Albert Pujols Still Struggling Badly In 2012

Remember when Angels fans were hoping Brandon Wood would be the next Pujols? For a month, it actually happened! Just in a monkey-paw kind of way. Careful with those wishes, people. But from May 9 through Monday’s game, Albert Pujols hit .299/.353/.558 with six homers, two doubles, and seven walks in 85 plate appearances.

You might consider it cherry-picking to start with May 9 because he was 2-for-5 that day, and it makes his numbers look shinier. But I wasn’t trying to cherry-pick, and your suggestion offends me, w… Hey, is that a .gif of a dog trapped in a fortress of soda cans???

No, he’s not breaking any rules. Not any official rules, anyway.

Oh (the baseball scribe thought to himself) isn’t that intriguing? Perhaps all those rumors of Albert’s demise were greatly exaggerated and he’s become himself this month.

Albert Pujols signed with the Los Angeles Angels in December, and in spring training, he was fantastic. He was Albert Pujols, basically. Since spring training, Albert Pujols has played in 35 games that mattered, batting 149 times. Over those 149 trips to the plate, he’s hit .197 with a .510 OPS. You know the story by now - it’s a catastrophe. Nobody really knows what’s going on, and if you ask Pujols nothing is going on, but this has gone on long enough that we can’t just dismiss it as noise.

At our own Lone Star Ball, the author takes a look at the worst 35-game stretches Pujols has ever had in his career. We have a pretty good understanding that Pujols has never before been this bad for this long. What is the most bad he has been for this long?

Did you know that Albert Pujols has been terrible so far with the Angels? Of course you did, it’s all anybody wants to talk about because what on earth is going on with Albert Pujols? It would be one thing for Albert Pujols to show signs of decline. We expect Albert Pujols to show signs of decline because he is up there in years. It’s quite another for Albert Pujols to look like one of the worst players in baseball. Just last year he was terrific. The year before he was amazing. According to FanGraphs’ WAR, since 2009 Pujols has dropped from 9.0 to 7.5 to 5.1 to -1.0. I am very familiar with the issues with WAR but I also know that conveys the proper idea.

Pujols, sports, terrible. A little while ago we shared a Joe Posnanski article on the subject of Pujols’ swing. Here we share a Chris O’Leary article on the subject of Pujols’ swing. This one is a wee bit more analytical, complete with nifty .gifs. An excerpt:

I am going to present to you some facts. Last December, the Los Angeles Angels gave Albert Pujols a ten-year, $240 million contract. In 2011, Albert Pujols posted a 148 OPS+. So far in 2012, Albert Pujols has posted a 46 OPS+. Mario Mendoza, the infielder after whom the Mendoza Line was named, posted a career 41 OPS+. Mendoza was a defense-first shortstop and Pujols is supposed to be an offense-first first baseman.

So, Albert Pujols’ slump is a bit of a thing. Here’s Joe Posnanski with his analysis:

It was supposed to be a moment of release. The pressure was supposed to have been relieved. The crowd continued to cheer in part because they’d seen a home run, and in part because they figured that home run would lead to a bunch of other home runs. Now the homers would come in bunches, right? There’s no homer as hard to hit as the first one. MLB.com, for its part, published quite the assumption in its game recap:

That wouldn’t be an assumption - that would be a statement of fact. “Albert’s back! That’s what this is a picture of.” I don’t know why someone would lead with that headline after a baseball game but sometimes you have to work to keep things fresh.

You can take a deep breath, Orange County, California. Your prized off-season acquisition has cleared the fences in a regular-season baseball game wearing your team colors!

The Angels, who are in last place in the AL West, were able to have fun with Pujols’ first dinger of the season, exhibiting something far more hilarious than the typical cold-shoulder treatment teams have been known to do when a player hits his first career home run or snaps out of an excruciating long cold streak.

If you analyze virtually any player’s slump, you’ll probably find some negative indicators. Some reasons for that slump’s very existence. Otherwise the player probably wouldn’t be slumping. Far more often than not, the indicators reverse, and the player pulls out of his slump and goes back to being himself. I think the expectation is still that Albert Pujols will be more or less fine when he gets going.

But it’s interesting to think about where Albert Pujols’ new true-talent baseline might be. The fact of the matter is that he is now doing some things he hasn’t done, or hasn’t done as much, in the past. He’s getting older, and he’s around the point at which we expect players - even the great ones - to get worse. Pujols is under contract for a very long time and already, with just a month in the books, we’re wondering if he’s even Albert Pujols anymore.

“The positive things that are being said … this clubhouse is not separating, it’s bonding more than ever,” Hatcher said. “I tell them, ‘The magic can start today.’ I refuse to do it any other way.“He said other things, too. All of them just as innocuous. And he also told beat reporters that Pujols told his teammates not to expect the same struggles all season long. That last part didn’t even make the article.

How did Albert Pujols respond? From CBS Sports:

It was a beautiful thing.

It would have been meaningless -- it came in the bottom of the ninth inning, and turned an 8-1 game into an 8-4 game -- except it was Stanton’s first home run of the season.