St Louis slugger Albert Pujols arrived at spring training on Thursday vowing his lack of a new deal with the Cardinals won’t be a distraction this season.
Pujols and the Cardinals failed to agree on a new contract before the Wednesday deadline imposed by the three-time National League Most Valuable Player.
Pujols said he imposed the deadline to keep protracted negotiations from becoming an issue as the Major League Baseball season progressed.
“You have to put a deadline ... because you don’t want to bring distractions to the ballclub,” said Pujols, who also asked reporters not to solicit speculation about his future from his teammates.
The 31-year-old Dominican is now all-but certain to test his value as a free agent after the upcoming campaign, in which he is due to make US$16 million, one-quarter of it deferred. However, his agent insisted on Wednesday that Pujols could yet end up re-signing with the Cardinals after the season.
Pujols has played all 10 of his major league seasons with the Cardinals, becoming the only player in Major League Baseball history to hit at least 30 home runs in each year of his first decade in the league.
Pujols hit .312 with 42 homers and batted in 118 runs. He has a career batting average of .331.
Meanwhile, another contract negotiation involving a slugger was completed, as MLB home run champion Jose Bautista and the Toronto Blue Jays finalized a US$65 million, five-year contract on Thursday.
The 30-year-old Bautista led the league with 54 homers last season and was eligible for arbitration.
Bautista gets US$8 million this year and US$14 million in each of the following four seasons. Toronto have a US$14 million option for 2016, with a US$1 million buyout.
Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos said giving Bautista a lengthy contract “is part of the risk” of signing a player after one exceptional season.
“The easy thing for me and the organization to do was to not do anything and say: ‘Well, it was one year,’” Anthopoulos said. “The conservative approach was to let him play it out. If he has a great season maybe he prices himself out of what we thought made sense.”
Bautista had requested US$10.5 million and the Blue Jays had offered US$7.6 million when players and teams exchanged proposed arbitration salaries last month.
Bautista hit .260 with 54 homers and 124 RBIs last year, when he played 113 games in the outfield and 48 at third base.
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