Given that the details of Fielders contract haven't been released, we can't really do a proper comparison of the two. What we can do, however, is make a few assumptions. (And yes, they're going to be very broad assumptions, but they're generally supportable).

Let's assume that Fielder's contract is level for all 9 years, earning him about 23.8M per. Let's further assume that the long term inflation rate is 3%, as is generally forecasted for a short term period.

Discounting the nominal values:

Pujols' contract in 2012 dollars = 201.05M

Fielder's contract in 2012 dollars = 185.15M

This gives us a difference of 15.91M. But, that's not a fair comparison. We know that as of 2011, living in Detroit is 45% cheaper than living in Los Angeles. (Note: Home prices in Detroit are approximately 83% lower than those in LA, but I'll use the 45% Cost of Living Adjustment, for the sake of conservatism).

Let's further assume that the divide between Detroit and LA Decreases by 5% per year, as the automotive economy picks up, and as the housing market in the "Sand States" of the union continues to decline. So, from a 45% adjustment in 2012, we decline exponentially to a 29.9% adjustment in 2020.

So, if we adjust Fielders contract by dividing by one minus this adjustment (essentially adjusting it to get the same "purchase power" as Pujols' contract in LA gets --> Detroit Dollars * LA Purchase Power/Detroit Purchase Power = LA Dollars):

Fielder's annual purchase power adjusted salaries:

Discounting THIS cash flow stream at the same 3% gives him 297.3M in 2011 dollars, at the same purchase power level as Pujols is getting in LA.

So, you could argue that Fielder's contract is about 96M BETTER than Pujols', simply because of location.

Then again, you could argue (and I'd agree with you), that when you're talking about this much money, the general economy doesn't really impact you that significantly, and that you're less likely to actually live in the area where you're working, and thus Fielder won't draw on the massively cheaper cost of living in Detroit (because he doesn't have to).

But, assuming they live and spend most of their time where they work, Fielder can buy more toys with his contract than Pujols can buy with his. Still has to spend a lot of time in Detroit though. Which negates pretty much all the benefits.

So you can argue (and again, I'd agree), that this analysis isn't really relevant because of the raw dollars involved. It's kind of interesting, though...

So we're in the second half of January now, and Prince Fielder is not yet signed as a free agent. I think it's probably pretty easy for Scott Boras to get people interested in having Fielder be a part of their team, but the hesitation enters when they start talking about contract length. Teams would love to sign Fielder through 2015, without a doubt. If he said he was willing to sign a contract for just those years, the numbers could get silly. Unfortunately I think they're looking for nothing less than six years, and probably closer to eight or nine.

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Q: Is it true that NPB position players coming to MLB have all been busts other than Ichiro?

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Its that time again, folks. Thus far here's what we know:

• The Brewers are presumably going to need go with Mat Gamel a starting at 1B.
• The Brewers are presumably going to need a upgraded starting SS with Alex Gonzalez.
• Francisco Rodriguez, Takashi Saito, LaTroy Hawkins are all free agents, opening up three two holes in the bullpen, one of which was filled by Jose Veras, the other presumably will be filled by Zach Braddock.
• Francisco Rodriguez accepted the Brewers arbitration offer. I think Doug will try to keep him on the team for the entire year.

As a point of reference, my arb estimates will be in bold, MLBTR's will be italicized. The payroll total with MLBTR's estimates will also be italicized at the bottom. EDIT 1/8/12: I'll put the running total as accurate figures come out to the far left at the bottom of the article. Immediately to the right will be my original estimate, and to the far right the MLBTR estimate total.

So, without further ado, here's how things currently sit:

C - Jonathan Lucroy - $480k
C - George Kottaras - $700k ($750k / $800k)
1B - Mat Gamel - $480k
2B - Rickie Weeks - $11.0M
SS - Alex Gonzalez - $4.25M
3B - Aramis Ramirez - $6M
IF - Taylor Green - $480k
IF -
LF - Ryan Braun - $7M
CF - Nyjer Morgan - $2.35M ($2M / $1.9M)
RF - Corey Hart - $9.33M
OF - Carlos Gomez - $1.9625M ($2M / $1.8M)
OF - Norichika Aoki -

