Albert Pujols Isn't a Machine—Or So We Think

Cardinals 12, Mets 8

The Stat Line: 4 AB, 4 R, 3 H, 3 RBI, 1 BB, 1 SO, 2 LOB, 2 HR, 1 IBB, 1 SB, 9 TB

Congrats to El Hombre.

He had what would have to be the fullest stat line we’ve chronicled to date.

There is a lot of ground that could be covered here. The two HRs. The SB. The IBB. The RBI, etc.

But I would like to focus on the one thing he actually did wrong...so far as the box score can show, of course.

The Strikeout.

It was his fourth of the season. He’s played in all 16 of the Cardinals’ games. So one out of every four games, he strikes out. So what?

Well, if you play that out over a full 162 games, he’s on "pace"—dangerous to talk pace in April, I know—to strikeout 40.5 times. Again, so what?

Well, according to Baseball Reference’s Play Index, only seven times in the history of baseball has a player hit 40 home runs and struck out 40 or fewer times in a season.

That’s it. Only SEVEN.

And, if you want to take it a bit further, only ONCE in the history of baseball has a player hit 50 HR and K’d fewer than 50 times: Johnny Mize, 1947.

However, no one has ever hit 50 home runs with 40 or fewer SO. And that is where Pujols could be heading.

He’s never hit 50 home runs in a single season. His career high is 49 in 2006. And he’s never struck out fewer than 40 times either. His career low is 50, also in 2006.

So he’ll probably strike out today a couple times and blow all of this out of the water. But then again, he might not strike out again until next month. We know he won’t play all 162 games.

He’ll get days off to rest, we hope, as health will be the primary factor in all of this. If he has to hit the DL twice, or has a nagging injury he can play through, the odds of getting to even 40 HR are basically shot. We know that. And pitchers will pitch to him less and less. We also know that.

But it is kinda fun to think of the possibilities. That is, if you are a Pujols fan. And it seems hard to not be.

And for some extra nuggets...

He also has four doubles and five intentional walks on the year. So he’s on pace (there’s that word again) to have the same number of those as he does SOs too.

So maybe Tony La Russa wasn’t just blowing smoke when he said this:

“Perfect player, in my opinion.”

And Pujols himself added this:

“If my swing is good,” Pujols said, “I’m going to hit the ball hard everywhere. My job is to try to see a pitch that I can hit, and drive it.”

I can attest to this fact about him hitting the ball hard, and I am pretty sure Daniel Murphy can as well. Wednesday night, the Cards played the Mets on ESPN. Pujols had a ho-hum 2-for-3 night, and his out was a deep fly to Murphy on the warning track in left.

His next AB, he hit a grounder to LF that Murphy had to pick just as if he were playing 3B. He absolutely crushed a ball that basically ate up a guy in Left Field. I’d say his swing is good.

Thanks to Matthew Leach / MLB.com for the quotes.

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