The St. Louis Cardinals’ 50 greatest players

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#4 Albert Pujols  1B

What can’t be said about this guy’s eleven seasons in St. Louis. He was the best player on the planet for a time when baseball needed a clean star, he was a charitable man off the field, he played the game the right way, and was absolutely amazing to watch.

I can’t tell you how many times I stopped what I was doing when this man came put to bat, what I can tell you is that for eleven seasons this man had a fWAR of 81.4, and a career wRC+ of 167, while bringing in the second best offensive value at 629.3 runs above average.

He was absolutely a “Machine”, his number were so ridiculous that they seemed like video game created numbers. Among these impressive numbers is the fact that Albert finished with a fWAR of above 7.0 in eight of his eleven seasons as a Cardinal.

He also regularly struck out less than 10% of the time in eight of those eleven seasons, posting an increasing walk rate from his rookie year on until his 2010 season when it dropped to 14.7% from 16.4%.

Albert also only finished one season with less 100 runs scored and only one season with less than 100 RBI. The sure fire Hall of Famer never hit under 32 homers for the Cardinals either.

All of these numbers only scratch the surface to tell you how great he was, look at the black hole the Cardinals’ offense has been since he left, while they have still been successful, the offense hasn’t been the same since his departure.

While I miss seeing “El Hombre”, I understand this is a business, but I can’t help but think Pujols made one of the worst “business” decisions in baseball history.

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