The Los Angeles Angels sent shock waves through Major League Baseball when they designated Albert Pujols for assignment during the final year of the surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer's 10-year, $240 million contract.
The 41-year-old, who spent the first 11 years of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals before signing with Los Angeles, is one of baseball's all-time greatest players -- and his midseason release raises a host of questions. The three-time MVP and 10-time All-Star is destined for Cooperstown, but will he have any more stops along the way? If this is indeed the end, how will he be most remembered -- as the game's best player during his days in St. Louis or as the faded star he became for much of his tenure in L.A.?
ESPN baseball writers Bradford Doolittle, David Schoenfield and Alden Gonzalez answer the most pressing questions following Thursday's stunning news.
Why would the Angels decide to release Pujols now?
Doolittle: There is speculation that he wanted to be released in reaction to diminishing playing time. And let's face it, if that's how it played out, he did the Angels a favor. A team with Jared Walsh and Shohei Ohtani has no place for Albert Pujols, even when there's a lefty on the mound. There is an opportunity cost to carrying someone for such a specialized role when there are so many others out there who could produce as much at the plate while offering a lot more value in defensive versatility and on the bases.
I hate to see it because I love baseball history and I've relished watching Pujols over the years. But the Angels need to win as much as any team in the majors, because we all want to see Mike Trout in the World Series just as we got to see Pujols during his St. Louis days. This move makes a Trout World Series trip more likely to happen.
Schoenfield: The Angels have been playing Walsh in right field since Dexter Fowler went down, but his best position is probably first base. The Angels would be better trying to patch right field with a good defensive player -- while hoping prospects Jo Adell and Brandon Marsh are ready sooner rather than later -- and playing Walsh at first with Ohtani at DH. But, yes, the Angels have kept Pujols long past his expiration date because of his big contract, and he definitely did them a favor here.
Gonzalez: What Dave brought up -- that Walsh has been playing right field of late, giving Pujols plenty of time at first base -- made the timing of this even more surprising. Here's what I know: Pujols doesn't like to sit and has a desire to continue playing. The ironic thing is that this team -- as presently constructed, with top prospects Adell and Marsh still developing in the minor leagues -- actually gives him the best opportunity to play right now. It's not as if he was blocking anybody who can perform above replacement level. The Angels' position-player depth remains very suspect, especially with all the injuries they have suffered.
Is there another team you could see Pujols playing with for the rest of 2021?
Doolittle: Probably not, and it's because of all the reasons his departure will likely help the Angels. Teams carry so many pitchers that you can't carry someone with such a limited skill set on your bench. No one is going to pick him up for sentiment, and no one would be fooled into thinking signing him would somehow be a boost at the box office.
St. Louis is the obvious first thought here, but the Cardinals are trying to win a division, have an elite first baseman in Paul Goldschmidt, play in a non-DH league and are already struggling to find time for Matt Carpenter. You might say that Pujols would actually be an upgrade at the plate over what they've been getting from Carpenter. But Carpenter has more positional versatility, has had a couple of big recent moments at the plate and is a rare left-handed threat on a righty-heavy roster.
The only other team that I can fathom looking at Pujols is Kansas City. And that is really just a fantasy. Pujols went to high school and junior college in the area, his wife is from Kansas City and they still have a lot of ties to the city. From a baseball standpoint, Jorge Soler has been holding up well defensively in right field, so perhaps you could carve out a role for Pujols as a part-time DH. Royals GM Dayton Moore might see an opportunity to add some intangible value and leadership for an emerging team. But probably not.
Schoenfield: A moment from a recent game: Pujols hit a slow grounder in the hole to shortstop, the kind of play the batter hustles down the line, with the fastest runners having a chance to beat it out. Pujols didn't even run. He can't run. The shortstop simply fielded the ball and lobbed a throw to first base with Pujols barely halfway down the line.
Over the past five seasons, Pujols has hit .240/.289/.405. For a player who now has one tool -- his power -- that's not good enough production to warrant a roster spot. Even though he doesn't strike out much, he doesn't hit for average, doesn't walk, rarely hits a double, grounds into too many double plays and doesn't help you on defense. The track record at this level is years too long. Pujols isn't suddenly going to start hitting .275. He can't help a team. (Tigers DHs are hitting .112 with two home runs, so Pujols probably IS better than what Detroit has. The problem: Detroit's primary DH is Miguel Cabrera, and you're not going to bench Cabrera to play Pujols.)
Gonzalez: I'm going to bring up another moment: April 2 at Angel Stadium. The White Sox lead by a run, with two outs and a runner on second in the bottom of the eighth. With first base open, Tony La Russa stunningly elects to intentionally walk Pujols. That's how much respect La Russa still has for Pujols. Will that ultimately mean he convinces the front office to sign him? Maybe not. Yermin Mercedes is performing too well at DH to justify adding Pujols. But if there was ever a team that made sense for him at the moment -- and I don't know if there ultimately is one -- then it's the White Sox.
If this is the end for Pujols, where does he rank among the greatest first basemen ever?
Doolittle: Pujols once seemed like a cinch to spring past Lou Gehrig as the best first baseman ever. Instead, his time with the Angels only cemented Gehrig's status as the king at that position. Pujols ended up in a neck-and-neck historical battle with Jimmie Foxx for the No. 2 spot, and I'm not sure which one I'd pick.
