If You Could Sign Albert Pujols, Would You?

This is all HYPOTHETICAL (for all those reading impaired individuals)

Albert Pujols is one of the best, if not THE BEST, hitter our generation has ever seen. I completely expect the Cardinals to re-sign Albert Pujols to a contract worth over $200 million for 7-8 years. Let’s get a little hypothetical on this dark and rain-soaked afternoon.

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For one minute let’s pretend Albert Pujols and his agent reached out to all major league teams. And of course they will all talk, this is obvious. When I say “reach out”, I mean contact teams with an open mind of acquiring Pujols. I’m sure the Cardinals will lock him up fairly quickly, but let’s pretend Pujols’ representatives actually test the waters.

Now let’s pretend your the General Manager of the New York Mets. Fred Wilpon comes to you and say’s you have an unlimited budget to sign Albert Pujols and structure the team around him.

Do you do it? It mean’s Jose Reyes is not returning for sure. It also means Ike Davis is either being moved to RF or traded.

Lucas Duda, who was a big part of the 2011 Mets, will probably be your right fielder. He may very well be able to handle LF. Could you trade Bay?

Would you trade Jason Bay for A.J. Burnett? If the Yankees can lock up C.C. and one of Yu Darvish or C.J. Wilson they may be open to swapping A.J.’s contract for another closely matched contract. Not to mention Bay would rake in Yankee Stadium and he could replace Nick Swisher in RF.

Trade Mike Pelfrey to a team willing to absorb his contract for his potential.

Now you spend the remaining dollars you can squeeze out of Wilpons checkbook plus what you saved on Pelfrey on a bullpen piece or two (think Joe Nathan and Octavio Dotel on cheap deals).

Sign a cheap CF, say Nate McLouth. Done.

This is the 2012 Mets

1B – Pujols

2B – Turner

SS – Tejada

3B – Wright

C – Thole

LF – Duda

CF – McLouth

RF – Davis

Bench – Murphy, Nickeas, Evans, Satin, OF we sign in FA or F-Mart ehh

SP – Santana, Niese, Burnett, Dickey, Gee