Maybe Albert Pujols will deliver a productive farewell tour with the Cardinals. Maybe he won’t.
But the Pujols signing is guaranteed to deliver a big win on two fronts: marketing and player development.
Baseball’s stupid lockout shut down the Cardinals’ sales machine during the offseason. There was no Winter Warmup to prime the merchandising pump. Spring training, another big sales opportunity, was disrupted too.
It was easy to imagine some light crowds at Busch Stadium early on this season, just as we saw during the first several weeks after pandemic restrictions were lifted.
So signing Pujols for modest money was a brilliant play from the business standpoint.