Albert Pujols: becoming one of the greatest
31-year-old Albert Pujols is a Major League Baseball player for the St Louis Cardinals and is renowned for his immense talent and abilities. He has excellent fielding and base running capabilities and can hit both average and power. Unlike other players,
he just doesn’t have a good season and then crumbles. He has been giving back-to-back powerhouse performances since a decade. According to a poll of 30 MLB managers, he is the most feared hitter in the game today.
He has a big chance of being known as one of the greatest players in the history of baseball. Why? At 30 years of age he has more home-runs than the legendary Babe Ruth. The number of his hits exceeds those of the great Pete Rose and he surpasses Hank Aaron
in RBIs. At only 31, he already has more runs than Rickey Henderson.
Pujols is definitely on his way to becoming one of the greatest baseball players of recent times. This is probably why everyone is pining all over him and the free agencies just can’t wait to get their hands on him. His relationship with Nike is definitely
long term and their deal is one of the biggest in baseball history paying him about $1 million per annum. He ranked at Number four in a report released on baseball’s most marketable players. Based on image awareness, personality attributes and appeal coming
behind the likes of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Josh Hamilton is no less than an off field achievement. Everyone wants a piece of the man who is making history with every game that he plays, every performance that he gives.
An average of 3.14 along with 127 RBIs and 34 home-runs is the worst statistic Pujols has ever posted. For any other player the same statistics would mark a career season, if they manage to even score this in the first place. During each of his first 10
seasons he managed 30 home-runs and 100 RBIs each. He is the only player in baseball history to have done so. He has three Most Valued Player awards under his belt and has always finished within the top 4 category, except for once where he came ninth in 2007.
For the past six years he has been on the top of the National League for Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and is on his way to approaching the WAR levels of the great Barry Bonds and the Hall of Famer Babe Ruth. Pujols has two Gold Glove Awards to his name and
has an impressive 30 stolen bases in the duration of only two years. All these statistics indicate the greatness of his prowess.
His hitting is often compared to the likes of baseball royalties like Jimmie Foxx, Ken Griffey, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle.
His standing is baseball history? No one knows as yet. Time has given us examples of player like Pujols who perform marvelously for a decade and then fall flat on their face. Mantle and Griffey’s career was slowed down because of injuries whereas Foxx developed
quite a drinking problem. Even though everyone looks at his records and presume he’s older than 31, he’s not. He is one of the best players in today’s baseball and if he plays like what he has until now in the coming 5-6 years then he will make his mark as
the greatest player in baseball history for sure. Hopefully obstacles like difficult contract situations and injuries will not get in his way.
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