When Albert Pujols suffered a broken bone in his left wrist during a collision on Sunday, the entire city of St. Louis gasped, wondering if this might be the end to their season. How could they overcome this? Their all-star first baseman, arguably the best player in baseball, sidelined for up to six weeks. Would they be able to stand their ground without him?
Oddly, the Cardinal fans weren't the only ones gasping at the news. Baseball fans in general, upon hearing the word that Pujols had suffered an injury that no hitter would ever want to endure, began to wonder if they'd seen the last of Pujols, at least the Pujols we've grown to expect. Will his power numbers ever be the same? Will he still be able to hit for the same .329 career average he has? Will he still be considered a lock for the Hall of Fame if the answers to both of those previous questions are "no"?
There was one more large gasp to speak of, and that gasp was from Albert's agent. Would the injury squash any potential they would have to get him the $300 million contract they'd been rumored to have been seeking this offseason? Would this injury potentially drive down his value, in this, the last year of his current contract?
These questions, among many others, are all very valid questions and concerns. We won't know until Albert comes back, some time in August, whether he'll be able to get back to the player he's been for his entire career. There is a strong possibility that he may not, given the history of some players who have had similar injuries. When you look at players such as Derrek Lee, the first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, who broke his wrist in a similar fashion while playing for the Chicago Cubs in 2006, the power numbers take a slight decline immediately. Lee was able to improve those power numbers a couple years after the injury, but overall, his career averages have been down since. Would Pujols be the same way?
Looking at his career numbers, he is easily one of the greatest players to ever play the game. If his career were to end today, I think it would be safe to say that Albert Pujols would be a first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee. In his first ten season in baseball, he's never hit below .312, he's never hit less than 32 home runs, and never driven in less than 103 runs. Just those three stats alone are impressive, but there are so many more. It's those career numbers, however, that this injury could ultimately rob baseball fans of. The type of player that Albert Pujols is only comes along so many times during a generation. Given all of the talk of performance-enhancing drugs over the last few years in the sport, Pujols seemed to be the poster child for doing it the right way. His career numbers would have been those we would ultimately have compared to the greats of the game. Those comparisons are what have been jeopardized now by this injury.
From a business perspective, the injury could cost Pujols millions of dollars. Unless he comes back in August and lights it up over the last two months, the consensus thought amongst those in baseball is that he may never recover to be the hitter he once was. If that's the case, his overall value would take an incredible hit. No team in their right mind would give a player like Albert Pujols the type of contract he'd reportedly been looking for, just on reputation, especially coming off this type of injury. The reason Pujols and the Cardinals couldn't get a deal done before his spring training deadline was because of how far off the two sides actually were. Now, whatever the Cardinals were offering will more than likely go down, so the gamble Pujols and his agent took by not accepting any of the offers put before them by the Cardinals could come back to bite them in the rear. Only time will tell.
Having been a baseball fan for over 25 years of my life now, I've seen many great players come and go. I've seen players that were great, and we now know they were artificially great. I've seen players be crowned the next big thing, only to never pan out. When it comes to Albert Pujols, he is the real deal. He's been the most impressive player of the last 50 years. His career numbers through the first ten years are numbers many life-long Major Leaguers would kill for. And he's not done...that's the scary part.
All we, as fans, can hope for is that the injury isn't as serious and career-threatening as it appears it may be. If it's not, we can expect to see more of the same from Albert over the next few seasons. If it is as bad as advertised, then how he comes back from it will define the career of Albert Pujols. Is he truly "the machine" we sometimes think he is? We'll have to wait a few weeks to find out.
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