Angels to release Albert Pujols

tims4wins

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It probably goes without saying, but Barry Bonds walked more than he struck out for 17 of his 22 seasons. He didn't hit 40+ homers for all of those, but neither did Pujols for almost half his St. Louis seasons.
Bonds was +1000 in his career, absolute insanity, including +191 in 2004 (232:41; and the most insane stat, more HR than K that year at 45:41)
 

DanoooME

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Add Vernon Wells. All around the same time too.
Vernon Wells they actually traded for. Gave up old friend Mike Napoli and former Yankee uberprospect Juan Rivera.

The most amazing thing about Pujols while he was with the Cards was that every season other than his rookie year he struck our fewer times than he walked. He struck out between 50 and 70 times per year while hitting 40+ homers. I can't think of another player with that kind of K/BB ratio while hitting for power like that.
I think there's some DiMaggio guy that played for the Yankees that you should take a look at.
 

glennhoffmania

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It probably goes without saying, but Barry Bonds walked more than he struck out for 17 of his 22 seasons. He didn't hit 40+ homers for all of those, but neither did Pujols for almost half his St. Louis seasons.
True. Bonds was obviously incredible. But his K rate was in the 11-14 range while Pujols' was in the 8-10 range. My overall point was how infrequently Pujols struck out for a power hitter.
 

Max Power

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Bonds was +1000 in his career, absolute insanity, including +191 in 2004 (232:41; and the most insane stat, more HR than K that year at 45:41)
That was the only season in the last 40 years where a hitter had more homers than strikeouts.
 

CaptainLaddie

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Bonds was +1000 in his career, absolute insanity, including +191 in 2004 (232:41; and the most insane stat, more HR than K that year at 45:41)
That includes IBB (and plenty of unintentional IBB too). He drew 120 IBB in 2004! ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY. Berkman/Abreu/Helton were second in the NL, with 127.

This means Bonds was 5th in walks by just his IBB and 7th in walks by his BB. Just bananas.
 

jmcc5400

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5-1 3.63 with an ERA + of 117 with the 2009 Phils? And then a masterpiece against the Dodgers in the NLCS followed by a couple of unlucky starts in the World Series.

Don't besmirch Pedro, man. :)
 

Kliq

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Yeah Pedro was better than I remembered on the Phillies. I remember him being good in the playoffs but his regular season numbers were solid.
 

DeadlySplitter

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Huh. I remembered his Mets tenure being a disaster when making that jab. Should have gone to BBREF first.
 

scottyno

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Huh. I remembered his Mets tenure being a disaster when making that jab. Should have gone to BBREF first.
It was a disaster after the first year, his career looked over before the short season swan song with the phillies.
 

mauf

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I wonder if his age will ever be confirmed. I know there's been questions about it and looking at his aging curve it certainly looks like he may have been older than reported when he came to the US.
It would explain a lot, but Pujols didn’t become a U.S. citizen until 2007, so he would’ve had to take a massive risk by not coming clean after 9/11.
 

cromulence

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5-1 3.63 with an ERA + of 117 with the 2009 Phils? And then a masterpiece against the Dodgers in the NLCS followed by a couple of unlucky starts in the World Series.

Don't besmirch Pedro, man. :)
Unlucky? Hideki Matsui begs to differ.
 

jmcc5400

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Unlucky? Hideki Matsui begs to differ.
First game he pitched well enough to win. Shouldn't have been brought back in the 7th, but since the Phils didn't score again it didn't really matter. But it was a strong 6 inning start. Second game, yeah, Matsui got him twice.
 

GrandSlamPozo

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Miggy's could end up being worse because of the dollar amount/length, but Detroit got fair value (and more) early on. His numbers with the Tigers alone are borderline H of F, and he won two MVPs and also finished 2nd, 4th and 5th. four straight trips to the playoffs, including a world series. what sucks for the Tigers is having to pay the tail end, when they'd like to be rebuilding but are stuck with this albatross of a contract. But for his first 7-8 years in Detroit, he put up great numbers. Pujols never did anything in LA.
I think he's talking specifically about the 8 year extension that the Tigers gave him which covers the 2016-23 seasons. He put up 5.1 WAR in the first year of the extension but since then he's been 1.3 wins BELOW replacement.
 

