Cut/Released: Albert Pujols

[darko]

Hope I'm wrong but can't see anyone picking him up.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Couldnt help but look at Bonds age 42 season: .276 BA, 1.045 OPS, 28 HR and led the league in walks 132 and OBP .482

His age 41 season, same "age" sarcasm as Pujols, was almost identical

 

[Blitzkrug]

Couldnt help but look at Bonds age 42 season: .276 BA, 1.045 OPS, 28 HR and led the league in walks 132 and OBP .482

His age 41 season, same "age" sarcasm as Pujols, was almost identical

Barry Bonds also had arguably the best plate vision in the history of baseball though.

 

[jcs0218]

Couldnt help but look at Bonds age 42 season: .276 BA, 1.045 OPS, 28 HR and led the league in walks 132 and OBP .482

His age 41 season, same "age" sarcasm as Pujols, was almost identical

Barry Bonds also had arguably the best plate vision in the history of baseball though.

Bonds had great plate vision. Plus a lot of "help" (I think everyone knows what I am referring to).

 

[Canes]

Bonds is arguably the most talented player in modern baseball history, and I say this even knowing how the shitshow of PEDs play with everyone's opinions.

 

[MMC]

Pujols was only a replacement level player for half of his Angels' stint. He was average to above-average the first five years there.

Griffey is pretty similar - good to great player every year with the Mariners (not quite as good as his reputation was, but still a superb peak and good every year), one good year with the Reds, and turns into an injury-plagued pumpkin as an above-average (but not excellent) hitter who doesn't belong in the field but is stuck in a non-DH league.

If only that were true. 0.5 fWAR in 2013, his second year, 0.8 in 2015, his 4th.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Bonds had great plate vision. Plus a lot of "help" (I think everyone knows what I am referring to).

Even before the "help" he was a feared hitter. If he is to be believed when he claimed he started juicing in 1998, he already had 7 seasons with 30 or more home runs. The roids just transformed him from one of the best hitters in baseball in to some lovecraftian nightmare who sustained himself by obliterating baseballs.

 

[Cas]

If only that were true. 0.5 fWAR in 2013, his second year, 0.8 in 2015, his 4th.

Honestly I just don't trust Fangraph's WAR and never have.

 

[Terry Yake]

pujols in 03

43 HR 124 RBI .359 Avg. led the league in hits, runs, and doubles

runner up to bonds 45 HR 90 RBI .341 Avg 148 BB (!!!) in the MVP voting. crazy

 

[Centrum Hockey]

Any chance the Cards bring him home so he can end his brilliant HOF career where it started?

He could go back to STL on a one day contract to retire but he still has to spend to the next 10 years as a ambassador to the angels. Angels release Pujols in final year of record contract that lured him away from Cardinals.

 

[RyCanadian]

He's had a great career!

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Barry Bonds also had arguably the best plate vision in the history of baseball though.

Yeah, everyone knows that. Just had to admire again what he was doing at 42 years old!, since Pujols age and decline are brought up again. 42 and hes leading the league in OBP and walks. Would have had 35+ home runs at 42 in pre launch angle baseball if he wasnt walked so much. Pujols was the oldest active player in the league at 41. People can have any opinion on him they want but he was obviously not juicing or anything during that scrutinized period

Think 40+ age seasons werent really appreciated for what he did at his age because of the HR chase, the controversy and it was Bonds

 

[Cas]

As part of a discussion elsewhere, I went and figured this out - if there was an immortal baseball player who first started playing in 1871 (the first season of organized professional baseball), and then played in every game since then, he would play somewhere between 21,750 and 22,000 games.

Albert Pujols has played in more than 13% of that total number of games. His career has spanned more than ten percent of the history of the longest-lived professional league team sport.

That's a lot of Pujols.

 

[MS]

Yeah he kinda sucked as an Angel but the dude is probably like 50 years old.

Not everyone can be Julio Franco.

He’s almost certainly born in 1977 or 1978. This has been speculated since he first came to the US as a teenager and basically confirmed by his Dotel comments a few years ago.

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

End of an era - Pujols has been a fixture since I started paying attention to baseball in detail.

I saw him live at old Busch in his rookie season. Could tell he was special very early.

 

[Vector]

He’s almost certainly born in 1977 or 1978. This has been speculated since he first came to the US as a teenager and basically confirmed by his Dotel comments a few years ago.

Or former MLB exec David Samson 100% saying that everyone in the league knows he's been lying about his age.

""We knew when we did the calculations for that deal that we didn’t care about 2019, '20 or '21. It was so far in the future that it didn’t matter,” Samson said. "We knew he’d be unproductive, we knew that he was not the age that he said he was. We had all the information."

