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Macomb, IL – Respected first baseman Albert Pujols could be playing for the Angels almost as long as disgraced Governor Rod Blagojevich will be giving the devil his due in prison. (Already, there are more arguments about Pujols deserving his pay than Blago deserving his 14-year sentence.)
Two days after federal Judge James Zagel sentenced Illinois' impeached governor and (OK, enough about him) a day after Major League Baseball's winter meetings, Pujols last week agreed to a 10-year contract worth $254 million with the Los Angeles Angels. Baseball's usual big-spending clubs, including the Yankees and Red Sox, were less interested than the upstart Miami Marlins and the contending Angels.
Pujols' deal will not be the highest paying contract in pro sports history. It's the runner-up to the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, who signed the two biggest deals in sports history: one worth $252 million in 2000 with Texas, and another worth $275 million in 2007 with New York.
But it's a huge step up for Pujols, who won three National League Most Valuable Player awards and two World Series with St. Louis after launching his professional career in Peoria in 2000, when he played for the Chiefs and was named Midwest League MVP.
One St. Louis business professor thinks it's a step too far.
Lamar Pierce, an Associate Professor at Washington University and an advocate of the so-called pay-for-performance management approach, said, "For Albert Pujols' pay to be equitable to others in baseball, he needs to be paid more than Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player. However, since Rodriguez is now overpaid - his performance, or lack thereof, is easy to measure based on statistics - it leads to ... escalation of pay across the league. In five years, if Pujols has gone downhill, then someone else will be the best and the escalation continues."
Already, Pujols' statistics in most offensive categories are declining. However, he's still a premier ballplayer, last season hitting 37 home runs, hitting.299, and driving in 99 RBIs.
Pierce continued, "It's pretty clear who's better than whom. For CEOs or workers, it's much less clear. This is why the problems are rare among salespeople, who have clear metrics to measure performance, and common among public-service workers or factory workers."
The issue with Pujols, Pierce said, is that while he does deserve to be paid more than Rodriguez based on performance, Rodriguez now is overpaid. Pierce added, "While someone might view such relative pay as equitable, this leads to excessively high salaries in baseball. The problem here is that when people think about relative pay, any overpaying for the top salary escalates the problem."
However, besides the argument that most pay-per-performance judgments are subjective and depend on whoever decides and criteria that employees usually can't affect, workers eventually are cheated by time. In the classic baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly, author Mark Harris has his hero, pitcher Henry Wiggen, expressing that in club negotiations.
A management rep makes an offer, saying, "If you have a good year this year, we'll make it back to you next year," but the ballplayer replies, "I will go on year after year being paid for the year before. That shorts me a year in the long run."
Indeed, for however much "Cardinal Nation" loved him (and now loathes him), Pujols was paid $14.5 million in 2011, according to Forbes magazine - a bargain. As for objections to a long-term, no-trade pact for Pujols (who will be 32 next month), that ignores various revenue streams his employer will exploit.
Agent Scott Boras, who represents free-agent first baseman Prince Fielder, said, "I've had people come out (and say) Oh, you ought to do a three-year deal.' That doesn't fit anybody's purposes. That initial concept is the shorter the better,' but the reality of it is, the length of a contract has a lot to do with an understanding from both sides about what franchise players are and what they mean - the branding part, the whole media-rights part. ... All those things go into it."
Sure, Pujols' pay is outrageous compared to grade-school teachers, home-care workers and other vital jobs, but considering he's an entertainer, Pujols seems worth as much as other performers, from Justin Bieber and Will Farrell to Oprah Winfrey and J.K. Rowling.
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio