One of the strangest and most spectacular careers in baseball history is skidding to a conclusion. The Angels confirmed Thursday that they were releasing Albert Pujols, who is in the final year of his contract there.
Pujols has been declining for years, hitting new lows this season with a .198 batting average and .622 OPS. The separation from the Angels may have been acrimonious; according to the L.A. Times, he was angry that the front office benched him on Wednesday night against the Rays.
His ten-year, $240 million deal in Anaheim was mostly a disaster, but consider it back pay for one of the greatest decade-long runs ever. He was a stud as soon as he debuted with the Cardinals in 2001, and over the next 11 years in St. Louis, finished in the Top 10 in NL MVP voting every single year — something he never did once after signing with the Angels before the 2012 season.
The Angels put out a magnanimous statement on Thursday, saying that “his actions define what it means to be a true superstar.”
If it’s the end of his career, the 41-year-old Pujols will head to the Hall of Fame as a slam-dunk first-ballot inductee with 667 homers, which ranks fifth in MLB history. For the next decade, he still has a ten-year, $10 million personal services contract with the Angels.
In St. Louis, Pujols won three MVPs and was the best player on two title-winning teams, then never won another playoff game after Game 7 of the 2011 World Series. That had more to do with the Angels failing to build around Pujols (and later, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani), but Pujols was, at least, involved.
He left St. Louis with a .328 batting average, cementing him as one of the greatest hitters ever, but his career average dipped below .300 after a decade in Anaheim, where he was only even above league-average for half the contract. The 86 wins above replacement (according to Baseball Reference) he racked up in St. Louis would have ranked in the top 50 of all time if he retired after 2011.