SP - Zack Greinke - $13.5M
SP - Yovani Gallardo - $5.75M
SP - Shaun Marcum - $6M (arb 3) $6.8M (Filing: $6.75/$8)
SP - Randy Wolf - $9.5M
SP - Chris Narveson - $480k

LR - Manny Parra - $1.2M ($1.5M / $1.2M)

RP - John Axford - $480k

RP - Kameron Loe - $2.175M ($1.75M/$2.8M)

RP - Marco Estrada - $480k
RP - Jose Veras - $2.5M (arb1)
RP - Zach Braddock - $480k
RP - Francisco Rodriguez - $8M ($11M was estimate)

2012 commitments to others:

Francisco Rodriguez option: $500k (negotiated deal to remove vesting clause, Mets paying initial $3.5M)

Yuniesky Betancourt buyout: $2M

Total 2012 Payroll commitments:

$94.5775 $97.19 $98.49

As always, click RIGHT HERE to get to the Google Docs spreadsheet I keep running. More assumptions and discussion after the jump!

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Hey folks,

I kept this off the front page because most of you won't care, but a handful of you might be interested in helping me with an issue I've stumbled across and either know or be capable of figuring out a solution.

I use Google Reader to produce the Mug each morning, because it's the easiest way I've found to peruse new content from hundreds of sites daily. In 99% of situations it works great, and I'm able to use it nicely with some of SBN's proprietary tools. Twitter, however, has become an exception.

I have several Twitter feeds in my reading list, but for whatever reason Twitter seems to have gone out of its way to prevent users from getting RSS feeds for individual accounts. My old feeds still work, but if I try to add a new one (like new MLB.com Pirates beat reporter Tom Singer, for example), I can't. I frequently use tweets as a source for the Mug, but not being able to get them in Google Reader makes it increasingly difficult for me to efficiently find them.

Anyone know how I might be able to fix this?

I had heard the news that the Journal Sentinel wanted you to pay to use their website. I had also heard that you could visit 20 "articles" for free a month. What I didn't know was how much of a crock this was going to be.

First of all, for Brewer fans there is the Brewers BLOG. Yeah that's right, a blog. A blog is something that you can only visit online. That is the only forum you can see a blog in. Basically what it is is an insider breaking news post to alert people instantly before the information gets fleshed out, updated and posted to an actual article. Did I mention that the only way you can see a blog is online, not in the paper newspaper that people pay for?

I noticed that by only reading these blogs, I got a notification that I could only read a few more for free. UMM HELLO? I pay Time Warner every month to use the internet, and blogs are something you can only access on the internet, not in a print edition of the newspaper. In short, I am not "raiding" the Journal Sentinel of any money by accessing their BLOGS. If I was reading their actual articles online (You know the ones published in the newspaper) then maybe we could talk about how I am not properly giving money to the Journal Sentinel.

What's going to be worse is spring training. Remember all the cool features like getting to know a certain player and other "cactus juice" tidbits? For every one game played there could be potentially five places for you to click with the different features posted, and those five places you click will all be counted against your 20 allotted views for the month.

During the regular season, it will be the same way. There is the game wrap, the "clubhouse confidential notes" which includes the attendance up to this point and various other things of interest, and the "full count" post which is a key stat to watch. For each baseball game played there could be a number of items to click on.

I guess the biggest beef I had was with the stuff they are charging for that is indeed "online only" and this goes beyond brewer coverage. You want an up to the minute weather forecast? Or how about reading a post from the associated press about various news items from the day, which is linked on the jsonline site? Yep that will cost you a click against your 20, even though you definitely wouldn't wait till the paper comes out the next morning to read that stuff when you can find it posted online right away up to the minute. That's if the actual physical paper would even put the AP stuff in there, I don't know. Any blogs, from sports to business to the online chats that are posted by writers to the relationships blogs to the tv critic blogs should NOT be counted against what you can get for free.

Main point: I don't have a problem with trying to gain an edge in today's growing and competitive marketplace. I completely understand things change and the world is not the same as it once was. However you people at the Journal Sentinel really need to understand what exactly people should be paying for and what they should not be paying for. I cannot live with the complete and utter bologna that you guys consider "links you should be paying for."

From now on I get my sports news from other sources such as FoxSports, OnMilwaukee.com, KFFL, Brewers Bar, MLB Trade Rumors, Milwaukee Magazine, and others.

