Albert Pujols Watch Getting Nasty
Don’t know how many baseball fans out there noticed the throwaway line that Doug O’Neill, the winning trainer in last Saturday’s Kentucky Derby made. Soon after his horse, I’ll Have Another, won the 138th Run For The Roses, the Southern California-based judge of horseflesh made the comment that perhaps Albert Pujols should go back to St. Louis.
Whoa, as O’Neill might have said to his horse. It’s become that bad, huh? Albert Go Home? Yikes. Well, it is pretty bad, Pujols’ protestations that everything will be alright and that his numbers will be there at the end of the year notwithstanding. He has been the last valuable member of Los Angeles Angels batting order, not the most, as he figured to be.
Well, it’s about five weeks into the Major League season and if Pujols’ numbers are going to be there at the end of the year he’s going to have to pick up the pace to become Babe Ruth-like in home runs, Hack Wilson-like in RBIs, and Ty Cobb-like in average.
The greatest player of his generation has never had a sustained period of looking like a Class A hitter, not even when he was in Class A. After 32 games Pujols was batting .196 with one home run (One!), and seven RBIs. He’s been so out of sorts, so horrible at the plate, that the only person Pujols compares to in recent history is Adam Dunn of 2011. We are more used to comparing Pujols to Lou Gehrig. Heck, the Angels even benched him for a game.
Just last week I read a fairly lengthy article about Pujols where he sat still for questioning with a reporter and defended his snail-like start by saying A) He’s not worried; and B) Albert will be Albert and end up with his usual .300-plus average, 30 or so homers, and 100-plus RBIs.
Still, after helping lift the Cardinals to a World Series title, notably with a record-tying three-home-run game, nobody saw this coming. OK, Pujols has changed leagues, so there is a little adjustment. He changed teams. His family is still living in Missori. Those are all things to get used to, but Pujols has been supreme for more than a decade and even if adaptation is called for based on several alterations in his routine the situation has gone way beyond that.
It should be noted that this is the second season in a row Pujols has had a lengthy slump In 2011, Pujols missed a chunk of games to injury and also started very slowly. He did indeed catch fire late in the season when the Cardinals were driving for the pennant, but he finished one RBI shy of 100 and one hit shy of .300. Could be that slow start was foreshadowing.
No good explanation for this disaster, unless he needs glasses, or something. Pujols signed a record-breaking $240 million contract that is good for a decade. There was skepticism he wouldn’t be his old self by the end of it when in his early 40s.
But it hasn’t even been close to 40 weeks since Pujols signed with the Angels and suddenly he can’t hit at all? Hate to say it Al, but it is time to start worrying. No one is rooting for you to fail (except for maybe some angry Cardinals’ fans). We all want to see the Pujols we have admired for 11 years, though I grant you not a fraction as much as Angels owner Arte Moreno does.
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