People – Albert Pujols Is Still Really Good

Last week, we published a piece that looked back on our 2016 Lynchpin players and how their performance has impacted their respective teams’ playoff chances. The analysis started in earnest with this bit: “Albert Pujols has been objectively very good this season, but the Angels have nonetheless been very bad. LA is 61-75. Their pitching has been a disaster and they would be in last place if not for the disaster of a calamity playing in Oakland. As predicted, the Angels’ offense is Trout, Pujols, and nothing else. But Albert has done his part.”

Someone from the internet ripped Max apart for this analysis via email. He not only “laughed,” but also sent an 854 word essay arguing the notion that Pujols is in decline. However offbeat the response to the article: within that email, the writer made an interesting point. He said, in essence, that Pujols was still having a Hall of Fame worthy year this year, that his candidacy for induction shouldn’t be judged based solely on his first 10 years followed by a coast to the finish that padded his counting stats.

I liked his point. I didn’t know for sure if it were true, so I decided to take a look. Using only Pujols’ 2016 stats, extrapolated over a career, can I make a serious case for a Hall of Fame player?

We can start with wOBA. That’s Fangraphs all-in-one offensive metric. Pujols doesn’t fare so well this year, ranking 97th in baseball with a .327 figure. That’s not a great start, but we can take a look at it historically. I downloaded all of the career numbers for qualified hitters. That’s a data set of about 4,000 players.  I filtered this list to find everyone who posted a career .327 wOBA figure. That left us with about 1700 players.

Being one of the top 1700 players of all time does not warrant a strong Hall of Fame case.

Luckily and historically, the Hall of Fame voters don’t care so much for wOBA. They much prefer the traditional stats, just like MVP voters. I looked at how to win the MVP award back in 2011. My basic point from that article: “You should consider hitting for a high average, playing on a winning team out West, and changing your name to Barry.”

So we should look next at batting average. Pujols has hit just .262 this year, but that’s not terrible. Filtering the list again by batting average, we’re left with about 1300 players. Again, being one of the top 1300 players of all time does not warrant a strong Hall of Fame case. We really need to get down to about 200 or so.

Luckily, Pujols’ top skill this year has been his ability to hit the homers. And the chicks voters really like the long balls. Pujols has 29 already this year. Filtering the list by people who averaged more than 29 homers per 162 games over their career leaves us with… 90 players. Wow, Ok.

Obviously, this is not a perfect measure. Travis Hafner and Luke Easter are among the 90 players still standing and nobody is making a case for either for the Hall. The reality of those remaining is that a whole lot of them are really really good. 65% have at least 40 career WAR, which is about the cutoff where people from the internet start shouting about their candidacy. There’s another 12 guys still playing and each has a reasonable chance of approaching that figure, led by Kris Bryant and Nolan Arenado.

I think that last bit is what is most telling about our perception of Pujols’ 2016 campaign. Taken historically, a player who hits 29 homeruns over the course of the year is pretty special. But of the 90 players ever to achieve the three filters that I set out (wOBA, average, and HR/162), 17 are active right now. Historically, hitting 29 homers in a year is great, but we already have almost 30 players who have done it this year.

Our perception of 2016 Pujols is muddied by the home run rates that we’ve seen this year. He’s putting up a top power season of all time; 29 homers  would have been the most anyone ever hit in the Majors from 1871-1920. The problem with extrapolating this season into a Hall of Fame case is that he’s just not head and shoulders above his peers.

-Sean Morash