Albert Pujols has spent the years since his 2022 retirement staying close to the game: special assistant to Commissioner Rob Manfred, analyst work for Netflix and NBC, winter-ball and World Baseball Classic managing, and a long personal-services relationship with the Angels. This week he added another chapter. He wanted to own a team.
“I was part of a group but it didn’t work out,” Pujols told Front Office Sports. “We went after a couple of ball clubs that got sold over the last eight months, but they bid a little bit higher than us.”
Those clubs line up with the two most recent major-league sales. The San Diego Padres’ controlling interest transferred in August to a group led by José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones at a then-record $3.9 billion valuation. Weeks later, Arte Moreno agreed to sell a controlling stake in the Los Angeles Angels to Stan Kroenke at a reported $4 billion, resetting the record again. Both deals closed — or were agreed — inside the window Pujols described.
They are also the same two franchises that interviewed him last offseason for manager.
Pujols was widely viewed as Arte Moreno’s preferred choice in Anaheim before talks ended over compensation, staff, and resources. He then interviewed with the Padres; that job went elsewhere. Jon Heyman, speaking on The Show, put a finer point on the Angels conversations: Pujols “interviewed with the Angels and with the Padres” and, Heyman said, “wanted not only a $6 million salary… he wanted control of everything.”
A $6 million manager salary would have placed him among the highest-paid skippers in the sport. “Control of everything” is the kind of demand that rarely survives first contact with an existing ownership group and front office. Pujols himself acknowledged the tension between the two ambitions. “I won’t be able to do both, being the manager and the owner, so whatever comes first,” he told FOS.
That is the through-line. Pujols is not simply waiting for a dugout. He is testing how much of an organization he can shape — from the owner’s box if the money lines up, from the manager’s office if a club will give him the authority and the paycheck. The last eight months showed the price of entry on the ownership side has jumped into the $4 billion neighborhood. The last offseason showed that even a three-time MVP, two-time World Series champion, and 703-home-run hitter still has to negotiate the gap between legend and day-to-day control.
Pujols remains one of the most connected figures in the sport. He managed the Dominican Republic in the WBC, won a Caribbean Series title with Leones del Escogido, and keeps a formal tie to the commissioner’s office. None of that automatically translates into a controlling interest or a blank check in the dugout. What it does mean is that the next time a franchise comes available — or the next time a manager’s chair opens — his name will be in the room again, this time with a clearer statement of what he is actually chasing.
For now, the clubs he pursued have new owners. The jobs he interviewed for have new managers. Pujols is still looking for the first door that opens on his terms.
