Pitching shuts down hitting. Again.
Especially notable on the first Pujols home run. Ogando’s pitch was not where Torrealba was calling for it but it actually wasn’t a bad pitch, a 96-MPH heater inside and above the letters. 99% of hitters can’t touch that pitch, or will at best foul it back. Pujols annihilated it.
There’s serious talk about Pujols’s free agency and him maybe not coming back to St. Louis. I’m curious as to whether this is actually a public relations possibility for the Cardinals, or whather they basically have to pay him anything he wants to keep him or risk pissing off the fanbase.
The thing is that absent the PR hit, if Pujols demands $25 million or $30 million a year or something like that, they would probably be entirely correct in letting him walk. Albert’s going to be 32 next year so it’s a near certainty that if he gets a monstrous contract he’ll be being paid for what he did in the 2000s, not what he’ll do in the 2010s. He’ll still be a force for some time but probably not for as long as, or as dominant as, his contract will suggest. But will St. Louis dare to let him go?
And if they let him go, and Milwaukee lets Prince Fielder walk, where will TWO elite first baseman sluggers end up? Probably New York or Boston, I guess. Yawn.
Pujols is a fascinating player, in that he might actually be the most consistently great hitter who has ever played baseball. He has been an elite hitter in every single one of the 11 seasons he has played so far. I cannot find anyone else of whom that can be said.
- 2011 was, according to WAR, Pujols’s worst season, with 5.1 (Fangraphs) or 5.4 (Baseball Reference) and those are still amazing numbers.
- His season average is about 8.8 WAR. In other words, Pujols’s average season is an MVP.
- He has finished in the top ten in MVP voting every year he has played (we don’t know yet for this year but he’ll probably be top ten again.)
- He has won three MVP Awards but has probably deserved at least five. He certainly should have won in in 2006 instead of Ryan Howard, and arguments can be made for 2003, 2007, and 2010.
Name one other player who was that good every year for their first 11 years. I can’t find one. The only close call is Lou Gehrig, who was equally dominant for twelve years starting in his sophomore year (I’m not counting his cups of coffee in 1923 and 1924) but did not have the rookie season Pujols did. Willie Mays is the same as Gehrig; didn’t have as huge a rookie season but was thereafter dominant if you discount his abbreviated 1952 season (he was drafted.) Musial is very close as well, again if you discount a cup of coffee. But Albert beats them all.
Wow.
NIce breakdown, Rickjay.
I’m going to hold off on thinking too much about the free agency thing, but I will say that was almost surely the greatest performance by any hitter in any World Series game ever. That’s pretty awesome. The funny thing is that the Cardinals probably still would have won if he’d gone maybe two-for-five with two singles, but who knows what affects of a game like that will have on the Rangers’ staff.
Ted Williams, if you skip the years he was flying fighter jets. But that comparison doesn’t exactly make Pujols look bad.
Ted doesn’t quite qualify because his ninth season was abbreviated by injury. So that year he doesn’t get up to Pujols’s “bad season.”
But of course had it not been for World War II, yeah, he probably would match Pujols, so he’s a unique case.
If it hadn’t been for Hitler and the North Koreans, Williams would probably today be regarded as unquestionably the greatest hitter of all time (as opposed to now being regarded as maybe the greatest hitter of all time.) If you just go by what he averaged during his career - and that’s probably a low guess, since his WWII years were prime seasons - Williams would likely have ended up with 650-680 home runs, well over 3300 hits, over 2000 runs, and would hold the career record for RBI or be close to it.
In defense of my getting way off topic, Ted Williams has the distinction of being the first Texas Rangers manager. Allegedly he quit the job because he didn’t like working in Dallas.
Pujols will want a long term contract. He is aging. The fear is he may be like Arod. An extremely expensive player as his skills diminish.
The front line pitchers shut the offenses down. Now we are dropping down to weaker pitchers, pitching in a stadium that gave up the most runs, most home runs and the highest batting averages. It is expected that hitting will thrive in those circumstances. I suppose the first 2 games disappeared from reality. poof
Weaker pitchers? Specifically speaking of starters, you mean the ones who (in a strange coincidence) both had 3.39 ERAs on the season?
But this is precisely the point.
Why is it that, for you, every low-scoring game is proof that “pitching shuts down hitting,” but every high-scoring game is somehow the exception to the rule?
As i said earlier, no-one is disputing that good pitchers have an excellent chance of holding the opposition to a low number of runs; it happens quite often, both during the regular season and during the postseason. But it also happens that strong offenses, with batters who can mash the ball, will also, on a fairly regular occasions, score a whole lot of runs, and will even do so against very good pitchers on occasion.
There is some truth to the argument that pitching can sometimes weigh more heavily in the postseason, partly because a team’s best pitchers get a higher proportion of the starts during the postseason. In a seven-game series, it is not unheard of for the number one pitcher to pitch games one, four, and seven. At the very least, the best two pitchers for a team in the in the postseason will likely get four out of the seven starts in a seven-game series. During the regular season, the best two pitchers on any given team only get about four out of every 9 or 10 starts.
But all of this has to be weighed against the fact that the teams that make it to the postseason often also have some of the best hitters in baseball. Any pitching staff that comes up against hitters like Matt Holliday, Albert Pujols, Nelson Cruz, and Josh Hamilton in seven consecutive games is quite likely to give up a higher-than-usual number of runs, even if it’s a great pitching staff.