Thanks for being fun JS!

I posted this over on the Facebook site too, but I just wanted to get some feedback from the community and see if I was the only one noticing anything (and if so, should stop overthinking it).

First off, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, Jon Baas is running a replay of the 2011 Brewers season, following all the same trades, ownership decisions, and schedule that the team followed. The only difference is he's making all the lineup/roster decisions based on the community's vote.

Link

Does anyone else see this replay as being a bit of a reality stretch?

So far, while I've been excited to see the potential for so many grand stats (and wins) from the 2011 squad, the numbers just don't seem right.

I mean, 25 saves for Axford? 46-21 record? All on June 12?

That would put John on pace for almost 60 saves, maybe more.

It also puts the Brewers on pace for 109 wins (That's just a guesstimate, but the rough math is there).

Not to mention other "on paces": Lucroy with 21 HR? Braun with 40? Fielder with 50? Those numbers, while possible, aren't very realistic.

I realize that the 2011 team was strong, but beyond the Fielder/Braun combo, a solid rest of the lineup, and a slightly above average rotation, I'd say that the results from this past season were far more realistic than this replay has been so far. No amount of changed decisions/line-ups could produce such drastic changes in the stats.

All of these numbers seem even more especially "flubbed" when you take into account that Craig Counsell has seen most of the starting SS time, Gamel, Boggs, and Farris all received noticeable promotions to the Majors, etc.

I'm not necessarily criticizing Jon or his replay. I've enjoyed following so far and will continue to follow it until it's over. It just seems to me like the simulator he's using is far off from what we could call reality.

It's barely after New Year's Day, but believe it or not, it might actually be about as good of a time as any before spring training to get a glimpse of what this year's Brewers will look like. The starting lineup, rotation, and bullpen are all about as set as they'll be until March, and the only two big questions remaining until then are whether Ryan Braun will be suspended and whether the Brewers will sign Norichika Aoki as a backup outfielder.

Given that, I thought it'd be fun to look deeper at the Brewers' ZiPS projections, which went up earlier this week. Those projections only have some of the basic stats, and when I saw a Viva El Birdos post this week converting the Cardinals' numbers to wOBA, FIP, and ultimately WAR, I thought I'd give it a shot for the Brewers.

So these are my own 2012 WAR calculations for the Brewers based on ZiPS projections, plus a bit of my own estimates on defense and playing time. The plate appearances (and, to a lesser extent, the innings pitched) for each player are all knocked down a bit from a full season's worth to account for the possible for injury for each player. Defensive estimates are in runs relative to league average per 150 games and come from a rough average of the past two years of UZR and Baseball Prospectus' Total Zone-based FRAA. (If you want to know all the nitty-gritty stuff about how I calculated my WAR, I put the methodological details at the end.)

Here's what the offense looks like:

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Here is a look at some of the top comparables to the Brewers top starting pitchers: Zack Greinke, Yovani Gallardo, Shaun Marcum, Randy Wolf and Chris Narveson as per the MLB Depth Charts website.

In this exercise I used 2010-2011 data, looking at the skilled stats of K/9, BB/9 and GB/FB, while coming up with a similarity score based on these three stats for each Brewers starting pitcher. The cutoff was having pitched at least 150 IP as a starter (exception for Matt Moore and Stephen Strasburg, Fans Projections FG) over the last two years. Here is the top 25 list for each Brewers starter. There is some bias when comparing NL pitchers with AL pitchers due to the slightly inflated strikeout rate for NL pitchers who don't have to pitch to a DH, so feel free to make a mental adjustment for those pitchers. If you wanted to take something like this to the next level, you could look at age, contract status, handedness etc... but I've chosen to look at these three stats which are highly controlled by a pitchers skill level.

Greinke's and Gallardo's list of comparables are pretty impressive. Marcum has a solid but not spectacular list. Narveson begins the drop off, which is mostly due to his BB/9 that climbs to over 3, then Randy Wolf rounds things out with some pretty non-impressive numbers.

What a season. 3 of us have earned our champion title to put in our sig. Let's see who ended this wonderful journey that included me delivering my own daughter this season (no, Meiz, I will never shut up about that. It's going on my resume):

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