Is Pujols Becoming One of the Greatest Hitters of All-Time?

Chipper Jones walked through the bowels of Busch Stadium following Saturday night’s game against the Cardinals with his hand clutched to his chest. There was a small abrasion about the size of a quarter on his left palm.

“He nutted every ball,” Jones said of Albert Pujols when speaking to the press from his locker following Saturday’s game, “he about broke my hand with that ball he hit right at me.”

The welt was more than a simple bruise, it was symbolic, and the small beseeching grin that adorned his face as he addressed the media all but told the story. Jones was finally coming to terms with what everyone else in the room had known all along, and there wasn’t much he could do about it but smile: Pujols was coming for the batting title.

Jones’s grabbed the inside lane in the race for the batting title during mid-April and, for a while, judging from the way he was hitting the ball, it didn’t appear that he’d ever let go of the reins. He was hitting .400 as late as June 18 and appeared to be a legitimate threat to unseat Ted Williams as the last man to reach the hallowed mark.

His historic aspirations have since been extinguished after hitting .270 for the month of July and, after watching Pujols go 8-for-10 from the plate over the weekend, his reign atop the leader board is now in serious jeopardy. Coming out of the weekend series, Pujols had perched himself atop of the list alongside Jones by lifting his average to .359.

By doing so, Pujols now leads all comers in average, On-base percentage (.467) and slugging (.639), and is also in the top ten in the National League in homers (28), walks (86), hits (151), and RBI (87), among other things.

But, as impressive as his slash and counting statistics have been, what really has set Pujols apart is his clutch hitting. His production in these situations has been one of the reasons that the Cardinals have been able to sustain despite having a lesser cast than their foes, and generally what sets Pujols apart as an MVP candidate.

Here’s a few numbers to chew on:

• With a runner on third base he has managed to amass a ghastly .722 on-base percentage.
• He’s hitting .367/.511/.619 with 2 outs.
• He’s hitting .315 with runners in scoring position, and has driven in 54 runs in 89 at-bats in such situations.
• According to the Elias Sports Bureau, over the last 50 years only two players led their league in both batting and slugging while maintaining a BB/SO ratio as high as Pujols’ (86/44). Barry Bonds did it twice (2002 and ‘04), and George Brett accomplished the feat in 1980.
• And one just for fun: he’s hitting .526 with less than two outs and a man on third

With this type of resume, it’d be fair to assume that all MVP discussions have to start with him, but there’s something far greater happening here: Pujols is quickly solidifying himself as one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game.

Ted Williams wrote the book on hitting, both literally and figuratively, but it may not be long before Pujols grabs a chair and takes a place at the table with the likes Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron and, of course, Williams.

None of those players had a better start to their career than Pujols, so in some ways it’d be fair to place him the upper echelon already. He’s achieved a ton of “first’s” since breaking into the league as a 21 year-old rookie in 2001, such as becoming the first player to finish in the top five in MVP voting each of his first six years, but becoming the first player to hit.300 with 30 homers and 100 RBI through his first seven years is the one that truly illustrates who he is as a player.

Barring injury, Pujols is a lock to make that eight straight seasons of .300/30/100 production, which also makes him a lock to finish somewhere in the top ten in the MVP balloting. Once this happens, he’ll have accomplished something that Williams, DiMaggio, Barry Bonds, Aaron, Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx never have - finish in the top ten in eight straight MVP elections. Pujols, 28, is just entering his prime, if he continues to produce at this rate he could easily string together five more MVP caliber seasons. He only needs three more top-ten finishes after this season to pass Musial and Mays.

Another stat that more properly illustrates his sheer dominance as an all-around hitter: Pujols’ career OPS (1.047) was 266 points higher than the average hitter over the last eight years. Relative to the competition, he ranks ahead of Mays, DiMaggio, Aaron, Musial, and a million others in this department.

In a recent e-mail session with ESPN’s Buster Olney, Astros’ catcher, Brad Ausmus, declared Pujols the greatest hitter in the game today:

“I feel like he has really disciplined himself at the plate, and has grown to understand, not only what the pitcher is trying to do, but what he is capable of doing. He combines a lead-off hitter’s eye and ability to make contact, a 3-hole hitter’s average, and clean-up hitter’s power. He’s the best hitter in the game, period.”

That’s the scary thing: he’s evolving. We haven’t even seen the best of Pujols yet. The numbers are there. A study by Baseball Prospectus ranks Pujols first seven years in the league as the second greatest start of all time, behind only Williams. He may not quite be there yet, but it’s generally accepted among baseball people that Pujols has set the standard for players breaking into the league. At some point his legendary start is going to have to drop the start, and just be legendary.