Revisiting the Pujols Trade

[Brewers GM]

Absolutely - on a pure WAR level you could argue its been a relatively even deal until now and Santana is much better going forward, but if you look at WAR/$ then its not even close.

[Colby]

This is great analysis and something we should all do with trades of yesteryear.  The key here is not only Santana's production but his cost compared to Pujols.  This deal (and others) kept the Cardinals far more competitive than they would otherwise have been in this league.

[Brewers GM]

With Pujols having a down year so far, after a quite human year last season, I decided to take a look back at the trade and offer some commentary.

At the time (just after the 2009 season), the league was new and the trade was rather controversial; many thought Pujols should be untradeable.  However, Paul was looking to rebuild and I wanted to add a star to Prince and Braun, so we got a deal done for the following five players (all top 100 prospects at the time): CI Carter, Chris, CI Gamel, Mat, P Perez, Martin, P Rondon, Hector, C Santana, Carlos.  Now three plus seasons later, he's how everyone has performed from a WAR perspective (per fangraphs.com)

[2010/2011/2012/2013 = Total]

Brewers Received:
Albert Pujols: 7.0 / 4.3 / 3.6 / -0.2 = 14.7

While Pujols has faded the past few years, he helped the Brewers dominate their first few seasons.  However, without a championship things haven't worked out how we hoped.

Cardinals Received:
Chris Carter - -0.8 / -0.7 / 1.0 / 0.1 = -0.4
Mat Gamel - -0.8 / -4.1 / -0.6 / 0.0 = -5.5
Martin Perez - 0.0 / 0.0 / 0.5 / 0.0 = 0.5
Hector Rondon - 0.0 / 0.0 / 0.0 / -0.2 = -0.2
Carlos Santana - 1.8 / 3.3 / 3.2 / 1.9 = 10.2

Rondon and Perez are still young pitchers, but their stars have certainly lost some luster since 2010.  Carter and Gamel have failed to live up to expectations.  However, Santana was the biggest chip in the deal has nearly matched Pujols in terms of production the past few years.  Going forward, Santana is one of the elite players in the league at a scarce position, tipping the scales in favor of STL for this trade.  It's funny that at the time, he was the one prospect we didn't want to include, but Paul insisted was the only one he had to have.

Perhaps more than the trade of Santana for Pujols, the decision to keep Pujols @ $27.0M / year over Prince @ $22.0M / year has set the Brewers back.  Since 2011, Pujols has a total WAR of 7.7, while Prince has totaled 10.6 (at $5.0M less per year and 4 years younger).  With Hosmer not yet living up to his elite potential, this is a decision that the Brewers are still trying to recover from.