Le Batard responded, "Did you just report flatly that Pujols is older than he’s always claimed to be?"

Samson said, "There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Albert Pujols is the age that he says he is. The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind.""

His own Dotel comments:

"As for Pujols, Samson didn't give the age he thought the baseball star truly was, but there is some history using Pujols' own words. Many people took notice in a 2018 interview with Yahoo Sports when Pujols may have revealed his true age.

"I actually hit it off Octavio Dotel, I think I told you that. I was about about 12, 13, almost 13 years old," Pujols said, describing his first-ever home run. "And we go back, you know, 28 years later, and here I am."

Using Pujols' math, 13 years old plus 28 years later would have made him 41 at the time of the interview. In the same interview, he said, "Well, Dotel, I believe he’s like three or four years older than me." The same math led to Pujols being 41.

So using that context, Pujols would be three years older than the 41 years old he's listed at currently (considering his birth date of Jan. 16 is accurate), which would theoretically make him 44."

 

[MS]

Or former MLB exec David Samson 100% saying that everyone in the league knows he's been lying about his age.

""We knew when we did the calculations for that deal that we didn’t care about 2019, '20 or '21. It was so far in the future that it didn’t matter,” Samson said. "We knew he’d be unproductive, we knew that he was not the age that he said he was. We had all the information."

Le Batard responded, "Did you just report flatly that Pujols is older than he’s always claimed to be?"

Samson said, "There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Albert Pujols is the age that he says he is. The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind.""

His own Dotel comments:

"As for Pujols, Samson didn't give the age he thought the baseball star truly was, but there is some history using Pujols' own words. Many people took notice in a 2018 interview with Yahoo Sports when Pujols may have revealed his true age.

"I actually hit it off Octavio Dotel, I think I told you that. I was about about 12, 13, almost 13 years old," Pujols said, describing his first-ever home run. "And we go back, you know, 28 years later, and here I am."

Using Pujols' math, 13 years old plus 28 years later would have made him 41 at the time of the interview. In the same interview, he said, "Well, Dotel, I believe he’s like three or four years older than me." The same math led to Pujols being 41.

So using that context, Pujols would be three years older than the 41 years old he's listed at currently (considering his birth date of Jan. 16 is accurate), which would theoretically make him 44."

Just to elaborate further :

- Dotel is born in October 1973, so ‘3-4 years older’ would put Pujols birthday somewhere between October 1976 and October 1978.

- that interview is from April 2018, so Pujols is putting himself as being ‘12, almost 13’ 28 years earlier, which would be 1990. This would again line up with a late 1977/early 1978 birthday.

- when Pujols came to NA in 1998 to play HS baseball, apparently the age fraud was so obviously ridiculous that he was intentionally walked in a majority of his plate appearances in protest.

- this was incredibly common in the 1990s. Vladimir Guerrero Sr. admitted when his career was almost over that he was born in 1975 instead of 1976. Miguel Tejada was late in his career when he was busted as being born in 1976 instead of 1974.

- players usually used their correct DOB in a different year to make the fraud easier, so I’d say Pujols most likely DOB is probably January 1978.

 

[Terry Yake]

just remembered pujols played with mcgwire in his rookie year

damn he really has been around a while

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

Bonds had great plate vision. Plus a lot of "help" (I think everyone knows what I am referring to).

Greenie amphetamines like Hank Aaron and all his buddies???

Or do old people continue to get an undeserved pass???

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

just remembered pujols played with mcgwire in his rookie year

damn he really has been around a while

Saw them together in that game I went to. Pujols was in left and Mac at 1st. I think the person who came closest to actually hitting a homer was former A Fernando Vina lol

 

[Lunatik]

Honestly I just don't trust Fangraph's WAR and never have.

Frankly, I have trouble trusting any stat where they don't tell you how it is calculated.

 

[Cas]

Frankly, I have trouble trusting any stat where they don't tell you how it is calculated.

I know how WAR is calculated, but I don't trust Fangraph's overreliance on DIPS in its pitching WAR, and that filters through its entire WAR database.

 

[BiolaRunner]

Everyone knew the 10 year contract was going to be ugly by the time it ended. It got ugly quicker than anyone thought.

It is over after this season. I doubt the Angels can compete this year with their rotation and bullpen being what it is. I would have let him have his swan song

 

[NJDevs26]

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.

 

[jcs0218]

Apparently the release of Pujols turned ugly on the final day.

Nightengale's Notebook: How Albert Pujols' final hours with Angels turned ugly