Appreciating Albert Pujols

ESPN’s Jayson Stark, on the newest member of baseball’s 500 Homers Club:

So the moral of this story remains the same: Lots of men have hit baseballs over many, many fences. Only the greatest hitters who ever lived have been the all-around offensive forces that Pujols has been. And that’s a fact. […]

But suppose we take all those other numbers out of this and focus just on batting average — which isn’t a measure of power at all but merely of a man’s ability to hit baseballs where nobody with a glove is standing.

At .321, Pujols has the fourth-highest average in the entire 500 Homer Club — trailing only those same three men from the previous list: Williams (.344), Ruth (.342) and Foxx (.325).

★ Wednesday, 23 April 2014