’re not on the same page of bringing championship caliber to play every year, then it’s time for me to go somewhere else. Where? Somewhere else that I can win.

– Albert Pujols, Feb. 2009

It’s as though every few months, Cardinal fans and writers re-realize that Albert Pujols is signed only through 2011 (assuming the team picks up the option on his age-31 season), and they become a flock of chicken littles. Most recently, the venerable Bernie Miklasz posted a strong argument for keeping Pujols in the fold. Then Brian Burwell wrote from Pujols’s standpoint, taking a decidedly Yankeeish ("What have you done for me lately — as in yesterday?") view and demanding to “see some legitimate signs” that the team doesn’t suddenly repudiate the very idea of winning. But is the sky really falling?

As is often the case in the fever swamps of hype and fear, objectivity and data are the last to the discussion. The question of whether the Cardinals should re-sign/extend Pujols’s contract notwithstanding (we don’t think it’s as clear a decision as many do), are the Cardinals "in a place to win"? Ultimately, of course, that’s a question for Pujols to decide. But it may be possible to come to a conclusion more or less rationally.

To try to quantify competitiveness, we came up with four team-health metrics: Annual league ranking of its farm system, payroll, win-loss percentage and attendance. Obviously, the strength of a farm system impacts future possibility of success. Payroll can indicate how dedicated a team’s ownership is to winning, though, as several teams have shown (both high-payroll losers and low-payroll winners), a strong correlation is questionable. Certainly, win-loss percentage demonstrates a team’s actual success and can indicate near-term future success insofar as their improvement is gradual ("When a team improves sharply one season they will almost always decline in the next"). And attendance, while correlating with winning, shows the support of a team’s fan base — something Pujols himself points up as important.

Sources: Baseball America (via Derrick Goold), USA Today, Baseball-Reference.com

For the entirety of Pujols’s Cardinal career, the team has consistently ranked in the top half of MLB in payroll and win-loss percentage and in the top eight in attendance per game — this despite ranking 24th in market size (based on JC Bradbury’s 2004 research).

The major complaint regarding the team’s dedication to competitiveness that we’ve read and heard is the payroll. Granted, 2009 is the lowest that it has been in 10 years. But the 2009 season needs to be weighed in light of recent seasons, after the team returned from its unsustainably high #6 rank in 2005 to closer to its 10-year average of 11th the past two previous seasons. Again, it’s hard to complain about a team in the lower third of market sizes keeping its payroll in the upper third. Boston and New York are about the only places where payroll is consistently greener, and we’re guessing that the fan-loyalty factor cancels that out: Pujols may be able to make more money there, but can he name a player since Mickey Mantle that Yankee fans haven’t booed?

So with payroll, winning percentage and attendance all relatively constant since before Pujols even arrived on the big-league scene, the one variable has been the team’s amazing turnaround in its farm system. If anything, then, a franchise that has not only been committed to winning but has actually won, is currently in as good a position to continue that commitment as it has been during Pujols’s tenure.

We suspect that Pujols intuitively knows how good he has it as a St. Louis Cardinal. Now he has some data to back it up. Then again, data and 25 cents won’t even buy you a cup of coffee. So when push comes to shove, we’ll see how serious Pujols is about it not being about the money. As for that commitment to winning, he’s already got it.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 2:21 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.