Albert Pujols should have a monster 2012 season for the Anaheim Angels. Is it a guarantee? No. Is it very likely? Yes. Overall, I have been very impressed with Cardinal Nation’s response to Pujols heading out west. On one end of the spectrum are the fans who say they are taking the logical approach and applaud Cardinal management for not offering a huge 10-year contract. On the other end, are the fans who burned his jersey and anxiously await their opportunity to find his statue unguarded. Both the “we don’t need him” and “I hate him” attitudes are different expression of the same feeling of rejection. But you’ve already read that article. Oblige me a few minutes to prepare you as to what you should see from Pujols in 2012, and what that means to the Cardinals and their fans.

First, a general observation…those who have followed Pujols over the last 11 seasons know that he always plays better when he feels he has something to prove. At 32,  he is at the tail-end of the prime of his career, but…he is still in his prime. Remember the 2008 season, when Pujols was the last standing member of the MV3 playing for St. Louis and the second best hitter in the lineup was Ryan Ludwick?

2008 Season

AB         R            H           2B       HR        RBI         BB        SO     SB       AVG         OBP       SLG         OPS

524       100      187       44       37          116        104     54      7         .357         .462      .653       1.114

Not shabby.

Remember Game 3 of the 2011 World Series? Pujols heard all the critics who said he had never done much of anything in his three World Series appearances. He proceeded to unleash 3 HRs, 5 hits, 4 Runs, and 6 RBIs.

You may be thinking, all that is well and good, but what about his three-year decline from 2009-2011? Yes, Pujols did experience a noticeable drop in HR, RBIs, walks, BA, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage over that three-year period. Even with the decline, he remained an elite hitter. And do not forget about the great second half numbers he posted last year.

After coming back from wrist surgery, Pujols posted the following stat line.

AB         R            H           2B       HR        RBI         BB        SO        SB       AVG         OBP       SLG         OPS

299       53         95          18       20          54            27       33       4         .318          .378     .579         .957

Again, the point of this article is not to prove to you that Pujols is a good hitter. The purpose is to prepare you for a huge year from Pujols in 2012. Here is the biggest reason why…each ball Pujols puts in play has a 5% better chance of being a hit at Angels Stadium than at Busch Stadium, and each fly ball has a 27% better chance of being a homerun. (I used the 2009-2011 ballpark tendencies chart from baseballhq.com for these numbers). Said another way, Angels Stadium produces the league-average number of hits and home runs for right-handed batters. Busch Stadium decreases right-handed batting average 5% and right-handed home runs 27% more than the average MLB park. Busch Stadium is a much more pitcher-friendly park than most people realize. Pujols hit 10 fly balls last season that were outs in Busch Stadium, that would have been home runs in LA.

Quick side note: Ballpark factor makes the offensive numbers the Cardinals put up in 2011 that much more impressive.

I hope I have proven my point that Pujols is on track for a big 2012 season. What does this mean to Cardinals fans?

First, on an emotional level, being able to come to terms with this fact. I am not one that wishes bad performance on Pujols because he left the team I cheer for.

Second, even as you watch Pujols put up big numbers, realize the Cardinals made a smart baseball decision for the long-term, and made smart decisions with the money freed up for 2012. Long-term it is easy to see how the Cardinals would have been severely handcuffed paying Pujols 22-25 million during his age 38-41 seasons, when production will most certainly substantially decline. But I want to focus on the 2012 season and why Cardinals fans should not be worried.

Pujols had a 5.1 WAR (wins above replacement) in 2011. When he signed elsewhere, the Cards re-signed Rafael Furcal and Carlos Beltran. Beltran certainly would not have happened with Pujols still on the team, and Furcal is unlikely. While Furcal only a 0.5 WAR during an injury-shortened 2011, he posted 4.2 and 3.5 the two seasons prior. Here are the WAR numbers for Theriot, Schumaker, and Descalso over the last two seasons (the three guys who would most likely have seen most of the playing time at SS).

Schumaker   0.6, -0.2    Theriot  .07, -0.1  Descalso  0.5, 0.4.

Tyler Greene has a lot of potential upside but has yet to produce at the major-league level.

If Furcal returns to career-average production, the Cardinals gain 3 to 4 WAR at shortstop by not re-signing Pujols.

Beltran posted a 4.7 WAR last season, just 0.4 below Pujols. Adam Wainwright put up 5.7 WAR in 2009 and 6.1 in 2010. I think you are starting to see my point. On paper, the Cardinals not matching the Angels offer to Pujols along with the return of Adam Wainwright, puts a better team on the field for 2012 than 2011. Throw in the fact that the team plays 92 of their 162 games against the bottom two divisions in baseball (AL and NL Central), and there is a lot to be optimistic about heading into spring training.

Cardinal fan, please remember these things when you watch Albert do what only he can do in another uniform for the first time.

Carlos Zambrano.

There are very few names that will launch most any baseball writer into a tirade quicker than that one. Zambrano is the type of player that is seldom loved in our end of the spectrum that is baseball but when he is, that writers will quickly come to his defense. More often than not, writers are quick to point out all of the wonderful flaws that surround the pitcher known simply as “Z”.

As a writer myself and a lover of baseball, I dislike the term “off-season”. There truly is no off-season in baseball, it simply becomes a time of year when Major League Baseball is not operating games with the thirty clubs that we all follow so closely. It is this time of year, the administrative time of year, that games shift to winter ball and our focus turns to our team’s adjustments being made for the following season.

