There isn’t a more dangerous hitter in baseball right than Albert Pujols.
Pujols homered twice and drove in four runs in St. Louis’ 5-3 win over Minnesota today, extending his MLB-leading totals to 28 homers and 74 RBI. It was the sixth multihomer game of the season for the Cardinals first baseman, and the reigning National League MVP is three homers away from reaching the 350-homer mark for his career, and he’s also well on his way to a career season.
Pujols’ previous career highs were 49 homers and 137 RBI, both reached in 2006, but he’s on pace for 60 homers and 159 RBI this season.
We’ve got a few more weeks to go before the All-Star break and more than three months to go in the regular season, but it’s certainly not too early to start thinking Triple Crown.
No one’s led their respective league in batting average, homers, and RBI since Carl Yastrzemski last did it in 1967, when the Red Sox legend and Hall of Famer posted a .326/44/121 season to post a clean sweep in the American League. The last National League player to win the Triple Crown was Cardinals left fielder and future Hall of Famer Joe ‘Ducky’ Medwick in 1937, when he hit .374 with 31 homers and 154 RBI.
The obstacle for Pujols is in the batting average category, where he’s hitting ‘only’ .328. He’s actually having his slowest month of the season BA-wise, with his 2 for 2 performance today bumping him up from .291 to .307 for the month.
If he wants to make up the necessary ground in batting average, he can’t have too many down months (though a down month for him is a good month for many), he’ll need to keep churning out the hits and have the likes of David Wright (who currently leads the National League in batting average) to drop back a little.
However, Pujols has always fared well in the last few months of the season, which bodes very well for his Triple Crown hopes.
Here’s a look at the post All-Star break numbers that Pujols posted in each of his first eight seasons:
2001: .336 (93 for 277), 16 HR, 64 RBI
2002: .335 (94 for 281), 13 HR, 61 RBI
2003: .346 (84 for 243), 14 HR, 38 RBI
2004: .360 (101 for 280), 24 HR, 63 RBI
2005: .320 (82 for 256), 19 HR, 48 RBI
2006: .344 (96 for 279), 20 HR, 61 RBI
2007: .349 (89 for 255), 19 HR, 51 RBI
2008: .366 (87 for 238), 19 HR, 66 RBI
So, judging by those numbers, he’s certainly capable of hitting well enough in the second half of the season to put himself in position to win the Triple Crown. Even if he doesn’t, he won’t miss by much, and even missing by a hair will likely translate into career-best home run and RBI numbers. It will also likely mean MVP #3, which will put him in pretty elite company.
But if Pujols can pull it off, it’d be pretty fitting that he be the one to do it, considering that the last National League player to accomplish the feat was also a Cardinal. Of course, it goes without saying that it’s not going to be easy for him to do it – otherwise it’d have been done more by now, right?
It’s crazy that Yaz’s Triple Crown numbers in 1967 would likely not lead the league in any triple crown categories in today’s game. Seems like every year, someone hits 50+ HR’s and has almost 150 RBI’s. Guys like Ryan Howard and Prince Fielder certainly make it difficult. And for BA, last year he hit .357 and still didn’t lead the league.
The thing I like about Pujols chances this year are that he’s getting the HR’s and RBI’s. BA has been his most consistent statistic; he is the current career leader among actives. I’d say he has a 20% chance of winning the Triple Crown, which is actually pretty good odds.
Nice article but, you should know that Albert did not actually win the MVP in 2006 when he hit 49 HRs and 137 RBIs. Ryan Howard got the MVP that year, which was a travesty. Albert won his 1st MVP in 2005 beating out Derek Lee and Andruw Jones.
Thanks for pointing that out. I was working a little quickly, and I got caught up on thinking about that 2006 season and got that one and the 2005 season mixed up. Certainly was indeed a travesty that he didn’t win it in 2006 – he could very well have three or four MVP awards already, but I think he’ll more than make up for that over the next few seasons if he keeps it up.