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It’s the news every St. Louis Cardinals fan has been waiting for.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Sunday night that Albert Pujols will return to the team this season on a one-year contract, worth $2.5 million.
Breaking: Albert Pujols is signing a one-year, major league deal to return to the St. Louis Cardinals, sources confirmed to ESPN. The news was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Athletic.
Over 10 years later, The Machine is once again a Cardinal. pic.twitter.com/m5ZDKNXtL9
— ESPN (@espn) March 28, 2022
Pujols, 42, has not played for the Cardinals since 2011. After his release from the Angels in the middle of last season, he spent the rest of 2021 with the Dodgers. During his first 11 MLB seasons in St. Louis, Pujols was a nine-time All-Star, won three NL MVP awards and two World Series championships.
HEAR FROM THE BIG SHOW HOSTS
Andy Humphrey: “It’s a move that seemed inevitable, right? There was no way the Cardinals would’ve just allowed another team to swoop in and sign Pujols once they finally get a green light to use the DH in the National League. Now you can bring back a living legend of the organization without having to sacrifice defense. Will it make fans happy? Of course! Will it help the team in the long run? Eh… maybe.
I wasn’t really in favor of the Cardinals signing Pujols when they had their first chance at it last summer. It would’ve restricted him to the glorified pinch-hitter role all year, and in the end that just wasn’t worth it. For me, however, I don’t really understand the major shift in the narrative even with the DH. Even though you have more of an ability to use him, Pujols’ numbers in recent years don’t lend to the belief that he should be an everyday player, or even an every-other-day player. If he ends up continuing this steady regression, that puts St. Louis in a tough spot, because, I mean, The Cardinals of all teams wouldn’t cut Albert bleeping Pujols mid-season.
On the other hand, Pujols has done significantly better against left-handed pitching than right-handers (.939 OPS vs. LH, .500 OPS vs. RH last season). The Cardinals needed another bat to fit that mold, and they have it now. You don’t have to expose Pujols to righties all the time. However, you’re obviously going to face more righties than lefties over the course of a season (79% of team plate appearances were against right-handers). So, you’re gonna have to use Pujols in those situations eventually, and the results may not be pretty.
In the end, two things can be true: I can be excited about seeing Pujols in a Cardinals uniform again and watch him try to reach 700 homers in the place where it all started and have him be part of the Wainwright/Molina farewell tour like we all dreamed of. I can also be a little concerned about the team investing in the past and not the future. Sure, I was intrigued by Pujols potentially being the DH. But I was also intrigued by Nolan Gorman possibly filling that role, too. This just creates another obstacle to that.
I know I’ll get ridiculed for this, but whatever. At least have some fun this year, St. Louis!”
Brenden Schaeffer: “If you grew up following the Cardinals in the early 2000s like I did, you know Albert Pujols is an icon of St. Louis baseball. When he left for Los Angeles in 2011, it stung. Though time proved his Angels contract to have been an unfortunate albatross that the Cardinals were savvy to have avoided, the bitterness lingered for many Cardinals fans who wanted to see him finish his career where he started it.
Well, more than a decade later, the introduction of the universal designated hitter has come bearing gifts. The rule change in the new collective bargaining agreement allows the Cardinals to roster a player with Pujols’ particular skill set.
Is Albert the same player he used to be? Of course not. Father Time is inevitable, and Pujols has slowed considerably since the last time he donned the birds on the bat in his prime playing days. Although he never was a split-heavy hitter in his prime, Pujols found success primarily against left-handed pitching in 2021. That’s a trend that the Cardinals hope will continue as Pujols projects to serve as the primary DH against LHP while otherwise providing a power threat off the bench when the opposing team has a right-handed starting pitcher.
In a shortened spring training, nobody has been beating down to door to lay claim to the role that Pujols’ righty power bat should fill for St. Louis. So his return to the Cardinals on a meager one-year contract actually makes some sense on the field, while being an obvious win in the sentiment department for a generation of Cardinals fans.”
