Pujols is right up there with Aaron, Mays
We live in an era of home run fatigue, with an entire generation of baseball fans, having already witnessed the obliteration of once-hallowed numbers such as 755 and 61, now growing accustomed a grotesque recalibration of historic milestones.
Fifty homers in a season, or 500 in a career, used to mean far more than they do now. Fly balls are leaving ballparks at an unprecedented rate this season, 1.23 per team per game, each one a brick in the construction of a gaudy new skyscraper where a historic monument once sat.
It would be easy, in this atmosphere, to dismiss Albert Pujols’s 600th career homer, struck late Saturday night in Anaheim, Calif., as just another manifestation of the overall cheapening of the home run. He became the ninth member of Major League Baseball’s 600-home-run club, but the sixth to get there in the past 15 years. Babe Ruth was alone in that room for 38 years, then Ruth, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays had it to themselves for another 31. But lately it’s gotten crowded.
But there is nothing cheap about Pujols’ ascent. The Los Angeles Angels designated hitter became the fourth-youngest member of the club, behind only Ruth, Alex Rodriguez and Aaron. Only Ruth, among those with 600 homers, has a higher career batting average than Pujols, .342 to .308, and only Ruth has more World Series rings, seven to two. Only Aaron struck out at a lower rate than Pujols, 9.9 per cent to 10.1.
And it’s not as if another wave of new members is on its way, as happened between 2007 and ’11, when Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr., Rodriguez and Jim Thome all reached 600 homers. Miguel Cabrera, 34 years old and sitting on 451 homers, has a chance to reach 600 if he can stay healthy and productive for another few years, but there isn’t another obvious, projectable candidate after that.
It’s entirely possible the 600homer barrier won’t be breached again until the Mike Trout-Bryce Harper generation another 12 to 15 years down the road.
If anything, Pujols has been underappreciated, both because of the homer-happy era in which he plays and the fact he has spent the second half of his career in selfimposed exile in Anaheim, with the Angels making the playoffs just once since his arrival in 2012 on a 10-year, $240-million contract. Some would also penalize him for having played nearly 15 per cent of his games as a designated hitter, becoming essentially a full-time DH the past two years.
There will also be those who will always associate Pujols with steroids, both generally, because of the era in which he played, and specifically, due to a handful of dubious claims that Pujols had used PEDs. But, even in this era of cynicism, that isn’t a convincing enough case to put Pujols alongside Bonds, Sosa, Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez in the category of steroids-tainted sluggers.
The fact is, leaving defence aside, you could make a convincing case that Pujols is the greatest right-handed hitter in history; at a minimum, he is in the discussion, along with Mays, Aaron, Cabrera, Rodriguez, Frank Robinson, Ramirez, Jimmy Foxx and Trout.
Of that group, only Trout, Ramirez and Foxx have a higher career OPS than Pujols’s .959, and only Trout, Foxx and Mays have a higher career OPS+ than his 155.
And let’s remember Pujols, who is under contract with the Angels through 2021, isn’t finished yet. Though age and injury have reduced him to a DH, he needs just 124 hits to reach 3,000, which would gain him entry to the 3,000hit/600-homer club, of which there are only three members — Aaron, Rodriguez and Mays.
He could hit another 100 homers and join Bonds, Aaron and Ruth in the 700-homer club, or he could retire before his Angels contract is up.
Either way, he has separated himself from contemporaries such as Rodriguez and Ramirez, and will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer five years after he plays his last game.