Where Does Albert Pujols Rank Among the Greatest MLB Hitters of All Time?

Albert Pujols' quest for 700 career home runs has been baseball's inescapable extravaganza over the past three weeks, as his nine home runs since the All-Star break have suddenly turned the unlikely proposition of reaching 700 into a realistic possibility.

Even if he doesn't quite get there, there's a great chance that Pujols (694) will at least bypass Alex Rodriguez (696) to climb into fourth place on MLB's all-time home run leaderboard. He already supplanted both Eddie Collins and Paul Molitor in career hits this season, moving up into 10th place on that leaderboard.

And while it's been fun to get caught up in the moment of Prince Albert finding the fabled fountain of youth, this sudden surge has raised the question of where Pujols ranks among all hitters in MLB history.

One pertinent note before we dive in: We won't play the "Oh, he (probably) took steroids, so he doesn't count" game. It will be mentioned where necessary, but we're not going to pretend Barry Bonds and A-Rod weren't incredibly good.

But even with those players included, Pujols is clearly one of the 20 greatest hitters of all time.

The Top 13

Stan Musial (Bettmann)

(Original Caption) That Man Stan. New York, New York: Stan Musial goes along with the gag and lifts four bats after belting four consecutive homers at the Polo Grounds. The man hit the last three as Cards beat Mets, 15-1.

Twelve players rank in the top 15 among hitters in Baseball Reference WAR, FanGraphs WAR and in Offense rating on FanGraphs—which is more or less total value added without factoring in defense and sure seems like a useful third data point in a "greatest hitter" conversation.

Albert Pujols ranks 20th, 28th and 22nd, respectively, in those categories, so he cannot quite contend with that top 12 of: Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner and Ted Williams.

We're adding Mickey Mantle to that top tier, as The Mick ended up at 16th, 14th and ninth, respectively, this in spite of an injury-plagued career that limited him to 2,401 games. (Pujols is north of 3,050.) The three-time MVP was easily one of the best to ever pick up a bat.

The exact order of those 13 players doesn't matter in this Pujols-centric debate, so we're just going to leave them in alphabetical order and start our ranking at No. 14.

That said, if you really want to argue that "The Machine" is one of the 13 greatest batters of all time, Ott (.304 AVG, .414 OBP, .533 SLG, 511 HR, 2,876 H) is probably the low man there.

Honorable Mention: Josh Gibson

Josh Gibson (Bettmann)

During the 12th annual East-West All-Star Game of the Negro Leagues, American baseball player Josh Gibson (1911 - 1947), of the East team, creates a cloud of dust as he slides into home plate during the fourth inning, Comiskey Park, Chicago, Illinois, August 13, 1944. West team’s catcher Ted Radcliffe (1902 - 2005) is visible at right. The West defeated the East, 7-4.

Career Stats: .374/.458/.720, 165 HR

Josh Gibson was the Babe Ruth of the Negro leagues.

While his "official" home run total sits at just 165 in 598 games, that doesn't include the many exhibition and barnstorming games against semi-professional teams. Try to account for all games played and baseball historians estimate that Gibson hit between 800 and 1,000 career home runs.

But was he the best hitter ever?

Top 10?

Top 50?

There's no good way to argue it since most of the games didn't "count" and his wins above replacement (38.4 per bWAR; not calculated by fWAR) is really just an estimate from a bunch of partial seasons' worth of data. But his numbers—13.1 AB/HR, 1.178 OPS, a 162-game pace of 45 home runs and 198 RBI—in the data that we do have are just plain outrageous.

While we have no clue where to actually rank him against the likes of Stan Musial and Albert Pujols, we would be remiss if we didn't at least mention Gibson before continuing with the ranking.

14. Joe DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio (Bettmann)

(Original Caption) Joe DiMaggio, star slugger and center fielder of the New York Yankees, shown following through after belting out a single in the first inning of the world series opener against the giants at the Yankee stadium today, October 6. This single advanced Frank Crosetti to second.

Rankings: 42nd in bWAR, 34th in fWAR, 36th in Offense

Career Stats: .325/.398/.579, 2,214 H, 361 HR

Joltin' Joe DiMaggio was way more than just the 56-game hitting streak that gets brought up every time someone manages to string together 20 straight games with a base knock.

He was one of the greatest hitters of all time who falls short of top 30 in the above career value added rankings because A) his age-28, -29 and -30 seasons were spent in the military and B) he retired at 36.

DiMaggio ended up with fewer than half as many career plate appearances (7,672) as Pete Rose (15,890), yet had both a career bWAR and fWAR nearly identical to the hits king.

While we're not interested in playing the "had he stayed healthy" game for this ranking, it's indisputable that DiMaggio's career WAR and Offense ratings would be better than those of Pujols if he hadn't lost three years of his prime to WWII.

Among the 359 players with at least 7,500 career plate appearances, DiMaggio ranks eighth in slugging percentage, 26th in batting average and 19th in wRC+. And, again, he missed out on three of what are traditionally some of the best seasons of a hitter's career.

This three-time AL MVP should probably just go straight into the aforementioned top 13, but this will have to suffice.

15. Eddie Collins

Eddie Collins (Bettmann)

(Original Caption) After ten years with the Chicago White Sox, Eddie Collins, veteran second baseman, will again play with the team he made his debut in baseball back in 1907. He is shown above after hitting the ball over the fence at the athletics Spring Training camp at Clearwater, Florida.

Rankings: 10th in bWAR, 11th in fWAR, 17th in Offense

Career Stats: .333/.424/.429, 3,315 H, 741 SB, 47 HR

Along with Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins is the less frequently mentioned fourth member of Major League Baseball's pre-1930 Mount Rushmore of light-hitting, batting average heroes. And if the other three get a free pass into the top 13 for their "above replacement" metrics, it'd be hard to justify not having Collins as one of the first runners-up to that club.