Today we have learned, thanks to an interview with Mark Carman at 610 Sports, that Dayton Moore has identified a possible fit in Kansas City for the game’s most interesting character, Carlos Zambrano. From that interview:

We would have to be interested. We would have to explore it because that’s what you should do. You should explore every opportunity. Carlos Zambrano is a heckuva competitor. Carlos Zambrano has had a lot of success in the major leagues. Carlos Zambrano is actually a very pleasant, easy going, classy person off the field. Sometimes, as with all of us the competitiveness takes over and brings out qualities in us that we are not proud of. Obviously the Cubs grew tired of some of his outbursts but I believe in our coaching staff and we’ll always take a chance and a risk on certain players. We’ll see how that particular situation unfolds.

Let me try to break the mold of the two types of writers I just described and let’s take a look at the two sides of Carlos Zambrano. First, we will drop by our friends at Baseball-Reference for some pure statistical analysis:

If you took a look at that chart and did not know who it belonged to, you would be in full support of Dayton Moore pursuing this opportunity. He is a top of the rotation type starter that can dominate when he is on his game.

The true test, however, is Zambrano off the field. Face it, the Royals are a very young franchise right now. Guys like Jeff Francoeur not only add production, but leadership to the clubhouse. Frenchy is the type of guy you want around the young players, showing them the ropes and teaching them life outside of, and around, the game.

Like him or not, Zambrano has had some meltdowns. He walked out on his team last season. He gets visibly upset on the field and has been known to fight with his teammates, even in the dugout during a game.

The player that takes the mound would be a game changer for the Royals.

The player that has had so many public problems would be a distraction to a young team.

Those two points are hard to put on a scale and weigh out. Dayton Moore has that choice before him right now. Is the risk of the possible chemistry problem worth the reward of what the player can provide on the field?

What works in the Royals favor is the situation in Chicago itself. The Cubs are going to cut bait with Zambrano, so if they can find a trade partner to send them a bag of balls and pick up $1 million of the horrible contract he is under, they will take it. It puts Moore in a good position to move a low level prospect and barely pick up any salary in order to acquire a potential front of the line starter. Again, the Royals General Manager had this to say:

He has a no-trade clause for 29 other teams so he is going to have to be comfortable wherever he goes and there is a lot of money attached to his deal. There is a vesting option that is a part of that worth $18 or 19 million going forward. We certainly wouldn’t want to put ourselves in a position where we have to honor a contract of that nature.

I don’t envy GMDM on this one. It is not as clear cut as you would like it to be.

The quotes utilized in this article were provided by MLBTradeRumors.com and have been credited to CSNChicago.com’s Dave Kaplan.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Follow him on Twitter here.

August should be a fascinating month in helping determine the future for the Kansas City Royals.

Here’s why: the Royals start out the month with an off day on August 1. Their next off day? Over 20 days later on August 22. Besides those two dates, the Kansas City Royals will be battling through the hottest heat of summer every single day on the field. Mostly, they’ll be visiting other ballparks. But for the 13 games at home, Kauffman Stadium will feel like the middle of the desert. Oh yeah, and they’ll almost exclusively be playing teams with 2010 winning records.

By August, some of the stellar young guys from the team’s stacked farm system, including third base uber-prospect Mike Moustakas, figure to be up on the big-league roster. Their first major test will be to see if they can make it through a taxing month and a brutal schedule.

Mike Moustakas by Erika Lynn

August Breakdown:

Total Games: 29

Home: 13

Road: 16

Vs teams with winning records in 2010: 23

Vs teams with losing records in 2010: 6

Vs teams in the NL Central: 12

Key Series:

August 15-17 vs. Yankees & August 18-21 vs. Red Sox – For seven straight days in mid-August, the Royals host the elite teams of the AL East (in August, the team also plays on the road against the Blue Jays and the Rays, teams that also had winning records in the AL East in 2010). Although it’s likely the Royals will be out of the race by then, the team has had some success playing the role of spoiler in the past several years. If things go as they have in the past, the eyes of the baseball world could be on Kansas City from Aug. 15-21.

August 26-28 at Cleveland – On the other side of the spectrum, the Royals figure to be battling Cleveland in late August to help determine which team stays out of the cellar in the AL Central. The importance of that achievement is mostly artificial, but what is important is that both of these teams, while they’re likely to be miserable in 2011, have important figures in the farm system who could return their respective organizations to their former glory. The Royals are widely acknowledged to have the superior farm system (not only to Cleveland, but to every other team in baseball), but in a way, it’s like a poker game. The Royals are walking to the table with a huge armful of chips, the Indians with only a short stack. But that’s the thing about gambling: Anybody who steps to the table, no matter how much they start with, has a chance to win big.

Key to a hot month – Sadly, the Royals’ best chance at success in August will probably not occur between the baselines. The beginning of August will be the time to assess any trades made at the deadline. If the Royals can flip some of their current players (Melky, Frenchy and Getzy, I’m lookin’ at you) for even more prospects, it could mean a quicker path to future success. However, if they Royals part with any of their prospects now – for any reason whatsoever – it will be a failure.

If the Royals are below .500… Don’t worry about it. In some ways, the worse the Royals’ record is, the better. A poor August will mean we can finally part with some players who have been hanging onto jobs the last few years (Kyle Davies, I’m lookin’ at you), and it could mean increased playing time for some prospects during the September callups.

If the Royals are above .500… Buy some sunscreen, ’cause the end is near.