Basically, as I suggested before, all I’m arguing against here is the sort of reductionism implicit in phrases like “pitching shuts down hitting.” Phrases like this fail to appreciate the nuances and complexity of what happens when excellent teams face each other; it’s just a slogan that reduces meaning and understanding.
Discounting cups of coffee, I’ve got Foxx’s average fWAR at 8.45 to 7.98 for Pujols and in shorter seasons. Almost nobody, Pujols included, had a spike in his prime like Foxx’s, though, so Foxx was less stable. Pujols had never been under 6 before this year, and Foxx was under 6 three times. 6 isn’t exactly low.
Another very close one: DiMaggio’s lowest over his first 11 seasons was 5.0, and that was in only 76 games in his 11th. DiMaggio also had higher highs and slightly lower lows. He averaged 7.5, which would put him pretty close to Pujols over a 162 game season.
So to put a slightly different spin on it, I feel like the remarkable thing about Pujols is the flatness of his career in both directions. He’s only had a .450 OBP once, never slugged .680, only hit above .332 twice, never hit 50 HR, etc. Nothing unusual about any of those things, except for how high all his career numbers are anyway. It’s hard to believe anyone could possibly be 4th all-time in slugging, right in the middle of the monsters, when his best individual season is 61st best. Historically, to get career numbers as good as his, one of those years would have to be one of those years where you win the Triple Crown or drive in 180 runs or something, but he’s always right on the same line.
All of which I actually said to make a point, believe it or not. The guy whose career Pujols’ seems closest to in shape, to me, is Hank Aaron’s; it’s just that he’s a half-step up the ladder in terms of production. Which is an interesting notion, what with the free agency.
It’s not only a public relations possibility for the Cardinals, it’s a PR nightmare.
The Cardinals would be willing to pay Pujols the sun, moon, stars and all the beer in St. Louis to keep him. But Pujols wants a long-term contract – like 8 years or so. If he gets hurt, or even if he just ages like a normal player, it’s going to be a helluva payroll hit (I believe he’s asking for a starting bid of around $23 million per year) for a long time to come. The Cardinals payroll is reported somewhere around $105-$115 million, and they want to keep Wainwright, among others, around for a long time, as well.
Of course, if Pujols leaves and has another monster year, fans will say the team should have paid $40 million per year to keep him. The last time the Cardinals trimmed payroll was the late 80s/early 90s, and the fans definitely took it out on the team.
Fielder is younger, and nearly as potent (although not as complete a player) so one could argue if the team is going to sign anyone to 8 years and $20++++ million, they should make a run for Fielder.
But Pujols has worked himself into the Stan Musial level of adoration among Cardinal fans. His post-Game 2 snit not withstanding, he’s usually very approachable by fans and the media, devotes a lot of time and effort to his causes and in general is the kind of human being on and off the field that Cardinal fans want to love.
It’s an agonizing decision for the team. Fortunately for me, it’s not my money.
Most people expected this series to be a slugfest, then we had two low scoring games. Then we had a football score. We may have two or four more slugests or some more pitchers’ duels. What it goes to show that it’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen in a series. If you’re going to say “pitching shuts down hitting” and that pitching is more important, and then insist that the first two games prove it, you can’t start carving out exceptions in game three.
That’s an interesting point, and it occurred to me the Cardinals could sign Fielder, which would simultaneously plug that hole and screw the Brewers.
However, it is worth noting that while Fielder is younger,
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Fielder is really, really fat, and fat players age poorly. I would guess that despite being a little more than four years younger, Fielder’s career will end around the same time Pujols’s does. Maybe sooner. Fat first basemen usually blow out around age 31-32.
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Fielder is a really good hitter but he ain’t Albert Pujols.
I have to think there is a zero percent chance the Cards even look at Fielder. Spending that kind of jack and saying “we think he’ll age better than Pujols” is not something they will even consider.
If they don’t sign Pujols, Berkman will play first and Craig will play RF. Then they’ll throw some money at a SS or SP or something. I actually think making a run at Reyes might be enough to get fans back on the bandwagon. Even more so if the Cards win the WS this year.
In the end, as much as fans love individual players (and Pujols is at the very top of that list), they love winning. If Pujols go but the Cards win 90+ games without him, the stadium will still be full.
My analysis of the Pujols free agency is based solely on my Facebook feed, which is heavy on die-hard Cards fans.
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A lot of people already think his departure is inevitable.
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Cardinal Nation has a pretty, um, healthy sense of self-esteem. St. Louis is obviously the best baseball town with the best fans. If Pujols doesn’t resign with the Cards, I think a lot of people will blame him as much as management, because only an idiot would value a a bigger paycheck more than the opportunity to play in St. Louis.
(I may fall into both categories a little, in all honesty.)
Can someone explain why St.Louis wouldn’t pony up? They have the money, don’t they? They aren’t Pittsburgh, or KC (just to name a couple of smaller markets.)
Ultimately I think St. Louis keeps Pujols. They need him the most and their offer already seems to be competitive with what anybody else is going to offer him.
Berkman is also a free agent, isn’t he? Or did the Cardinals sign him to an extension?
But they aren’t Boston or New York, either. The thought is that one of those teams (or the Dodgers, Cubs, etc.) will offer some truly staggering wheelbarrow full of cash that the Cardinals can’t come close to.
Pujols is on record saying he wants to see what the market will offer.