How far did Pujols fall?
Once he left St Louis, how close did he come to his projections?
Angel fans do not look back fondly on the signing of Albert Pujols. Nothing personal against Albert - he was always a class act. The team however fell well short of the hopes and after 2015 never came all that close to contention. For his part, Albert declined from a generational superstar, to an ordinary player, to replacement level while still in the middle years of the contract.
How far short did he fall from reasonable expectations? I’m not talking about the mindless bragging that Arte Moreno’s advertising might have tried to sell you on after the contract. Oh sure, Albert is going to hit .350 over the next decade with 47 homers and 135 RBI per season.
You know (or you should know, if you found this site to read) that players will decline with age. That is why Mike Schmidt, David Wright, and Chipper Jones are not currently leading the Phillies, Mets, and Braves in this year’s pennant race. Projections can be used to estimate a reasonable aging pattern as an older player progresses through a long term deal.
The way that works is simple - how have players aged from year to year in the past? So by looking at projections we can compare Albert’s decline to the average decline for all of the players who came before him. I’ve been doing projections for a while now, and during the time in question I produced a 5-year projection for every player at the beginning of the season. With that I can show how Pujols projected for years 2012-2016 based simply on his age and what he did in St. Louis.
Beyond that, I looked at the earliest projection for the year in question. So for 2020, this would have been available for the first time before the 2016 season and based on the stats he had from 2012-2015 with the Angels. Without further ado, here are Pujols’ career numbers if all of his time in STL happened exactly as it did, and he had met projections for his years with the Angels.
Effect on the counting stats:
Very little. Pujols played more games than projected by 111. He got hurt and he played through pain. This was obvious (and painful to watch) for any Angel fan who ever saw him run. Pujols did not meet the expectations of his contract but you have to admire his work ethic, the willingness to show up for the job no matter how much pain he was in.
Looking back it makes me wonder if he could have been more productive with some kind of load management plan. Give him more days off and maybe he hits better on the days he plays? Too late to find out now.
Projected Pujols, being on base more often, would have scored more runs. He currently ranks 12th all-time, he would have moved up to 8th, passing A-Rod.
His RBI total is nearly identical and in either case puts him second all-time after Henry Aaron. He moves up one spot in career homers, passing the Babe but still behind Bonds and Aaron.
He moves up from 10th to 8th in hits, passing Yaz and Honus.
His rate stats suffer quite a bit though, losing 14 points of OBP, 26 of slugging, falling under a .300 career average, and OPS+ dropping 10 points. At 145 he is 54th all-time. At 155 he would have been in a 5-way tie with Mays, Aaron, Ott, and DiMaggio.
He’s currently behind active players like Judge, Trout, Alvarez, and Ohtani in OPS+, but they have not had (or completed) their decline phase yet. Pujols was at 175 when he left St. Louis, which put him in the top 10.
How would this have affected pennant races?
The 2012 Angels were one of the greatest teams I’ve ever seen to fall short of the playoffs, a team I wish they could have had a do-over. They had the incredible rookie season of Mike Trout, a great year from Torii Hunter (his last with the Angels). They had excellent production up the middle with Kendrick and Aybar. The had additional power down the order with Trumbo and Morales. On the pitching side they had Weaver, C.J. Wilson, and Dan Haren and Ervin Santana were in their primes. Late in the year they added Zach Greinke. And somehow they still couldn’t do it, finishing in third place with 89 wins.
Projected Pujols would have helped, but real 2012 Pujols was still very good. He might have helped them win another game, but the team fell short by 4. Probably still miss the playoffs.
The Angels of 2013, 16, 18, 19, and 21 were so far away from the playoffs that even the best year of Pujols (2003? 2009? pick anything from 2001-2010?) would not have made a difference.
The 2015 team might have made it. They finished one game behind the Astros for the last wild card spot. Projected Pujols was about one win better than real Pujols. This is hard to say. They were 9-10 against the Astros that year with many of the games decided by a single run. If they win an extra game against the Astros, they make the playoffs. If they win one against somebody else, it gives them a tie-breaker game to decide who gets to play the wild card game against the Yankees. Let’s call this a 50/50.
In 2017 they finished 5 games behind the last wild card team, the Twins. Pujols was awful that year, at 2 wins below replacement it was the worst he’d ever have. Projected Pujols was at least an average player so that is a 4 win swing. Count this as a maybe.
The 2020 team finished 3 games behind the Astros, but Pujols did meet projections that year, no change.
I don’t know if it would have been 2015 or 2017, but probability suggests that one of those years would have been better with Pujols meeting his projections. This doesn’t guarantee much, as even if they make that playoff game there is a 50/50 chance that they are bounced out of the playoffs after one game.
This team had Mike Trout. Later in the run they had Ohtani. Even if Pujols had played to projections, they still would have been a massive disappointment. Three years ago Oakland was awful. A complete disaster on the field. Now they are leading the division. Two years ago the White Sox set a new modern record for losses. They aren’t good yet but have already jumped ahead of the Angels.
Since the last time the Angels were good, the Orioles made the playoffs, fell apart, tore everything down and tanked for back-to-back #1 picks, rose from the ashes, became the best team in the league, and have fallen apart again. The Angels remain a consistent hopeless ballclub.
I hope I live long enough to see the day when a new ownership group comes in with a serious plan to figure out what they have been doing wrong, and what they can do to fix it.