When he retired, Collins ranked fifth all-time in career hits, 11th in triples (187) and 18th in doubles (438), and only Babe Ruth had drawn more career walks than Collins' 1,499. He never hit more than six home runs in a single season, yet he was named AL MVP in 1914 and placed top-six in that vote six other times.

Collins is still top-20 all time in walks drawn, and he racked up all those hits and walks in spite of a "still standing by a country mile" all-time record of 512 sacrifice hits.

Comparing the patron saint of sac bunts to a slugger closing in on 700 career home runs is quite the apples-to-oranges dilemma. But for the era that he played in—only three players had at least 200 career home runs when he retired—Collins was a special talent.

16. Albert Pujols

Albert Pujols (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

PHOENIX, ARIZONA - AUGUST 20: Albert Pujols #5 of the St. Louis Cardinals reacts after a single against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the sixth inning of the MLB game at Chase Field on August 20, 2022 in Phoenix, Arizona. The Cardinals defeated the Diamondbacks 16-7. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Rankings: 20th in bWAR, 28th in fWAR, 22nd in Offense

Career Stats: .297/.375/.543, 3,362 H, 694 HR

While it has been fun and nostalgic to have him out there creating memorable moments at age 42, these late-career seasons for Albert Pujols have been an interesting Catch-22 in the all-time rankings discussion.

He has 537 hits and 103 home runs over the past six seasons and ranks 10th in MLB history in the former and fifth in the latter. If he came back for one more season—he has remained firm in his commitment to retiring, but I'm just saying—he could get up to seventh in hits and might even make a run at Babe Ruth's 714 at No. 3 on the home run leaderboard.

But in addition to his triple-slash dropping from .309/.392/.573 to its current state—a 30-point drop in career slugging is rough, but no longer being able to call him a .300 hitter is the toughest part—he has been worth minus-0.5 bWAR, minus-2.1 fWAR and minus-49.2 Offense since the start of 2017. He has actually dropped from 26th to 28th in fWAR and from 16th to 22nd in Offense as a result.

But that's a small price to pay to, again, climb to 10th in all-time hits and fifth in all-time home runs.

Pujols is a three-time NL MVP with a total of 10 top-five finishes for that honor. With the exception of Barry Bonds and all of the asterisks attached to his career, Pujols has been the best hitter since Hank Aaron and Willie Mays retired in the mid-1970s.

All-time greats from at least half a century ago make up most of the top 15, but maybe one day we'll have the time machine technology necessary to crown Pujols one of the 10 greatest hitters ever.

17. Alex Rodriguez

Alex Rodriguez (Adam Hunger/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - JULY 16: Alex Rodriguez #13 of the New York Yankees in action against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium on July 16, 2016 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Adam Hunger/Getty Images)

Rankings: 12th in bWAR, 13th in fWAR, 16th in Offense

Career Stats: .295/.380/.550, 3,115 H, 696 HR

If you can somehow ignore the performance-enhancing drugs, Alex Rodriguez vs. Albert Pujols makes for one heck of a solid debate.

They have nearly identical triple-slashes. Pujols is just two away from tying A-Rod for fourth on the all-time home run leaderboard. They each won three MVPs, each led their league in runs scored five times and each had at least one season of leading the league in batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, hits, doubles, home runs and RBI. (Not all in the same season.)

Pujols is ahead of Rodriguez by nearly 250 hits, but The Machine has also played in nearly 300 more games than A-Rod, and the latter ranks considerably better in bWAR, fWAR and Offense.

But Rodriguez's admission of PED use from 2001 to 2003 and subsequent admission of using banned substances from 2010 to 2012 is quite the tiebreaker in Pujols' favor.

Active Player Who Could Pass Pujols: Mike Trout

Mike Trout (Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

TORONTO, ON - AUGUST 26: Mike Trout #27 of the Los Angeles Angels takes an at bat against the Toronto Blue Jays in the sixth inning during their MLB game at the Rogers Centre on August 26, 2022 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images)

Rankings: 38th in bWAR, 36th in fWAR, 27th in Offense

Career Stats: .303/.415/.584, 1,507 H, 338 HR, 204 SB

There are plenty of all-time great, Hall of Fame hitters who aren't far behind Pujols. Guys such as Frank Robinson, Mike Schmidt, Nap Lajoie, Rickey Henderson, Jimmie Foxx, Pete Rose, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Chipper Jones and Ken Griffey Jr., just to name a few. If we wanted to extend this ranking to a top 30 instead of just focusing on Pujols and the guys immediately above and below him, they would likely all make the cut.

But if those retired legends are already behind Pujols, well, they aren't moving ahead of him now, so let's focus on a still active, former teammate who might.

Mike Trout just turned 31 in August, but he already has three AL MVPs and a total of nine top-five finishes in that vote. Baseball Reference puts him over 20 wins above replacement behind Pujols, but FanGraphs has the gap at roughly 8.0.

As great as Trout has been over the past decade-plus, though, it's worth pointing out that Pujols was better at that point in his career.

Through his age-30 season, Pujols was triple-slashing .331/.426/.625 (.625!!!) with 1,900 hits and 408 home runs. Granted, Trout has played in nearly 200 fewer games thanks to the pandemic-truncated 2020 season and an injury-shortened 2021 campaign, but that only excuses the gap in counting stats while Pujols destroyed him in batting average and slugging percentage.

It would be premature to put him at No. 18 on an all-time greatest hitters list at this point, but if he stays even moderately healthy for the next few seasons, Trout is going to bypass Pujols in career bWAR, fWAR and Offense. And I look forward to the debate eight to 10 years from now over which phenom was actually the most phenomenal.