SumnerH

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Whos the oldest regular player non pitcher whos age is completely verified? Rose? Fisk? i think they were 45. Henderson 44. Not
Counting Minoso stunts and other pre 1950 one offs.
It's Fisk, but there's no doubt that Franco was actually older—if he lied about his age then he's just older by a bigger margin.
 

shaggydog2000

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It would explain a lot, but Pujols didn’t become a U.S. citizen until 2007, so he would’ve had to take a massive risk by not coming clean after 9/11.
Records in the Domican can be pretty lax. A lot of births take place at home, so the most convenient way to track age is by baptism instead of birth records, but even those are spotty. He moved to the US around what was supposedly him being 16, but if you were a baseball playing 18-19 year old, giving yourself two years of high school baseball would seem like a pretty good idea, wouldn't it? Since he came to the US before he was supposedly 18, and records of birth and baptism may not have even been checked then (before 9/11) there is a pretty good chance he is at least a year or two older. Or maybe 7, who knows really.
 

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I think he finishes out the season with Cardinals or La Russa brings him in then retires
Why would St. Louis tie up a roster spot with Pujols when they have Goldschmidt at first (backed up by Carpenter) and no DH? And why would La Russa bring him in to retire as a White Sox? Perhaps The Cards bring him in a one day contract and give him a day in front of the St. Louis fans, but I can't see them to committing more than that to Albert.
 

mauf

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Records in the Domican can be pretty lax. A lot of births take place at home, so the most convenient way to track age is by baptism instead of birth records, but even those are spotty. He moved to the US around what was supposedly him being 16, but if you were a baseball playing 18-19 year old, giving yourself two years of high school baseball would seem like a pretty good idea, wouldn't it? Since he came to the US before he was supposedly 18, and records of birth and baptism may not have even been checked then (before 9/11) there is a pretty good chance he is at least a year or two older. Or maybe 7, who knows really.
I know. A lot of guys did this. And a lot of them had to correct the record after 9/11, when the U.S. government started to care about the accuracy of these disclosures.

It’s possible that Pujols was one of these guys, and that he had his own for reasons for not correcting the record in the early 2000s as most other guys seemingly did. For example, as an evangelical Christian instead of a Catholic, Pujols likely wasn’t baptized as an infant, so having an official record surface might not have been a concern. But I don’t think a misstated age is the obvious answer to Pujols’s career arc that it would be if his arrival in the U.S., his naturalization, and his baseball career had all happened 10 years earlier.
 
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Red(s)HawksFan

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Pedro is not pleased with the Angels today. You hung on a bit too long too, didn't ya Pedro? I know it's hard to give it up.

View: https://twitter.com/45PedroMartinez/status/1390417496436527106?s=20
I can see where Pedro is coming from. It isn't necessarily about Pujols' production on the field so much as the way everything went down over the last couple days. The front office ordering his benching, then just dumping him rather than give him a chance to maybe walk away on his own terms, or at least try to make it feel like a mutual parting. Just feels way too cold to treat a future HOF like a random scrub, even if he's been playing like one.
 

JimD

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I can see where Pedro is coming from. It isn't necessarily about Pujols' production on the field so much as the way everything went down over the last couple days. The front office ordering his benching, then just dumping him rather than give him a chance to maybe walk away on his own terms, or at least try to make it feel like a mutual parting. Just feels way too cold to treat a future HOF like a random scrub, even if he's been playing like one.
He refused to take a bench role, so I doubt there was any way that Pujols was going to take part in anything designed to make it look like he was being let go gracefully.
 

moondog80

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I'd like to ask Pedro how he thinks Mike Trout and his 3 career playoff games would feel about the Angels continuing to roster Pujols out of respect for his legacy.

Pujols will have made $140,000,000 in the last 5 years of his contract while producing a cumulative WAR of minus 2.0. He is in absolutely zero position to dictate the terms of anything, or to feel even the slightest tinge of resentment.
 

Comfortably Lomb

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Remember when Pujols' wife publicly bemoaned the Cardinals lowball offer? This is on brand for team Pujols.
"When it all came down, I was mad. I was mad at God because I felt like all the signs that had been played out through the baseball field, our foundation, our restaurant, the Down Syndrome Center, my relationships, my home, my family close," Deidre Pujols told the station. "I mean, we had no reason, not one reason, to want to leave. People were deceived by the numbers."

She indicated the key moment was the Cardinals' initial offer of five years and $130 million.

"When you have somebody say 'We want you to be a Cardinal for life' and only offer you a five-year deal, it kind of confused us," Deidre Pujols said. "Well, we got over that insult and felt like Albert had given so much of himself to baseball and into the community ... we didn't want to go through this again."
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/7346376/albert-pujols-wife-deidre-explains-why-los-angeles-angels-slugger-left-st-louis-cardinals

Mad at God over only a 5/130 offer. The Cardinals had it right too.
 
