If you're convinced the Official Albert Pujols Contract Deadline is something to which he and Dan Lozano will hew, this is bad news: By my watch then deadline has officially passed, and we're without a contract extension for the best player in baseball. If the St. Louis Cardinals offered a contract that "fell short of $30 million" but not of $25 million I can't exactly blame Bill DeWitt and John Mozeliak for refusing to give this a shot, but Lozano and Pujols apparently want a deal that baseball teams will find difficult to justify on a value basis.
↵The same Unnamed Sources we've been dealing with all afternoon say they'll be a Mozeliak acknowledgement of the deadline's passing around noon, at which point we should hopefully know more. It will be interesting, if nothing else, to have some named sources.
↵And if you're looking for the bright side of things—there isn't really one, but you're allowed to look for it—I recommend the point-of-view Alex Fritz tweeted in the direction of about a half an hour ago: "I, for one, am excited by the thought of Albert Pujols' possible performance in a contract year." The good thing about hoping for a contract year in this scenario is that it's not like he can drive his asking price any higher.
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