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A Serious top 5 of why Pujols is below the Mathis line.

Albert Pujols... the machine, the myth, the legend. Coming into this season it seemed as if the Baseball Gods blessed their favorite holy team with the miraculous conception of Mr. Pujols...and a $245 Million dollar contract. Waking up that early Saturday morning to the news of newly arrived Hall of Famer brought images of MAMMOTH Home Runs, Platinum caliber defense, playoff dreams, and World Series hopes. Now a month into the season Phat Albert has batted 5 points below the Mendoza line with a lone home run looking to become the second coming of Jeff Mathis. As Angel fans try to contemplate whether this is a continuation of the 'Curse of the Cowboy' or just plain father time getting even with Pujols' success, we can examine five main logical reasons to explain this bizarre occurrence in the career of perhaps a top five great...

5. Early Season Blues - Pujols has had the early season misfortune only a few times in his past. No Pujols season has ever started this bad, but it can be said that there are many other factors, such as the ones in this post, that have contributed to make this "early season blues" especially bad.

Here's the three years Pujols got started late:

2011 - .231 by May 3rd, with 16 GiDP, & was batting .277 August 10th finished .299, & 5th in MVP.

2007 - .239 by May 14th ended an All Star 9th in MVP.

2004 - .267 by May 12th ended an All Star 3rd in MVP with a Silver Slugger.

Solution: Let Pujols, be Pujols and find himself like he has these three other seasons. He may have only one homer, but when your in an early season slump it might be more of a concern for Pujols to find his swing and fix his mechanics first, than try to hack em all out for the fans; hence, when he finds himself, the homers will come.

4. The Vernon Wells effect - A theory from last year, that basically explains how a superstar has been hyped up so much that they feel over obligated to perform.

Solution: Pujols needs to not focus on keeping that 300/40/100 slash line of AVG, HR, RBI, at the end of each year, and focus less on how horrible he's doing in comparison to what was expected. Albert needs to continue to keep his head around each game individually, utilizing his set of skills each day.

3. New Team - When your with a team for 10 years, and then join a completely new team with foreign players, new management, and chemistry, it can play with your psyche a bit. Players are affected in ways we do not see. Maybe Pujols is still adapting to the way our team's chemistry is, or still trying to prove himself to fit that chemistry.

Solution: Time.

2. New Ballparks - A new ballpark can mean alot in the way a player comes to bat. Players in a League for 5 years are still making adjustments to how they come to bat in a certain park. This shouldn't have that much affect on Pujols especially considering his interleague stats, but maybe with a combo of the other three factors it could make Pujols look worse.

Solution: Experience, and scouting.

1. New Pitchers - Like Team Chemistry, Pujols is in a new League, but he doesn't have as much drive to prove himself this time, so when he faces new and better pitching it can be like coming up in the Majors all over again, but at an older, less energetic, less need for money type of age. It might take him longer to adapt to these new pitchers and a little less motivated, especially when your own fans are booing you.

Solution: Scouting, and experience.

To conclude, Pujols may be at .195 batting average pretty late in the season, but it could be due to a combination of any of these five reasons I've given today, so conclusions should not be assumed that it is the sign of regression in a superstar. If he was in same league, same team & same manager/hitting coach, then we could say he hasn't been this deep in the hole, but it can be a combination of things that dug him deep, we'll just have to wait and see if he can get out.

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