Cut/Released: Albert Pujols

[Cas]

I used to be annoyed that Keith Hernandez played one or two years too long and thus his career BA fell below .300, and in an earlier generation that happened to Mickey Mantle his last few years...Pujols somehow hung around long enough to suffer the same fate. Of course BA doesn't mean what it used to in baseball but for a guy who was a .332 career hitter in St. Louis, yeesh.

With Mantle, he had the excuse that the offensive environment he played in cratered. He wasn't as good as he had been at his peak (of course), but when he hit .237 in 1968 (bringing his career batting average down to .298 from .302), he had the third-best OBP in the AL and eighth-best OPS+.

Of course, what everyone (including Mantle himself) saw was a man who couldn't play first base and couldn't run without pain hitting .237 with "only" eighteen home runs and 97 strikeouts, so just how good he still was as a hitter was lost. Had the league not been so pitcher-friendly in 67-68, the same player might have been a .250 hitter instead of a .240 hitter and preserved his career .300 average.

 

[NJDevs26]

LOL

 

[Vamos Rafa]

With Mantle, he had the excuse that the offensive environment he played in cratered. He wasn't as good as he had been at his peak (of course), but when he hit .237 in 1968 (bringing his career batting average down to .298 from .302), he had the third-best OBP in the AL and eighth-best OPS+.

Of course, what everyone (including Mantle himself) saw was a man who couldn't play first base and couldn't run without pain hitting .237 with "only" eighteen home runs and 97 strikeouts, so just how good he still was as a hitter was lost. Had the league not been so pitcher-friendly in 67-68, the same player might have been a .250 hitter instead of a .240 hitter and preserved his career .300 average.

I hate how Pujols’ SLG dipped below .550. At least A-Rod was able to keep it at exactly .550. Pujols’ SLG was over .600 before signing with Anaheim.