Effectively Wild Debate

[Yankees]

So I've become a huge fan of the BP Podcast 'Effectively Wild' with Ben Lindbergh of fivetwentyeight.com and Sam Miller from BP. They tackle such nerdy baseball topics that are just fascinating. I highly recommend it.

The other week they had a debate that I found fascinating, and I think would be a fun one to talk about on this board.

In Albert Pujols' 11 season with the Cards, he posted about an 80 WAR. Sam Miller said that if you essentially took those 80 wins off the Cardinals, they would have been a .500 win team. Lindbergh said that you can't just do that because the Cardinals would have found someone to play 1b that would have at least cut into that WAR. I thought that was completely fair...until Miller pushed back.

Miller's counterargument was that the presence of Pujols was worth the entire loss of 80 wins. He presence in the lineup made everyone around him better. His presence, via attendance/concessions/parking/merch/sponsorships/etc., generated more revenue for the Cardinals that they were able to invest more with.

Since this argument, Miller has walked it back a little in a following episode, saying on more though, it probably wasn't an 80 win difference because of how good an organization the Cardinals are. My challenge with this is that since thinking about this more, I've gone the opposite way. I tended to agree with Lindbergh at the time, but, since thinking about it, the ramifications of a player like Albert Pujols reverberate in so many different ways, that it's hard for me to think he wasn't worth the vast majority of those 80 wins versus whoever else the Cardinals would have put at first base.

I'd love to hear opinions on this...I thought it was a really fascinating, worthwhile debate to have.

[Astros]

I think people in hindsight forget how good those lineups were for the Cardinals. You had Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds hitting behind Pujols and in 04/05 Larry Walker in front of him

[Athletics]

This is so open ended in terms of where you could land and all relative variances.

Like if they didn't pay him, where would that money have gone during those years?

How much of an investment would you need to make to land a star player that could have filled that void?

What type of ROI would you get on replacement players?

Does shifting others around in the lineup with another player have a similar or different effect on the style they played?

Would other prospects that were groomed but traded by the Cards during those years to make Championship runs still be on the team and filling that void?

Do injuries play out the same way?

There are a whole lot of moving parts when you move beyond the box of Albert Pujols and what he was capable of doing.

[Yankees]

But those weren't Pujols' best years. Even as solid as those teams were, they wouldn't have been as good without Pujols. This isn't an anti-Cardinals argument, either. More a thought exercise.

[Yankees]

This is so open ended in terms of where you could land and all relative variances.

Like if they didn't pay him, where would that money have gone during those years?

How much of an investment would you need to make to land a star player that could have filled that void?

What type of ROI would you get on replacement players?

Does shifting others around in the lineup with another player have a similar or different effect on the style they played?

Would other prospects that were groomed but traded by the Cards during those years to make Championship runs still be on the team and filling that void?

Do injuries play out the same way?

There are a whole lot of moving parts when you move beyond the box of Albert Pujols and what he was capable of doing.

As I told Stephen on gchat, the whole point of this exercise is that there isn't a right or wrong answer. Just think it's a very cool thought exercise on how much of an impact a truly great player has on the entire organization.

[Astros]

Albert carried the team more after 2006. I think you look at 2007-2011 and there would be a huge dropoff from what reality was. I think 2001-2005 doesn't have all that much of a change