I also have to mention Negro Leagues legend Buck Leonard as being part of this conversation. When SABR published its ranking of the 40 best Negro Leagues players in history back in 1999, Leonard tied Satchel Paige for the top spot. (And Schoenfield ranked him No. 5.)
Schoenfield: Even though he's been worth minus-0.5 WAR since 2016 -- yes, he's been a replacement-level player going on six seasons now -- Pujols is firmly entrenched as the No. 2 first baseman of all time, behind Gehrig with Foxx third. Gehrig leads Pujols in WAR, 114.1 to 99.4, so he's about two great seasons to the better. If you want to make a timeline adjustment, maybe it's pretty even, but Pujols has been so mediocre for so long now that it does detract some from the St. Louis part of his career.
Gonzalez: I think slotting him between Gehrig and Foxx is fair, though Gehrig and Foxx played pre-integration when the sport was vastly different, so in many ways it's impossible to do this stuff. It's also hard because Pujols essentially had two careers. In the first half, he was quite possibly the greatest right-handed hitter ever. In the second, he was a compiler. All told, he is 32nd all time in WAR.
After such a dominant period with the Cardinals and his struggles with the Angels, how will you remember Pujols' career?
Doolittle: The first time I saw Pujols play in person was during his first month in the majors, at Busch Stadium II, and it was already apparent he was special. I saw him numerous times in St. Louis and, as I was based in Kansas City, we had a few common acquaintances. I wrote about him several times during those years, and while I've written about him since, the piece about him that stands out most from his time with the Angels was about him returning to St. Louis. All of this is to say that Pujols' time in St. Louis will always be fixed in my mind. For more than a decade, he was a perfect player. I have not forgotten that player.
Schoenfield: I compare him to Ken Griffey Jr. For the first halves of their careers, they looked like they would end up as top-10 players of all time. Then they changed teams, and it was never the same for either. While both are clearly inner-circle Hall of Famers and I would still put both in the top 25, there is a lingering "what if" in both cases. Griffey's decline was mostly due to injuries (and he didn't stay in the best of shape).
Pujols was already showing slight decline at the end of his run in St. Louis and suffered various foot injuries that hindered him, but his bat slowed down and he was never able to adapt to increasing velocity and the shift. It makes you appreciate players like Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Stan Musial, who were great in their 20s and aged gracefully in their 30s.
Gonzalez: Weirdly, every Pujols plate appearance was still appointment television for me. Right up until the end. For most of my time covering him, he was a shell of himself. And yet I always watched, looking for any remaining glimpses of the menacing slugger from yesteryear. The back half of Pujols' career might have encompassed most of my professional career, but his decade-long run of dominance coincided with my baseball-loving youth. He was such a consistent force for so long that it probably made it difficult to accept that he simply wasn't that any longer.
In the end, I'll remember how much he cared. I'll remember that even though his lower half was shot and he wasn't quick enough to get around on the devastating stuff pitchers throw these days, he still showed up early, still spent hours in the training room to get ready for games, still took batting practice with intent, still crouched really low on defense and still looked for any opportunity to take an extra base. He might not have been productive, but it wasn't for lack of effort.
What is your favorite moment of Pujols' career?
Doolittle: Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS in Houston. The Astros were one out away from their first-ever pennant, up by two runs with two runners on base and the vicious Brad Lidge on the mound. Even watching on television, you could sense how much Minute Maid Park was vibrating with anticipation. Then Pujols absolutely unloaded on Lidge's second pitch, sending a moonshot far above the Crawford Boxes and silencing the blare from the stands as if someone had hit a cosmic mute button. It was a moment of pure awe.
Schoenfield: Instead of the Lidge home run, I'll go with another postseason game -- Game 3 of the 2011 World Series. Pujols was heading into free agency, so everyone knew these could be his final games with the Cardinals. The Rangers and Cardinals split the first two games in St. Louis and headed to Texas. Pujols had one of the great individual performances in World Series in a 16-7 victory: 5-for-6 with 3 home runs, 4 runs and 6 RBIs.
What we didn't know at the time was that game was basically the end of Pujols' decade-plus of dominance. Who could have predicted the next 10 seasons? Pujols was good his first season with the Angels (4.8 WAR) and solid in 2014 (3.9 WAR) and 2015 (3.0), but after signing with the Angels, he never hit .300 again and made just one All-Star team. The past half-decade has been painful to watch. That night in Arlington, however, was a game to remember, one of the best hitters of all time with maybe the greatest performance of his career. (He's had four three-homer games in the regular season but topped out at five RBIs in those games.)
Gonzalez: June 22, 2019. I was standing at Pujols' locker before the Angels would leave on that three-city road trip that ended in St. Louis, and he showed me an envelope that was about to break because of the massive stack of tickets it contained for friends and family at Busch Stadium. That he received a standing ovation every single time he came to bat -- and delivered with a home run in the middle game of that weekend series -- made it all feel somewhat magical. Pujols always knew that place and those fans were special, but I don't know that he ever realized how much he'd miss it until he left -- or, perhaps more accurately, until he returned. That weekend series might have brought him some closure. Fittingly, it might have represented his last big moment.