If Albert Pujols gets what he reportedly wants in a new contract, he will earn a notable distinction.

At $27 million to $30 million a year, the 31-year-old first baseman would not only make more money than any other Cardinal and any other Major League ballplayer. He would likely earn more than any of the 1.3 million working men and women in St. Louis.

And that makes Pujols an interesting lens through which to ask this question: Is he worth it? Is anyone? Economically speaking, what return on investment do teams get from their most expensive superstars? How do they even know?

All kinds of companies wrestle with the compensation question. But it's harder to figure in pro sports — where salaries can reach the stratosphere — than in some other industries. The impact of a salesman can be easily calculated from the deals he closes. A lawyer counts billable hours. A CEO, stock performance and revenue.

Pujols has said he will not continue talks on a contract extension once he reports to spring training Wednesday. Without an extension, he would become a free agent at the end of the season, able to negotiate and sign with any team.

As that deadline nears, both Pujols' camp and the Cardinals have declined to talk publicly about their negotiations. But there are two distinct ways of weighing the worth of a ballplayer.

From the player's perspective, it's often about what some other guy makes. That's why the $27.5 million the Yankees pay Alex Rodriguez each year seems to have become a floor for what the Cardinals might pay Pujols, who made $16 million last season. For the team signing the check, it's nearly impossible to count how many Cardinals fans buy tickets because of Pujols, or how many fans might buy to see another player or players the team might sign if it lets Pujols walk — or how many games the team might win.

And how do you quantify the impact any one player has on that ineffable bond between a team and its fans, which is the true economic asset of a business such as the Cardinals?

Still, baseball insiders and economists try to find the numbers to translate exceptional talent into dollar values. That calculus, no doubt, will play heavily in the Cardinals' decision on whether to pay Pujols more than any other ballplayer in history — one that rests on a cold calculation of how much he adds to the team's bottom line.

ONE PLAYER'S VALUE?

Teams track player performance through a host of statistics — batting average, home runs, errors and so on — and all of them feed into salary negotiations to varying degrees. But to some of the sport's stat-heads, no individual number counts more than "wins above replacement" — an attempt to measure how many games a team won because it had a certain player on the field, instead of a typical journeyman.

Every season since 2005, Pujols has led the National League in this figure, according to the website baseball-reference.com. It credits him with, on average, 8.5 wins each of the last six years. For his career, Pujols' WAR is 83.8, second among active players only to Rodriguez, who has four more full seasons under his belt.

So no player, by that measure, has more value than Pujols in producing wins. But translating wins into dollars can get stickier.

While it's common sense that winners usually sell more tickets than losers, it's hard to draw a strong parallel between a team's play on the field and its performance on the balance sheet. The Mets have made the playoffs just once this decade yet perennially rank among baseball elite in both revenue and profits. Winners such as Tampa Bay and Minnesota languish at the bottom of the league's financial tables.

Partly that's because some victories are worth more than others.

Vince Gennaro, a baseball economist and author of "Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball," has worked for years to refine the precise value of a victory.

It varies widely, he writes, depending on the team, its market size and number of wins. The win that clinches the Yankees a playoff spot is worth far more than Arizona's season-ending 65th victory over the Dodgers last October.

That value then accrues to the players whose "wins above replacement" are the difference between making the playoffs — and the profits that come with that — or not.

Gennaro, who also works as a consultant for several major league teams, declined a request for an interview about Pujols' worth to the Cardinals. But it doesn't take an economist to realize that eight or nine wins often makes the difference between October baseball at Busch and a quiet ballpark's being mothballed for winter. That calculation is clear: October means big money.

THE PLAYOFF PAYOFF

Postseason revenue can vary because of a host of factors, but in general the money a team makes depends largely on how many home games it plays.

One back-of-the-envelope estimate comes from Maury Brown, president of the Business of Sports Network, who projects that teams draw $1 million in revenue for each "required" home game in the first round (the first three games in a best-out-of-five series), and it goes up from there. By Brown's figures, the Cardinals' World Series run in 2006 earned them $19.1 million. In the 2005 playoffs, they pocketed $8.6 million. But those are just estimates.

More specifics came last summer, when financial reports for a few teams were leaked to the website deadspin.com. These revealed that the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim took in $12.1 million in five home playoff games in 2009, while a first-round exit in 2008, with two home games, earned the team $4.4 million. Tampa Bay's trip to the World Series in 2008, according to their leaked financials, brought in nearly $17.7 million in playoff revenue.

That's a lot of money, and playoff appearances tend to boost ticket sales the following season. But even then it's less money than Pujols wants. So in the unlikely event he carries the Cardinals to the World Series every season, the team's postseason payoff would still fall short of Pujols' $30 million tab.

That's when you have to start adding up the things you cannot count.

THE WHOLE PACKAGE

Pujols, after all, is not just a collection of statistics. He is one of the game's most exciting players — when he's at bat, people watch. He has an exceptionally wholesome reputation. And if he re-signs here, he would probably become the rare superstar in modern baseball to spend his entire career with one team.

All that reflects well on his employer and boosts its brand, said Jim Fisher, a professor of marketing at St. Louis University. Although it might be possible for the Cardinals to replace the victories Pujols generates, replacing the whole package would be far more difficult.

"It's a very positive kind of overlay between player and team. The Cardinals are obviously well-attuned to that," Fisher said. "They're trying to get their story out, and Pujols helps tell that story."

As the club's best player, Pujols already features heavily in its marketing, from ads to signage to ticket bundles called "Pujols Packs." If he re-signs, expect even more of that, Fisher said, as the Cardinals try to leverage the best return from their big investment.

But where does the value of Pujols end and the franchise begin?

Forbes Magazine pegs the Cardinals as the eighth-most-valuable team in baseball, with a worth of $488 million. Of that, $64 million derives from the value of the team's "brand" — its image as a classy, consistent winner with generations of fans across the middle of the country. That image has been built by decades of greats, from Stan Musial to Bob Gibson to Whitey Herzog to Pujols.

But that lineage is also a reminder of why there are limits to what talent can command in the marketplace. In every industry, great performers come and go. Companies, or teams, live on.

"At the end of the day, the player is not the franchise," Fisher said. "Nothing succeeds like success, and a winner will be able to sell tickets regardless."

Some franchises have taken this notion to heart. The Boston Red Sox, for instance, have in recent years let a parade of big-name free agents walk away, rather than sign them to the kind of long-term deal Pujols wants — and they've made the playoffs six of the last eight seasons and sold out every home game since early 2003.

So for all the warm-and-fuzzies about the bond between player and team, it's important to remember that every business's first duty is to its bottom line, said David Yermack, an expert in executive compensation at New York University. Blowing the bank for a star makes little sense.

Yermack says the Cardinals would probably crunch all the numbers, from ticket sales to TV revenue to T-shirts, throw in a little extra for good will, and set their price. If Pujols wants too much, he advised, they would be wise to let him go.

"It's a cold-hearted calculation."

Steve Giegerich of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.