Angels slugger is back to his awesome slugging self after slow start
APThe Los Angeles Angels' Albert Pujols rounds the bases on his two-run home run on Aug. 1.
By BILL PLUNKETT
The Orange County Register
updated 3:23 p.m. ET Aug. 10, 2012
Same old Machine.
"I've said this a million times before -- you are who you are," Angels veteran Torii Hunter said. "Once you have a track record in this game, you're not going to see guys change from that much. You are who you are."
If that is the case and the 162-game rigors of a baseball season filter out flukes -- who was that guy playing first base for the Angels in April?
You remember him? Couldn't hit a home run. Bounced ground balls to the left side of the infield so frequently that teams began stacking their defenses on the left side.
"I knew it was going bad when people put on the shift against him," Angels right-hander Jason Isringhausen said. "Albert was never a guy who had to pull everything. I'd seen him threaten pitchers' lives with the way he worked the middle of the field. But (in April) he was trying to pull everything.
"Once he got back to being the hitter he's always been and not trying to do too much, the numbers have come."
A teammate of Pujols' for seven seasons in St. Louis (2002-08) as well as this year with the Angels, Isringhausen was one of the many voices in April and May telling anyone who asked -- and everyone was asking -- that Pujols would be fine, "once he gets going his numbers might be as good as last year -- and I bet they'll be better."
Those voices can now have their "I-told-you-so" moment.
With a power burst of six home runs in five games last week (including the first back-to-back multi-home run games of his career) and his first American League Player of the Week award, Pujols is back on pace to reach or approach those statistical markers that have defined his Hall of Fame-worthy resume.
"I've known Albert for a long time. When you doubt Albert, all he's going to do is prove you wrong," Isringhausen said. "He's proven the naysayers wrong before. When people asked me early in the year, I guaranteed he was going to get it going once he got settled in, and now he's on pace to do what he always does.
"Last year, he started out slow and they were asking all the same questions. How did he finish? Missed out on a .300 average, by what, one point? Nearly had 30 home runs and 100 RBI. Again. And people said he had a bad year. It was a bad year for him, maybe.
"He's set that bar so high. When your name is in sentences with names like Ruth and Gehrig -- that's a pretty high standard he's set. ... Albert is Albert, and you know what you're going to get."
The Angels didn't get it right away and there are different ways to slice up his season, trying to pinpoint when Albert started being Albert.
Was it the arrival of Mike Trout on April 28? Since then, Pujols has hit .297 with 24 home runs and 72 RBIs in 90 games.
Was it the "mental day" Angels manager Mike Scioscia gave a homer-less Pujols on May 5? He hit his first home run of the season the next day and has batted .314 with 24 home runs, 71 RBIs, a .383 on-base percentage and a .609 slugging percentage in 83 games since then.
Was it early June when his family life fell into place (his children finished school in St. Louis and his family moved to California) and Scioscia moved Hunter into a 1-2 tandem with Trout ahead of Pujols in the lineup? Pujols has batted .327 with 16 home runs and 45 RBIs in 53 games since the first Angels' lineup that started with the now-familiar troika of Trout, Hunter and Pujols.
Was it the All-Star break when Pujols, disappointed at not making the game in his adopted hometown of Kansas City, returned refreshed from the four days off, having had a chance to watch his son, A.J., play in a youth tournament and even coach some of his games? Pujols has hit .333 and slugged .725 since the break with 10 home runs (tied for second in the majors) and 25 RBIs (second in the AL).
"No, just whenever I decided to not try to do too much," Pujols said when asked if he could identify a turning point. "I don't know when that happened. But it was a long time ago. Just figured out with myself that, you know, I can play this game. I know what I can do. You don't just have a lifetime .330 average coming into the season with over 400-plus homers and over 1,000-plus RBIs in this game and all of a sudden you don't understand.
"It was meant to be that way. I told you guys, if I were to come out raking right off the bat, it probably would have been, 'Same old Albert. That's what we expected him to do.' But I struggled. Here we are and my numbers are creeping up and I'm helping this ballclub to win every day. And I think it's more special through that. That's how I look at it."
With 50 games to go, Pujols is indeed "creeping up" on his usual production.
He is batting .284 with 24 home runs and 76 RBIs. Just by maintaining his season-long pace, he would reach 110 RBIs for the 10th time in 12 seasons. Since hitting his first home run on May 6, he has averaged one every 13.4 at-bats. That pace makes his seventh 40-homer season a possibility, his 12th consecutive 30-homer season likely.
He is already the only player in baseball history to hit 30 or more home runs in each of his first 11 seasons.A .300 season will be harder to reach. At his current pace, Pujols will get 230 more at-bats. He would need 76 hits (a .330 average down the stretch) to reach .300 for the season. Last year, he finished one base hit short of a .300 average -- the only time in his career he has failed to reach that gold standard for elite hitters.
"As he got more comfortable in the box you started to see him getting in more hitter's counts, hitting the ball hard with two strikes," Scioscia said. "We knew at some point he was going to get going. A lot is magnified early in the season because your stats are bare. I don't know if there ever was a period like that he'd gone through before.
"But if you looked at it and said, 'Is this explainable or is this an enigma?' This was definitely explainable."
It was explainable primarily by another set of numbers -- the $246 million the Angels have started paying Pujols for the next 10 years.
"He absolutely was trying to do too much to live up to that contract. You can't help it," Isringhausen said. "But the thing is -- a contract like that, you can never live up to. You have to hit .400 with 80 home runs and 200 RBI. That's the only way you can justify it."
Those numbers are unattainable for Pujols or any other player. But the fact that he has rebounded from the worst five weeks of his baseball life to post a set of statistics that will not look terribly out of place on the back of his baseball card should give Pujols some special satisfaction.
"You know what is going to be special? Raising that championship trophy like I did last year," Pujols said. "That's what I play for."
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Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/48608054/ns/sports-baseball/
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