Prince Albert Pujols, he reigneth

For my eyes only! 1-2, 1 RBI--he needs one more hit and one more RBI...and he should try to win the game, too.

.299/99...noooooo!

^numerologist

could still get game 163

eh, not looking likely...

was this his "worst" season to date?

by far

embarrassing disaster imo

It's all downhill from here now that he is finally in his late 20s.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfFGBb7CMAAF3HL.jpg

I'll put this here...Didn't know you could make up and download your own WAR graphs on Fangraphs. Here's one for cumulative WAR showing Pujols' downturn the last two seasons:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/cumulativewar_zps562c47b6.png

i didn't know that either. good thing i got no plans this afternoon!

I'm kind of curious to see what Pujols and Hamilton do this year and see if they have some bounce back in them.

I still think both the Angels and Rangers look kind of thin in starting pitching. Joe Blanton is like LA's #4 and he was pretty bad last year. Both clubs got a couple of guys counted on that haven't really had a season putting up some innings.

Angels rotation last year was a dumpster fire. I blame arte for the fixation on declining sluggers..

pujols will presumably be at least a bit healthier this year. he was such a mess last season. i bet he'll be better but still off his second half pace from 2012

yeah, if he's truly 100% from his injuries, or even close, i think he's a great bounce-back candidate. after watching him play a ton of games in STL, he was really showing some wear and tear even in 2010 and 2011. noticeably limping, all the time. and he was still playing pretty well in those years! given that he's turning 39 this year, i think that his upside is a repeat of 2011 (4.4 fWAR, .299/.384/.541)

also he dropped his lawsuit against asshole jack clark, because clark issued an apology. the most sincere apologies are issued months after the fact, with a pending lawsuit

"given that he's turning 39 this year"

heh

The ghost of Steve Shasta lives!

494, getting close. (If it still means anything--it should.)

Obviously too early to tell, but I get the feeling he's going to settle into a Frank Thomas-like second half of his career: the power will come and go, and he'll still have some big home-run years, but BA and OBP markedly down from his prime.

Will be even worse because most of Pujols OBP was driven by IBB. Without those and with the average plummeting he might never get an OPS higher than 900 again.

If he spends a few years hitting behind a decent leadoff hitter and Mike Trout then he'll see loads of pitches with men on base, which will boost his BA and a bunch of other counting stats.

Hasn't he spent the last two years hitting behind Trout though to little effect?

He has been playing through an injury for the last 3 years. I'm expecting a very good year from in 2014, actually.

lol WARP3

not sure how accurate it is to say his OBP has been "driven" by IBBs when the guy averaged 130 walks a season

Alex's statement sounded odd to me too, but I checked, and he's right--a high percentage of Pujols' walks have been intentional over his career. Here are the top 26 HR guys (everyone with 500+, plus Pujols) reordered according to their IBB/BB percentages:

Banks -- 0.275 (missing first two seasons)
Bonds -- 0.269
Pujols -- 0.258
Aaron -- 0.213 (missing first season)
McCovey -- 0.193
Griffey -- 0.188
Murray -- 0.167
Sosa -- 0.166
Manny -- 0.163
Ted Williams -- 0.160 (last six seasons only)
Frank Robinson -- 0.154
Mays -- 0.145 (missing first three seasons)
Schmidt -- 0.133
Palmeiro -- 0.127
Reggie Jackson -- 0.119
McGwire -- 0.114
Killebrew -- 0.103 (missing first season)
Frank Thomas -- 0.101
Thome -- 0.099
Mathews -- 0.091
Sheffield -- 0.088
Mantle -- 0.087 (missing first four seasons)
A-Rod -- 0.074
Ruth -- n/a
Foxx -- n/a
Ott -- n/a

(My way of avoiding the drudgery of marking book reports.)

Obviously overall lineup strength plays a part in this (significant, I would guess), and also prevailing managerial strategies through the years, but holy cow, Banks--I would have bet my house on Bonds having the highest percentage. And lineup aside, Mantle's figure is weirdly low. Williams' figure is only for his age 36-41 seasons; bet he was up around 20% in his prime.

Pujols has only drawn 100 walks three times in his career, and never more than 115 in a season. Over a quarter of them have been intentional.

Trivia question I tripped over in a article about his impending 500th: who was slated to play left field for the Cardinals the year he broke in?

Cabrera's 0.225 would place him fourth on that list.

Trivia question I tripped over in a article about his impending 500th: who was slated to play left field for the Cardinals the year he broke in?

Lou Brock

Oh, wait -- you said "broke in," not "born."

Brock was slated to play left field for the Jays this year, but no.

oh i feel like we've had this conversation before -- on bbref, the BB columnn includes IBBs, right? that's confusing

Yes.

Mario Mendoza -- 0.077 (Mantle/A-Rod territory)...which may or may not say something about how meaningful a stat this is.

xposts bobby bonilla, right?

Well done. Found that a little disorienting.

I was going to guess Andy Van Slyke.

Banks IBB #s hugely inflated cuz Cubs both stunk and he didn't walk a huge amount otherwise. Unlike Bonds who did.

hit 499th in 1st in DC

His 500th in the 5th. Congrats!

PUJOLS BACK

weird: looking at pujols' career defensive numbers, bbref has him as a huge plus (not including the positional adjustment), which is how i've always thought of him, while fangraphs has him as a huge minus

are you looking at the "DEF" line on fg? that includes position

right, but on bbref he's +25 runs above average in the field (including position) where on FG he's -70

i mean i get that they use different methods but that's a huge difference

yeah BBRef uses DRS and FG uses UZR, i guess they have some different ideas

fwiw pujols has the highest UZR on record for a 1b. i think it only goes back to 2002 but still.

http://espn.go.com/blog/jayson-stark/post/_/id/769/appreciating-albert-pujols

just read about this, congrats.

"Only 26 of the thousands of men who have played in the major leagues have ever reached that milestone. At 34, he is the third-youngest to do so."

not sure about that last part however. :-)

i feel like people deal a certain amount of schadenfreude or at least snarkiness about his past two years, or at least LAA's incompetence, but i'm always rooting for him and i still hope he ends up with 700 homers

he's a lot easier to root for now that he's out of the NL Central ;)