Pujols..ha

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Bill Plaschke chimes in

FJM where art thou?

Did Bernie write a column like that last April? This is close:

Slow start for Pujols not hard to sum up
A look at the stats shows more ground balls, more swings at the first pitch.
SOURCE: Bernie Miklasz
DATE: April 16, 2011
I'm a numbers guy.
So when Albert Pujols got off to a slow start to the season - a cold spell that already is heating up - I wanted to see if the statistics would tell us anything.

[Cole Burns]

Bill Plaschke chimes in

FJM where art thou?

Albert is not dealing with the media well. This will not go in a larger market. It seemed like he took every single question in the interview as a personal challenge against him.

[cards2468]

How often has Albert gotten angry with StL media over pressure to hit home runs and then made it clear that he is "not a home run hitter"?

In St. Louis, fans would become almost as excited with a double as they would a home run. That's what Albert has made a career out of: driving balls into the gaps. Not in LA. What's a double? Just a longer single. Give us the long ball! Have fun playing in a market that doesn't understand your value as well as most other places would.

[dmarx114]

Kind of funny that Pujols has a great game the night Plaschke decides to blast him.

[heyzeus]

Kind of funny that Pujols has a great game the night Plaschke decides to blast him.

He didn't score any runs or drive any in with those three doubles and fourth smoked ball that resulted in an error. Clearly his fault.

[Fan_In_NY]

Kind of funny that Pujols has a great game the night Plaschke decides to blast him.

Was he really blasting him or just saying that the fans are impatient? I took it as saying the fans expected more...he necessarily doesn't.

Like this quote:

His career homer drought is 107 at-bats, set early last season. He eventually broke out of it to lead the Cardinals to a World Series championship. There is no reason to doubt that he won't find that swing again.

Doesn't seem like blasting.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Bill Plaschke chimes in

FJM where art thou?

Did Bernie write a column like that last April? This is close:

Slow start for Pujols not hard to sum up
A look at the stats shows more ground balls, more swings at the first pitch.
SOURCE: Bernie Miklasz
DATE: April 16, 2011
I'm a numbers guy.
So when Albert Pujols got off to a slow start to the season - a cold spell that already is heating up - I wanted to see if the statistics would tell us anything.

That's not even close. Bernie is [expletive] about Pujols swigning at bad pitches, which was a reality. Plaschke is [expletive] about Pujols hitting lasers off the outfield wall...because the doubles weren't home runs.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Slow down Cowboy. I wasn't trying to ruffle any feathers. I agree that I like Bernie's arguments better. In fact, its stuff people have been seeing the last year and a half around here.

The irony is, people in St. Louis were ,by and large, ready to tolerate a decline in his production for what he gave the team all those years. You can say "Yeah, for $40 million less." If I'm Albert, I think I would have thought "Yeah, for $23-25 million a year. And I will be an eternal legend. Sounds good to me."

Oh well.

[pioneer98]

They lost me at the very first sentence of the article..."Baseball's best power hittier strolls to the plate at 7:17PM."

Albert is definitely in the top 3 or 4 power hitters in the game, no doubt. But to kind of build on what some of you are saying, Albert is more of a line drive hitter than a HR hitter. He just crushes some line drives so hard they leave the yard. Albert has led the league in HR twice, so I'm not denying he has a ton of power. But when I think of "pure" HR hitters, Prince Fielder is the first guy that comes to mind. Ryan Howard when he was healthy comes to mind. Even Votto strikes me as more of traditional big fly ball hitter than Albert.

Albert separates himself from these guys by striking out less, walking more, and hitting for a higher average. Not by hitting more homers than them, necessarily. Albert could very well hit 10 fewer homers than Prince Fielder this year, but still be a more valuable player than Prince.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Slow down Cowboy. I wasn't trying to ruffle any feathers. I agree that I like Bernie's arguments better. In fact, its stuff people have been seeing the last year and a half around here.

The irony is, people in St. Louis were ,by and large, ready to tolerate a decline in his production for what he gave the team all those years. You can say "Yeah, for $40 million less." If I'm Albert, I think I would have thought "Yeah, for $23-25 million a year. And I will be an eternal legend. Sounds good to me."

Oh well.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Cardinals fans, had the CArdinals signed him for 9/10 years for 200/220, would have been fine with that and known they were paying for his decline but more importantly were going to see the best hitter of our generation retire a Cardinal.

Now, we've just got to be happy to see the best hitter of our generation in his prime and not pay for his decline.

RE: Bernie/Plaschke. I didn't see Bernie's piece as trying to come down on Albert for anything but rather just take a look at what was happening (swinging at worse pitches) where Plaschke just rambled on about how he hasn't hit a homerun.