Albert Pujols Wins NL MVP Unanimously

Again to no one’s surprise, The Great Pujols won the National League’s MVP award unanimously.  Two things come to mind for me, one negative and one positive, although with even the positive comes with an unsettling undertone.

First, the negative: I’m waiting for the steroid allegations to crop up. Following the ARod revelations, Pujols is the one big bopper left who hasn’t been implicated, and I think it’s just a matter of time following this high for someone to bring him down.  Part of it is that now is the time that reporters will be looking for dirt, because it is absolutely peak news value following this career high.

Americans as a whole love to see the mighty brought down to size and then rise up again as long as the fallen giant shows a little contrition and owns up, at least a little bit, to his or her failings.  It’s a theme that goes back at least as far as Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aeschlus’ Agamemnon, although they were a bit harder on their fallen heroes in those days.

I won’t be surprised if Pujols turns out to be enhanced.  He is awfully good and awfully big, and in recent years those players with the drive to be the best haven’t shown a lot of scruples about how they get there.  In other words, some of the signs are there.

On the positive side, the only 1Bmen in baseball history who, I think, compare with Pujols at this stage in his career are Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Frank Thomas and maybe Jeff Bagwell.  First base men who hit for average, power and drew a lot of walks.

Of these players, the players that most resembled Pujols in body type were Foxx and Thomas.  This is the down side.  Players as big as Pujols don’t tend to age well.  (Foxx was actually much smaller than Thomas or Pujols, but in his era, he was one of the biggest players in the game).

At the end of the season in which he was age 32, Foxx looked well on his way to beating Babe Ruth’s 714 career homerun total, but he played only full season after that.  Foxx’s heavy drinking added to his aging, but even without it, I doubt he would have played regularly into his late 30’s.

Frank Thomas, perhaps, is a better example.  Through the season in which he was age 30, Thomas played in at least 141 games eight years in a row (O.K., in the strike year 1994, he played in all 113 games the ChiSox played that year, so I’m going to count it).  After age 30, he played in at least 14o games only four times in the final ten seasons of his career.

Pujols will be age 30 in 2010.  At least looking at Thomas and Foxx, I’d sure be willing to shell out to get Pujols on my team in 2010 and 2011, but after that I think it’s a crap shoot.

Pujols runs well for a man his size, stealing 16 bases in 20 attempts in 2009.  However, I’m not sure he’s really fast, as opposed to being a truly great player who really understands the game.  Pujols has now twice stolen 16 bases in a season with a success rate of 80% or higher, but he’s also hit only 14 triples in a nine year major league career.

I’m reminded of Barry Bonds, who didn’t run hard in the last years of his career, even if he could have, but routinely stole bases when the pitcher forgot about him.  In his last six major league seasons, Bonds hit a puny 6 triples, while playing half his games in one of the best triples parks in baseball (AT&T Park’s Death Valley in right center is 421 feet from homeplate, meaning balls hit in that gap roll a long way), but he stole 30 bases in 33 attempts.  Bonds routinely stole second without a throw, because he got such a huge jump off the pitcher when he decided to run.  I suspect a lot of Pujols’ steals come in similar circumstances.

I note that 1Bmen in general rarely play as long as players at other positions.  Mainly, this is because 1Bmen are never particularly fast when young and get downright pokey as they age.  Think Will Clark or Alvin Davis.

As for Lou Gehrig and Jeff Bagwell, both had better body types than Foxx, Pujols or Thomas for long-term success, but neither made to age 40 as professional players.  Gehrig, of course, developed ALS, which effectively ended his career at age 36, while Bagwell developed an arthritic condition in his shoulder, which ended his career several years prematurely at age 37.