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MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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shaggydog2000

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I know. A lot of guys did this. And a lot of them had to correct the record after 9/11, when the U.S. government started to care about the accuracy of these disclosures.

It’s possible that Pujols was one of these guys, and that he had his own for reasons for not correcting the record in the early 2000s as most other guys seemingly did. For example, as an evangelical Christian instead of a Catholic, Pujols likely wasn’t baptized as an infant, so having an official record surface might not have been a concern. But I don’t think a misstated age is the obvious answer to Pujols’s career arc that it would be if his arrival in the U.S., his naturalization, and his baseball career had all happened 10 years earlier.
Those guys had to present new documents after 9/11 because they were applying for visas, my understanding was that he was already a citizen or pretty far down the naturalization path by then and wouldn't need to provide any more docs like that. One of the reasons he dropped in the draft was that all the teams were pretty sure he was older than claimed. This isn't a new theory people are throwing out there just because he aged so poorly. I don't think he fudged things by half a decade the way the Cuban ballplayers from the 90's would, but he shaved off at least a year and maybe two.
 

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Those guys had to present new documents after 9/11 because they were applying for visas, my understanding was that he was already a citizen or pretty far down the naturalization path by then and wouldn't need to provide any more docs like that. One of the reasons he dropped in the draft was that all the teams were pretty sure he was older than claimed. This isn't a new theory people are throwing out there just because he aged so poorly. I don't think he fudged things by half a decade the way the Cuban ballplayers from the 90's would, but he shaved off at least a year and maybe two.
40861
 

Marceline

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In interviews, Albert has actually tripped up on several occasions. He’s given his real age away in the past, and double downed on it this spring in an interview with Yahoo Sports.

“I actually hit it off Octavio Dotel, I think I told you that,” Pujols said. “I was about about 12, 13, almost 13 years old.”
“And we go back, you know, 28 years later, and here I am.”
28 + 13 = 41 for those of you scoring at home.

That comment was followed up this:

“Well, Dotel, I believe he’s like three or four years older than me.” Pujols said. “He was in the league above me, and it was actually like an intrasquad game.”
Dotel turns 45 on November 15th. That math leads right back to Albert being 41, maybe a tad older. Speculation by scouts is one thing, but these are Albert’s own words, words that have not been clarified since he podcasted this April.
That was from a 2018 interview.

https://www.halosheaven.com/2018/11/6/18053238/albert-pujols-angels-first-base-dh-age-conundrum
 

reggiecleveland

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It probably goes without saying, but Barry Bonds walked more than he struck out for 17 of his 22 seasons. He didn't hit 40+ homers for all of those, but neither did Pujols for almost half his St. Louis seasons.
Joe Dimaggio hit 361 homers and struck out 369 times. At one point he had homered more than he struck out in 7 of his 9 seasons. Only as a 21 year old rookie did he K more than BB. It was a different era where guys with 2 strikes often choked up and had one goal of not striking out. To many "experts" of the time the face that Ted struck out more than he hit HR just showed Joe D was a better hitter. Perhaps Munson was better at some part of the preflight checklist too.
 

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reggiecleveland

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Just FYI since he was once touted as a challenger to Ted a GHWEL, Ted put up a ops+ of 190 his disastrous 1959 of ops +114 would have been welcomed by Albert the last five years of his career.
 

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If there is proof of him lying about his age, would that constitute fraud? Could the Angels try to get money back, or more likely void his personal services contract?
 

sean1562

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I always thought he ended up with the same injury that killed Allen Craig's career. Also, the guy is a legend/hero to Dominican baseball players, as demonstrated by Pedro's tweet and this interaction between Vlad JR, Santiago Espinal, and Pujols early in the season

https://www.mlb.com/news/santiago-espinal-meets-hero-albert-pujols

For a franchise to aggressively litigate this issue to get out of a $10 million ten year personal services contract with a living legend who, by all accounts, is a stand up member of the community, would not send a great message to players and even fans. This is the same franchise that had an executive selling drugs to players, leading to one of their deaths. I think they should probably stand down and let the man retire.
 

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I’m betting Larussa brings him to the White Sox. That team is desperate for a DH given the outfield injuries, and more to the point, Larussa is an idiot.
 

Hoya81

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Pujols was 179 hits over .300 for his career at one point; Bill James speculates that nobody else has been that much over .300 and finished below.
I don't think there's another comp. I remember reading that Mantle was always upset that he lost being a .300 hitter during his final season in '68. He was at about .309 (about 50ish hits above) through the 1964 season before hitting .254 from '65-68.

There's a few other all timers that finished at .297-.299 (Kaline, Rice, Bonds), but none of them had the kind of lead that Pujols had. To add to the insane Bonds stat file, I didn't realize that he hit nearly 40 points higher with the Giants than in Pittsburgh (.312 versus .275).

