Baseball executives think Pujols will make $30 million a year. I think he could get more

I did a Pujols post and an Heyman post, so now here’s Heyman on Pujols:

Baseball executives agree on a couple things regarding superstar Albert Pujols, the Cardinals and their future together.

1. Pujols and the Cardinals have a very good chance to stay together beyond 2011, when his first nine-figure contract expires, and...

2. Pujols will get his $30 million a year, give or take a few pennies.

I used to ignore these sorts of “I polled a bunch of nameless baseball executives” stories, but now that I’m paid to read and write about baseball I’ve been paying pretty close attention to them this winter. One of the things I’ve noticed is that the nameless executives tend to undershoot what seem like reasonable salaries. This has mostly come in the arbitration context, but it has applied to free agents too.

While $30 million is a redonkulous amount of money, I can’t help but wonder if that’s still (gulp) low in the case of Pujols. Alex Rodriguez made $32 million last year and will do so again this year. He’ll make $31 million next year. After that the base dollars go down a touch, but then the incentives start kicking in, which could have him making more than $300 million over the life of his ten year deal.

Maybe Pujols won’t push as hard as Boras/A-Rod did, and maybe the Cardinals won’t cave the way the Yankees did, but I think a case could be made for Pujols getting more than $30 million a year.