10/22/11: The End of an Era?

I'm sure anyone who selected Albert Pujols early in their fantasy draft this year is regretting it.  The only people regretting being involved with him more are likely the Los Angeles Angels who thought he was worth $240 million over the next ten years.  Good news Angels fans, one month of what could end up being the worst contract in baseball is done with.  Only another nine plus seasons to go.

In all fairness, things aren't that bleak, at least not yet.  The disappearance of Albert Pujols in Anaheim is likely more temporary, even if he were never to fully return, his current production would not continue, so the contract can't be deemed the worst ever.  It probably isn't even the worst on the team right now seeing that Vernon Wells was the second highest paid player in baseball last year (behind Alex Rodriguez).  The Angels of course traded for Wells only a season ago.  Then you have Torii Hunter which surely wasn't a horrible signing, but easily overpaid given his $18.5 million a year salary.  Anyone remember Gary Matthews Jr.?

Alright, so Pujols can't stay as bad as he has been this year.  Players are never always consistent.  Production comes and goes in waves.  However, when talking about the supposedly best player in baseball, you want a little bit more than "just a slump" when more than a month into the season he has yet to his a home run, batting near the Mendoza line, and is struggling to draw walks.  Without diving into all the numbers, at least not right now, let's just look at how big a drought this is purely in terms of power, aka home runs.

Currently, Albert Pujols has 445 career home runs to his name.  That is good for 37th on the All-Time list of home run hitters.  More remarkably, he has done it in 12 seasons.  Of the 36 names above him, the next shortest career was Jeff Bagwell at 15 seasons, and he only has four more home runs than Pujols (Bagwell is tied with Vladimir Guerrero who played 16 seasons, and could still sign this year).

I went through the 36 names on the list above Pujols, and looked month-to-month to see how many of them had droughts for a full calendar month.  The only guideline I used initially was that a player had to start in six games just to see how often injuries may have affected thing.  This resulted in 119 results.  In fact, the only two players who hit at least one home run while starting at least six games each month were Frank Thomas and Chipper Jones.  Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, etc. all missed hitting home runs for at least a month.

That isn't really a good list since players can be injured for weeks, so I took out all the results where a player didn't start at least 20 games in a month.  Pujols started in 23 games in the month of April.  Using at least 20 games meant no major DL stints, nor shortened months (April use to only have about a dozen games).  This resulted in 21 occurrences by 11 different players that were in the same predicament at Pujols is now:

1. Sammy Sosa - 1992 (20 GS
2. Rafael Palmeiro - 1988 (26 GS)
3. Rafael Palmeiro - 1988 (27 GS)
4. Rafael Palmeiro - 1989 (22 GS)
5. Reggie Jackson - 1967 (22 GS)
6. Reggie Jackson - 1983 (21 GS)
7. Reggie Jackson - 1986 (21 GS)
8. Mickey Mantle - 1968 (24 GS)
9. Ernie Banks - 1954 (25 GS)
10. Ernie Banks - 1954 (23 GS)
11. Gary Sheffield - 1989 (23 GS)
12. Eddie Murray - 1996 (24 GS)
13. Fred McGriff - 1998 (24 GS)
14. Stan Musial - 1944 (24 GS)
15. Stan Musial - 1947 (24 GS)
16. Carl Yastrzemski - 1972 (20 GS)
17. Carl Yastrzemski - 1974 (25 GS)
18. Carl Yastrzemski - 1975 (22 GS)
19. Carl Yastrzemski - 1979 (20 GS)
20. Carl Yastrzemski - 1982 (25 GS)
21. Vladimir Guerrero - 2007 (23 GS)

Years listed twice meant two calendar months occurred in the same year without a home run.  Next, I looked at what point in a career these anomalies occurred.  Many of these involved seasons where a player had yet to his his stride (and in some cases likely weren't popping steroids yet).  If we eliminate every year that one of these players were 25 or younger, and older than 35, the list gets drastically shorter.  I think it is safe to assume all these players reached their prime in that ten year span, so let's do that.

1. Fred McGriff - 1998 (24 GS)
2. Stan Musial - 1947 (24 GS)
3. Carl Yastrzemski - 1972 (20 GS)
4. Carl Yastrzemski - 1974 (25 GS)
5. Carl Yastrzemski - 1975 (22 GS)
6. Vladimir Guerrero - 2007 (23 GS) 

 This is the exclusive company that Pujols is sharing when it comes to a hitter who has hit 445 or more career home runs, but has had a calendar month without doing so once despite starting twenty or more games.  This list should really be narrowed a bit further.  Stan Musial was only 26 at the time of his lack of accomplishment, and despite being a very good player prior to then, he was not the home run hitting player he was later known to me (19 HRs or less prior to 1948).

Carl Yastrzemski shows up on both lists plenty, but really does not share anything with Pujols.  After all, Yaz played in the middle of the Deadball era during his career.  The fact that he hit 449 HRs is really a true testament to the hitter he was.  He hit 40+ HRs three times in a four year span.  Otherwise, he never hit more than 28 HRs in his 23 year career, so really he probably should not be included in this list either.

So really that leaves him in the company of a 34-year old Fred McGriff and a 32-year old Vladimir Guerrero.  McGriff would hit 19 HRs in the 1998 season, the lowest total of any of his full seasons.  Vladimir Guerrero would bounce back to hit 27 HRs in 2007, the lowest total in a full season for him up to that point.  The difference in those cases is that Fred McGriff had just come off a fantastic April before putting up a goose egg in May.  Vlad Guerrero on the other hand didn't have his home run power for the month of July in 2007, but he still hit .292 that month.  That month was right in the middle of an otherwise MVP-caliber season.

It helps in each of their cases that their troubles did not occur in April, thus starting the first twenty some games of the season without a single home run.  Guerrero had been with the Angels for quite a few years at that point, so they got a lot of what they paid for before that.  McGriff was only in his second month with the expansion Tampa Bay Devils Rays, but he was a bright spot in an otherwise dim team.  Pujols has the unfortunate perspective of being the guy that was just signed for nearly a quarter billion dollars through the age of 41, bringing with him the title of the best hitter in the game, and the expectation of doing what Guerrero could not: returning the Angels to the World Series.

It's no secret that Pujols is off to a bad start.  When you consider the company of home run hitters he has joined, and it expected to move up the ranks of, then you realize this is a really bad start.  Alex Rodriguez was the guy one guy who had a shot at breaking the Barry Bonds home run record, but now that seems questionable.  Nevertheless, Pujols was the guy who had the chance at eclipsing Rodriguez, yet now that could be further out of reach than it seems.

Everyone will speculate that Pujols could have been on steroids, that his age could be closer to 42 than 32, or that he is just in a bad slump.  There is no real way to tell until the rest of the season and his career play out.  Maybe this is the beginning of the end of one of baseball's most productive hitters.  Maybe this is just a small hiccup in an otherwise Hall of Fame career.  In any event, I don't think any baseball fans last fall were thinking that Albert Pujols would not hit another home run until at least May.  Certainly not on October 22nd when Pujols hit his 3rd home run of the night against the Texas Rangers in Game 3 of the World Series.  The end of an era?  Maybe.