If there is proof of him lying about his age, would that constitute fraud? Could the Angels try to get money back, or more likely void his personal services contract?
IIRC, the Fausto Carmona situation happened after he signed with LAA, so there likely depends if there was generic language in the contract.
 

DeadlySplitter

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I can see where Pedro is coming from. It isn't necessarily about Pujols' production on the field so much as the way everything went down over the last couple days. The front office ordering his benching, then just dumping him rather than give him a chance to maybe walk away on his own terms, or at least try to make it feel like a mutual parting. Just feels way too cold to treat a future HOF like a random scrub, even if he's been playing like one.
I get it too, it's just the player disconnect from the front office business aspect of the game. As an analyst I feel Pedro should understand.
 

reggiecleveland

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I get it too, it's just the player disconnect from the front office business aspect of the game. As an analyst I feel Pedro should understand.
I would bet, Albert wants his money, and wants to play. Equally understandable, the Angles don't want him to play, and pretty clear he is not going to retire, forfeit money, or go on the DL with "can't hit the fastballitis". If Albert still wants to play, this is the only way it could end.

Even at my paltry level of coaching I have dealt with this. A guy, maybe an injury robbed him, or maybe younger guys are just better. But, the only way they will be happy is to play, and they don't deserve to play. The pride that made them who they were does not disappear. The word "disrespect" will be thrown around, but there is no respectful way to bench somebody who thinks they can play or should play.
 

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santadevil

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I get it too, it's just the player disconnect from the front office business aspect of the game. As an analyst I feel Pedro should understand.
I view that tweet as Pedro publicly supporting someone he considers a friend
I don't see anything wrong with that and even if Pedro 100% understands the business aspect of it, there would be no benefit in him coming and saying he agrees with the move

He could have said nothing, but the friendship is more important to him and I can't fault a guy for that
 

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I’m betting Larussa brings him to the White Sox. That team is desperate for a DH given the outfield injuries, and more to the point, Larussa is an idiot.
Laussa may not get the chance. Apparently his approach is not resonating with the youngish White Sox. If they underachieve for very long I can see him shown the door sooner rather than later.
 

LoweTek

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I think there are a lot of contracts out there today having the potential to wind up as under-performing albatross deals. Including Mookie's to be honest. Injury can happen to anybody and derail superstardom. I have always thought 8, 10, 12 year deals were insane for this reason.
 

Kliq

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I think there are a lot of contracts out there today having the potential to wind up as under-performing albatross deals. Including Mookie's to be honest. Injury can happen to anybody and derail superstardom. I have always thought 8, 10, 12 year deals were insane for this reason.
It depends on how much risk the team is accepting. With the Mookie/Harper/Machado/Lindor contracts, teams are in part expecting that those players will be technically overpaid on the backend of those deals. The thing is that if you want to get that elite player, you basically need to factor in that the back-end of the deal might be an albatross. Part of the reason Harper's contract was 13 years was not because Philadelphia figured Harper would still be worth $30 million at age 40, but that they got him at a lower year-over-year price by offering him the long term security of a 13 year deal.

The thing with the Pujols deal was that he was pretty much never good for his entire contract. The A-Rod deal, for example, was a technically bad contract by the time he retired, but the Yankees would probably do that deal again, since they got great production out of him from during the first-half of the deal.

I don't see Pujols going to the White Sox. Probably their two best hitters are 1B/DH types in Abreu and Mercedes.
 

BigSoxFan

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It depends on how much risk the team is accepting. With the Mookie/Harper/Machado/Lindor contracts, teams are in part expecting that those players will be technically overpaid on the backend of those deals. The thing is that if you want to get that elite player, you basically need to factor in that the back-end of the deal might be an albatross. Part of the reason Harper's contract was 13 years was not because Philadelphia figured Harper would still be worth $30 million at age 40, but that they got him at a lower year-over-year price by offering him the long term security of a 13 year deal.

The thing with the Pujols deal was that he was pretty much never good for his entire contract. The A-Rod deal, for example, was a technically bad contract by the time he retired, but the Yankees would probably do that deal again, since they got great production out of him from during the first-half of the deal.

I don't see Pujols going to the White Sox. Probably their two best hitters are 1B/DH types in Abreu and Mercedes.
Yeah, Pujols fell off a cliff almost immediately. Amazing that .859 OPS in his first year was the high water mark and he followed it with 9 straight sub .800 OPS seasons. I mean, holy crap. You knew a decline was coming but I never would have guessed this badly.