Mike Trout is the catch of the day when it comes to center field prospects. After posting a gaudy .338/.422/.508 slash line in the minors, Trout made his big league debut this past season. Though his performance wasn’t all that impressive, Trout still has one of the highest ceilings of any prospect in baseball. But even though Trout no longer needs to prove himself in the minors, he may find himself back there again this season. That’s because the Los Angeles Angels currently have five potential starters in the outfield for just three spots. Can Trout steal away a starting job, or will he be left swimming upstream all season?

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Recently I was reflecting on just how historically stacked third base seems to have been in the 1970s. Brooks Robinson and Ron Santo were nearing the end of their careers, but still had some good years left. George Brett and Mike Schmidt were famously taken back-to-back in the 1971 draft (that’s right, any team in baseball — including the Royals and Phillies, could have had them both) and while both initially struggled, well, do I even need to finish that thought? Graig Nettles, Darrell Evans, and Buddy Bell were all active and all have at least somewhat compelling Hall of Fame cases. And that is without getting into other third basemen who had excellent careers like Sal Bando and Ron Cey.

The position is not nearly as stacked these days, but there are obviously a number of excellent players, from the big guns in the New York and Boston to the young superstars in Tampa Bay and Washington to underrated guys in Cincinnati and Texas. But those sorts of players will probably get plenty of Fan Projections. Today, I want to take a look at less-scrutinized, but still interesting, third base situations that deserve your input — those of the Orioles, White Sox, and Angels.

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A month ago, Albert Pujols agreed to terms with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It was a deal that the media and public mostly ignored due to the intense coverage of the trade that sent Nick Schmidt to the Colorado Rockies as the player-to-be-named-later in San Diego’s Huston Street acquisition. Who could  forget what a monumental day that was? Apparently desperate to get back in the limelight, Pujols and the Angels have released final terms on the contract between the two. I now will cede to their wishes and relay that information.

Pujols will be guaranteed $12 million this year, followed by $16 million in 2013 and then $23 million in 2014. That’s followed up with $1 million raises each season, concluding with a $30 million payday in 2021. There’s a bunch of other stuff in there, and that’s probably what took so long to write out and agree upon. But these are the most important figures, totaling $240 million for sure over 10 years.

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Looking at Howie Kendrick’s performance record, it seems odd that he has only played two full seasons. Those two seasons — his two most recent campaigns — paint a starkly different picture. If Kendrick performs the way he did last year for the foreseeable future then the Angels scored big by extending his contract before he reaches free agency, but even a baseline Kendrick performance will make this contract a good one.

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On Monday night, the Nippon Ham Fighters announced they would accept the Texas Rangers’ $51.7M bid for 25-year-old right hander Yu Darvish. The decision ended a months-long rumorfest concerning Japan’s best pitcher last season — and put on full display the oddity that is the Nippon Professional Baseball posting system.

Much digital ink has spilled in service to the tricky nature of the MLB-NPB player transfer process. It stinks of inefficiencies; it dances around yet-fully-realized moral hazards; and it is, quite possibly and quite rightly, nearing its demise.
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Fan Projection Target season is upon us, a time for FanGraphs readers to show those computers what’s what and out-project them using only intuitive genius. In past seasons, relievers have sometimes suffered from a relative lack of ballots, and while I am not sure this is true of all the relievers mentioned below, it might be a good place to start getting into projecting bullpens. How will some notable 2011 rookie relievers fare in 2011?

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The Milwaukee Brewers were perhaps a bit surprised last week when reliever Francisco Rodriguez accepted their arbitration offer, likely putting the team on the hook for something north of the $11.5 million Rodriguez made last season in the third year of a three-year contract he originally signed with the Mets.

While Brewer GM Doug Melvin has stated that the K-Rod situation doesn’t represent a miscalculation on the club’s part — and while the move hasn’t prevented the Brewers from signing shortstop Alex Gonzalez and third baseman Aramis Ramirez in the meantime — it’s also likely the case that Melvin et al. would prefer not to make a set-up man the team’s highest-paid player in 2012. With Zack Greinke due a (non-Rodriguez) team-high of $13.5 million in 2012, that’s a distinct possibility.

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Episode 115
If you’re the sort of person who likes baseball, comedy jokes, and smiles as bright as the sun, then you’re precisely the sort of person who will care — or already does care — deeply about Sam Miller of the OC Register. In this episode, Sam talks at some length about the effects of the Albert Pujols signing. Also discussed: why not to write a novel, lowered expectations.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min. play time.)

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When he accepted a 10-year, $254 million offer from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim last week, free-agent first baseman Albert Pujols ended a tremendous chapter in his baseball career. He also joined a team in California — the state with the highest tax rate in Major League Baseball for those who earn as much as Pujols.

Various sources have noted that Pujols’ decision to sign with the Angels, over the St. Louis Cardinals, could see him forgo millions more dollars to income taxes. Certainly, his leaving Missouri — where the highest marginal tax rate is 6%, plus the 1% local rate in St. Louis — now puts Pujols in a state where the highest tax rate is 10.3%.

But athlete taxation isn’t anywhere near as cut-and-dried as it might seem. Most definitely, it’s not simply comparing rates between states or multiplying a player’s salary by the highest rate. That’s not how it works. As we discussed earlier this offseason, the ‘Jock Tax’ is fairly convoluted and it’s far more intensive.

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With the Angels throwing a small mountain of money at Albert Pujols, a common justification for the expenditure is that the revenues he creates through gains in attendance and merchandise sales will make up for the costs of acquiring him in the first place. This argument is a pretty common one among people looking to defend free agent prices, but it has one fatal flaw – there isn’t much in the way of evidence to support the idea.

The merchandise argument is almost a total non-starter, in fact. As part of MLB’s revenue sharing plan, the profits from sales of jerseys, hats, and the like are pooled into the central fund and distributed equally to each team around the league. While about one-quarter of all baseball jerseys sold have a Yankees logo on them, each team shares equally in the profits from those sales. Even if every person to walk through the gates in Anaheim next year purchased a Pujols jersey, the Angels wouldn’t get much benefit from those sales.

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