It was June 2001, the first half of the first career season nobody came. Albert Pujols was back in Kansas City, Mo., where he had played two years earlier for a community college that had never produced a major league player. Now, as a rookie of St. Louis Cardinals, he somehow beat the .350 with a lot of home runs. But how good is he really?
“The feeling that day is that you have an entire roster of 10-year veterans coming your way — Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds — so don’t let any of those guys beat you,” said Chad Durbin, who start that night for the Royal, recalls a scouting meeting with a coach. “Jamie Quirk said to me, ‘I think your stuff will beat Pujols’ – and he didn’t even call him that, he mispronounced it. You just don’t know much about him. “
The education is fast and convincing. Pujols hit singles twice before punishing a curved sphere for a homer in the ninth inning, ruining Durbin’s chances in the first complete game of his career. This is the 20th home run of Pujols’ career in a journey that has spanned more than two decades.
“My runaway house is old enough to drink; Durbin, 44 and retired for nine years, said. “However, I did well in baseball, just trying to get the game going. I did my part.”
Pujols has said he will retire at the end of this season and on Friday he won his final race. He hit the home run 700 career milestone by hitting home twice against the Dodgers in Los Angeles, joining the most exclusive home run neighborhood of all. Before Pujols, only Babe Ruth (1934), Hank Aaron (1973) and Barry Bonds (2004) reached 700.
The Bonds ended his career with the most pitchers, 762, followed by Aaron 755 and Ruth 714. But the Pujols, in this specialized and elite age, have owned more pitchers than anyone else. whoever: 455.
That total is still growing. Both hosts on Friday presented new victims: His 434-foot shot to the left in the third inning went to the Dodgers keeper Andrew Heaney, and his 389-foot shot in the second inning investment has invalidated Phil Bickford. Neither had ever faced the Pujols before Friday night’s game.
Glendon Rusch, 47, who gave up three family members for the Pujols during his 40 career bats, said: “People always ask me: ‘Who’s the hardest hitter you’ve ever faced?’ “And I always say Albert. Especially when at his peak, he can do the most damage in the most different ways.”
Ruth spread her hosts across 216 different pitchers, and Aaron on 310. Both players retired long before the introduction of alternate play in 1997, midway through the Bonds’ careers. Bonds connect to 449 different pitchers, a mark the Pujols hit August 22 against Drew Smyly of the Chicago Cubs.
“How he’s playing now, he’s definitely a different Albert Pujols to what I saw when he was with the Angels,” Smyly said. “I never had a chance to face him when he was with the Cardinals early in his career, when he was just the most dominant player out there. But now it feels like he’s that guy again. “
Pujols is ending with a flourish almost as improbable as his sublimation at the start. Playing part-time during his split, his .509 slip through Thursday was the highest since 2011, the final year of his first stint in St. Louis.
Pujols had an average of more than 40 hosts per year with Cardinals between 2001 and 2011, a total of 0.617. He then left with a $240 million deal with the Angels, and averaging only 23 people home per year at a 0.448 slip on the 10-year contract. The Angels released him last May and he ended the 2021 season with the Dodgers.
However, while Pujols has only beaten the angels .256 – compared to .328 before it – his presence has always been evident to opposing pitchers, especially to runners. on the basis of. Pujols, who is second only to Aaron and Ruth on the career roster for the RBI, with 2,208 people, has driven at least 93 laps in six of his first eight seasons with the Angels.
“During his Anaheim days he obviously wasn’t average, but I think the RBI is a big thing, and he’s had over 100 RBIs for a good amount of time,” said Mets right-hand man Taijuan Walker. . “He was always efficient. He did his job to pull people in, and it could be with a pocket fly or a double that he would poke the other way. That’s what makes it so difficult.”
Walker added his name to the Pujols’ roster with a career number 587 in September 2016. Walker, who was playing for the Seattle Mariners at the time, had held the Pujols with a hit in the previous 10 goals, But this is not his day.
“I don’t even know if I’ll make it through – run home, run home, run home, go home,” said Walker, who has dropped three games in a row and has only had two losses in his career. first inning. “Albert finished it for me. I think it’s a fast ball, to the left. It’s also pretty deep. I remember them saying he couldn’t get on the ball fast, but he could get it down, so I tried to beat him. And I think a lot of his house has gone up now.”
That was the throw Smyly tried last month in the seventh inning of a scoreless game at Wrigley Field: 1-2 fast balls at 93 mph, high above the outer half of the disc. Pujols moved it into the first row of the left stand for homer number 693, the only game of the match. According to Statcast, the pitch is 4.23 feet above the ground, making it the second-highest pitch for an athlete in the pro leagues this season.
“However, early in the game, I threw him a curved ball down below the area – and he hit that wall as well,” Smyly said. “He just got locked out.”
The Pujols broke another scoreless draw against the Cubs on September 4 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, lifted Brandon Hughes’ quick ball for a towering shot on the left bullpen in the eighth inning. Hughes, a rookie, insists that Pujols’ résumé makes no difference to him — “I don’t name a killer while I’m out there,” he says — but he knows it well. clear history of Pujols.
“I’m from Detroit, so we lost to the Cardinals,” 10-year-old Hughes said as Pujols led the St. Louis to the 2006 World Series championship, “I say ‘we’, because I was a Tiger fan growing up.”
Pujols beat Justin Verlander in Match 1 of that World Series, demonstrating a trait he’s famous for. Among the many pitchers he has hit for the homeowner, there are some of the best pitchers to ever take the mound.
“Jim Leyland mentioned this when I was in Detroit with him: “Albert Pujols and those guys, they pitch really well, really well,” Durbin said, referring to the former Tigers manager. “That’s what I think of Albert: he hits good, hard quality shots – and then when you make mistakes, he punishes them. And that’s the difference between guys who average 80 in their careers with 350 home runs, it’s been a terrible career, and a guy like him. “
Aces from the last decade often confuse Pujols; Corey Kluber and Chris Sale combined to hold him three times in 44 strokes, with just one home run (apart from the 2012 left-handed Sale).
But consider this larger collection of mostly retired celebrities, a group with 23 Cy Young winners among them: Roger Clemens, Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson, Clayton Kershaw, Greg Maddux and Johan Santana. Pujols beat 10 home players – including 5 beat Johnson – while hitting a total of .367.
The average of 0.367 is one point higher than Ty Cobb’s all-time career high. So although Pujols will always symbolize slugging, remember that strength is only part of the package.
Against Clemens, Glavine, Johnson, Kershaw, Maddux and Santana, he’s even better than Cobb.
