In Part One of the article, I looked at the best comps out there for Albert Pujols and how well they've performed past age 31.  The results are mixed overall, but there is some reason for hope that Albert could produce well into his late thirties.  In this part of the article, I'll take a look at a projection for that offense and try to place a reasonable value on what he should be able to provide.

Lessons from the Comparisons:

In part one, we learned some things from looking at the best comparisons for Pujols' performance through his age 31 season:

• Pujols easily ranks amongst the best hitters of all time through age 31
• Most of the players he compares to are the legends of the game that played at a time when medicine and conditioning were not what they are today
• Two of the recent players on the list, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Juan Gonzalez, each had an injury history that led to declining performances or early exits from baseball
• Pujols personality / makeup should make him a better bet than some of his comps such as Manny Ramirez or Jimmie Foxx
• The remaining players in the comparison set who didn't suffer major injuries or personality issues (Aaron, Mays & Robinson) were able to perform well up to age 40

Control Group Performance:

The first step in the projection is to look at the peformance of the players in the control group for as much of their careers as was available. In order to isolate the impact that age has on performance instead of injury, I selected four players from the ten who did not suffer from career altering / ending injury or disease.  Those four players were Manny Ramirez, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays. 

First, let's take a look at their performance from ages 29 through 42:

Looking at the aggregate performance leads one to believe there is a fairly significant decline.  However, it is interesting to note that though there is a decline through age 40, it is a moderate one.  Using the average of the age 29-31 seasons as the basis for comparison, here is the percentage decline for those four players:

In every season in age 32 and beyond, these four players retained a minimum of 91% of their value from their age 29-31 seasons. This is a rather remarkable finding and is a real reason for optimism that Pujols will remain an elite player if he can avoid major injury.

Projecting Pujols:

Now it is time to apply what we've learned to Pujols.  For projecting value, I'm going to make the switch from wOBA to WAR (wins above replacement).  The reason for the switch is that there's a general rule of thumb that one WAR is worth about $5M to a baseball team.  This is obviously a very rough estimate of value, but it is what we have available for the analysis.

The baseline value for projecting Albert's value is his performance in his age 29-31 seasons.  He had WAR values of 9.0, 7.5 and 5.1 for an average of 7.2. Three separate projections are used:

1. A flat 90% decline through age 40 and then an 80% decline for his age 41 season.  This is more conservative than the comparison group as they held more value in every year through age 40.
2. A 5% per year decline in value.  In this method, Pujols would decline by five percent every single year throughout the contract.
3. Accelerating decline.  Through age 36, the rate of decline is 5% per year.  Through age 39, the decline becomes 10% per year. For ages 40 and 41 the rate of decline would be 20% per year.

Those profiles look like this:

If you prefer to see the chart with projected dollar value it looks like this:

Summing the value in each one of these approaches gives the following results:

1. Flat 90:  $320.4M
2. 95%/yr:  $288.9M
3. Accelerated:  $265.2M

Caveats:

1. The risk of a career altering or ending injury is huge and largely ignored in the analysis.  How this risk is assessed will certainly alter the projected value over the duration of the contract.  What is presented here should be considered the upper bound of the value Pujols will provide as a result of this caveat alone.
2. While it is most likely that Pujols is the age that he claims, there are still some around baseball who believe he was older than his reported age of 31 in 2011.  Given the collapse that has occurred after age 40 for even the players with the most longevity, even 1-2 years of difference would make a huge difference in value.
3. It should not be ignored that 2011 was the worst season of Pujols career and that he's been trending downward for several years.  Looking at the graphs in part one of the article, every player has had good streaks and bad streaks so using a three year average is the best way to perform the analysis  But the current downward trend in performance is certainly troubling when handing out a $200M+ commitment.
4. Estimating value based on WAR is tenuous, at best.  I am unsure of a better way, but the true value to the team would depend on the other options available, where the team stands in wins (the marginal value of an additional win increases with the win total) and other factors.  Not to mention that the $5M / WAR is something of a SWAG estimate in the first place.
5. The sample size of the control group is...small.  It is impossible to find a large selection of comparable players, though, as there simply haven't been many comparable players to Pujols through age 31.  When you only start with a list of 10 and then eliminate to attempt to get to performance related decline instead of injury related decline the sample shrinks even further.

Conclusion:

Albert Pujols is one of the 10-20 greatest players to have ever put on a uniform.  Even with the caveats listed above, it is extremely likely that he will provide a minimum of $200M worth of value over the next nine seasons.  Barring major injury, it is highly likely that he'd be worth around $275M.  After accounting for the risks listed above, I would be comfortable with a nine year contract for Albert (ten years would actually be better) for up to around $230M.