With Peyton Manning on the shelf in 2011, the Colts staggered into last place. When Michael Jordan took a hiatus to hack at Minor League pitching, the Bulls barely scraped into the postseason.
Albert Pujols's name will not be in the St. Louis Cardinals' lineup all season. Fans in the Gateway may discover that breaking up wasn't so hard to do.
Replacing a once-in-a-generation talent like Pujols requires some skill at jigsaw puzzles, but it's easier than replacing a medium-talent first-string hockey goalie.
Barring cloning, which Major League Baseball has yet to master, even the greatest players only bat once every nine times. They only play one position on the field. And they don't throw a single pitch. There's a low ceiling on even the mightiest everyday player's value.
Moreover, no one who's not married to Cal Ripken's wife plays everyday, every year. Prince Albert missed 15 games last season, and lest you think that was an anomaly, chronic back and elbow issues aren't traffic violations and nightly bar hopping: they don't tend to subside after age 30.
Even so, Pujols in his worst year posted a .299/.366/.541 line with 37 homers and splendid defense, worth 5.4 wins to the World Series Champions. That's a lot of performance disappearing with one sweep of the pen in Anaheim.
Except that performance is not disappearing: someone will play first base in Pujols's absence. In the case of St. Louis, it's Lance Berkman, who was already on the field regularly, so he's not an offensive addition. But Berkman was in right field, where he probably no longer belongs, costing the Redbirds almost a game compared to the average right fielder.
Most teams would attempt to plug a Pujols-sized chasm with a montage of performers -- platooning, shifting and developing their way to recoup most of the loss. Not so for the Cards; they signed Carlos Beltran, whose 2011 performance in NY and San Francisco was .300/.385/.525 with 22 homers in 142 games, worth 4.4 wins to his teams. Beltran is a center fielder playing right and should be good for at least average performance with the leather.
Presto, the wins that flew to California during the winter have come home to roost under the Arch.* Theoretically, the return of co-ace Adam Wainwright to the rotation and a full season of World Series hero David Freese at third should have actually portended improvement in eastern Missouri, despite the loss of the best player (chemically-unaided division) since Willie Mays.
*Details schmetails. Okay, so it's not that simple. We compared Pujols's worst season to one of Beltran's better years, Beltran is older and the statistics suggest he left his outfield defense at the bars of his youth. Still, they won the title with Pujols in that state, so it's hard to argue they needed more from him. Besides, you get the point, and if you don't, go read John Kruk's blog.
Other issues, like injury to Chris Carpenter, may offset some of that; nonetheless, it's pretty astounding that St. Louis can just shrug off Superman's departure. That's baseball though, where the greatest player in the game wins just five of 162 games for you compared to a replacement who doesn't even belong in the league.
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