$240M Man Albert Pujols' 600th Home Run Puts Spotlight on What Might've Been

Think about what could have been. Think about what should have been.

Think about Albert Pujols hitting his 600th career home run…in St. Louis.

"It would have been a huge event here," said Bernie Miklasz, the longtime St. Louis columnist and radio host at the city's 101.1 ESPN.

Would have been. Could have been.

It's hard to think anything else regarding Pujols, even as he became the ninth player to hit 600 home runs with his Saturday night grand slam off ex-teammate Ervin Santana. It's better than thinking about the present, when Pujols is a good but hardly great player on a nowhere-near-great team.

It's better than thinking about the future, when the Los Angeles Angels will still owe Pujols $114 million for the four seasons after this one. If this is what he is now, at age 37, what will he be like when he's 41 and making $30 million?

No one should blame the Angels for aiming high when they signed Pujols, back in December 2011. They wanted to take the American League West back from the Texas Rangers. They wanted to take Southern California from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

They knew the back years of the 10-year, $240 million contract wouldn't make baseball or financial sense, but they were going for rings and they were going for relevance.

"The Rally Monkey has become King Kong," Bill Plaschke wrote in the Los Angeles Times that day, when Pujols was still baseball's best player and the Angels had just become baseball's boldest team.

No one should blame Pujols for taking the money, or for believing what Angels owner Arte Moreno was selling. He wasn't the only one who believed.

"Thank you, Arte!" the fans chanted that day, according to Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com, when the Angels introduced Pujols and C.J. Wilson in front of Angel Stadium.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

So here we are now, five-and-a-half years later, just past the midway point of that contract. Here we are, at a milestone worthy of celebration…except it feels so much like it should have happened somewhere else.

"No one would be talking about his batting average or on-base percentage or slow speed," Miklasz said. "No one would be dwelling on his inevitable career decline. This would have turned into a loving tribute to Albert in recognition of all that he'd done for a venerated franchise that's an essential part of the city's identity and pride."

What could have been. What would have been.

No one should blame the fans of Orange County if they can't feel the same way.

Instead of rings, Pujols has given the Angels five years with just one postseason appearance, and not a single postseason win. Instead of gaining relevance, the Angels' average attendance was higher the year before Pujols arrived than it has been in any season since he signed.

Wednesday, the day after he hit his 599th home run, the Angels didn't come close to selling out as he went for 600. The crowd that night was announced at 35,795, right about their season average and more than 3,000 below the 2011 average. Even fewer people (33,426) showed up the next night.

"Oh, how perfect," Angels television analyst Mark Gubicza said, just before he and partner Victor Rojas tried to explain that the chase for 600 mattered to the folks in Anaheim.

Perhaps it did, but the Angels seem to matter less in Southern California than they did in the pre-Pujols days. In 2011, when Pujols was still playing (and winning a World Series) in St. Louis, the Angels outdrew the Dodgers for the first time in their history. The Dodgers have won the local attendance battle every season since.

The Dodgers lead all of baseball this year in home attendance and road attendance. The Angels are seventh in home attendance, and dead last in the majors in road attendance.

That's stunning for a team with Pujols and Mike Trout, even though two series in Oakland and one each at Tampa Bay and Miami have a lot to do with it.

He was supposed to make them relevant. Is it possible they've instead made him irrelevant?

Whitney Curtis/Getty Images

Pujols never finished lower than ninth in MVP voting in 11 seasons with the Cardinals. There was only one time he finished lower than fifth.

In five seasons with the Angels, he has never finished higher than 17th.

He made the All-Star team nine times with the Cardinals. He's made it once since heading west.

The Cardinals moved on without him, making the postseason four straight times and going to another World Series after he left. Pujols, meanwhile, went from a .328 batting average and 1.037 OPS in St. Louis to a .265 average and .792 OPS in Anaheim. He averaged 40 home runs a year with the Cardinals; he hit 40 once (and has averaged 29 a year) with the Angels. 

He's older. He's been hurt. He would have gotten older had he stayed in St. Louis, and he may well have gotten hurt.

He may well have played a lot less, because he couldn't have been a designated hitter on the days he was too sore to play first base.

There's no guarantee the last five years would have gone well. There's little reason to think the next five would have.

But on this one day, for this one milestone, it's hard not to wonder.

What could have been. What would have been.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.