Is that tonight?

Pujols is starting to worry me.  I think the pressure of being "the face of baseball" and contract talks are getting to him.

APRTW wrote:

Pujols is starting to worry me.  I think the pressure of being "the face of baseball" and contract talks are getting to him.

have a statistician run the chances that he goes .143 over any 9 game period, i'll bet it's in the range of 1/20 to 1/100, meaning it probably happens a few times per season, every season.  this is nothing to worry about yet.

Last edited by Max (4/10/2011 11:20 pm)

APRTW wrote:

2001 July .241
2006 June .256
2007 April .250
2010 July  .267

Are Pujols' worst months of his career.  Say Pujols finishes the month with 90 at bats.  That is 55 more then he has right now.  He would have to hit for a .309 average, having 17 hits just to not have the worst month of his career.  I am not saying Pujols suddenly sucks but he is playing suckier then he ever has.  I dont think it is just luck that this contract BS just happens to be taking place.   

22hits 90 at bats

17/55

9 games is a far cry from a month.

It's like flipping a coin 9 times and getting all heads versus flipping it 27 times and getting all heads.  If you have lots and lots of iterations, you should get 9 heads in a row every 500 flips, or so.  27 heads in a row is pretty much beyond what could ever happen in the lifetime of anybody flipping coins.

On top of that, you are only examining a very limited subset of the number of ways you could look at his performance over a 30-31 day period.  If you examined every conceivable increment of 30-31 consecutive days you would be overwhelmingly likely to find worse performances.

Last edited by Max (4/11/2011 4:20 pm)

Worst yet he looks tottaly lost at the plate.  Even when the rest of the team is hitting pitcher he isnt.  When the rest of the team is getting ahead of pitcher and drawing walks he is falling behind.  When runners are in scoring position if is pressing and hitting into groud balls.  This is the shittiest I have ever seen him play.  A few bad at bats wouldnt worry me either Max but this goes beyond that.  He has even cost the Cardinals a game with his glove.  It makes me wonder how he would be playing if he had signed a contract.  Some players respond well in a walk year but maybe Pujols doesnt because money has never been his motovation before.

APRTW wrote:

Worst yet he looks tottaly lost at the plate.  Even when the rest of the team is hitting pitcher he isnt.  When the rest of the team is getting ahead of pitcher and drawing walks he is falling behind.  When runners are in scoring position if is pressing and hitting into groud balls.  This is the shittiest I have ever seen him play.  A few bad at bats wouldnt worry me either Max but this goes beyond that.  He has even cost the Cardinals a game with his glove.  It makes me wonder how he would be playing if he had signed a contract.  Some players respond well in a walk year but maybe Pujols doesnt because money has never been his motovation before.

This could elicit a good discussion on the difference between 'stats' people and 'baseball' people.  Just the BA alone doesn't concern me, from a stats perspective.  On the other hand, Pujols could be hitting .400 and a good baseball person might be able to tell you there was something wrong with his swing that was related to his contract situation . . . and it might be correct!

When it comes to baseball, I am much more of a baseball person than a stats person.  This is one reason why I sometimes come out with pronouncements in late April or early May that a pitcher such as Pineiro or Garcia will have a surprisingly good performance, because I see something in their delivery or approach that seems to be causing the good stats, as opposed to just looking at the stats and not knowing whether the pitcher was getting lucky or not.  [Thank goodness I have been wrong about so much lately, as it has given my arm the rest it needed to begin patting my own back again.]  I haven't seen Pujols swing the bat yet, and if I did I can't assess much from watching a guy swing the bat.  I have to trust the opinion of others, like yourself, who seem to be able to.  But from a statistics point of view, .143 is probably near, but not beyond, the point of concern.  Even if he ends the month batting .250, you have pointed out that he has done that four other times, and those times surely can't all be the result of his contract negotiations.

APRTW wrote:

How can you say it isnt a concern and then it is, yet you havent seen a game?  You disagree and then agree and say that the stats pointed to your opinion all along.  How close are you to the radiation in Japan?

I said that IMO we should not use his contract as an explanation for his low BA unless we use that as the explanation for the other times in which his BA has been similarly low.

His BA, alone, should not be a major cause for concern because he probably goes through streaks where he hits down around .143 a few times per season.  Fors measured that guesstimate to be five times in five seasons.  In other words, it's about like flipping a coin and getting heads 6 or 7 times in a row.  It happens once in a while and it does not mean that the coin is not "fair".  It just means that chance will bunch heads, and hits together and apart.

If you see his swing, and you think it sucks.  That's much more of a cause for concern than is his BA, and swing can look bad, regardless of whether a guy is getting hits or not.

In Pujols' second at bat he hit a ball sharply to left field.  He really made good contact but he swung at the first pitch he seen.  At this point in the game he had seen two pitches and made three outs.  If it was somebody else in the batter box most of us would be telling them to look at some good pitches, have a good at bat, maybe draw a walk and they would get back on track.  I am not sure the same isnt true of Pujols. 

In his third at bat the bases were loaded with 2 outs and he popped up.  It wasnt a bad at bat but I thought he looked uneasy fighting off the inside pitches, kind of annsy in the box.  So far Pujols has left 5 runners on base and lowered his BA 10 points tonight. 

I am no hitting coach but one thing that looked odd to me, something I remember sticking out in my mind before was Pujols front foot.  He seems to be picking it up alot while waiting for the pitch.  Even starting with a more open stance and closing it slightly as his time in the box progresses.  From what I remeber about his at bats is that he became set before the pitcher released.  Seems kind of unsettled to me.  Like I said, I have no clue how to be a hitting coach.

FWIW, I haven't seen Pujols play much either. I was in trial last week and yesterday's and today's games have been blacked out on U-verse because of a dispute with FSMW

How much does it effect his contract?  I dont think that Pujols having an off year drops his value a ton. 
I think the contract has everything to do with it.  I really think Pujols' focus has always been baseball.  If it wasnt he would have pressured the Cardinals to sign an extension after one of his MVP seasons.  Now that aspect has to have enter his thinking and I think that is something he is new to dealing with. 

On Pujols third at bat he took a pitch on the outside corner that could have been called a ball for strike one.  Then swung threw a ball that could have been handled.  Going 0-2 is something has been common this year for Pujols.  Then he took a couple pitches that were not to close before striking out on an inside pitch that looked unhittalbe.  It seems like he is having trouble with the inside pitches.  His batting stance is open to start with and he inches it closed as the pitcher becomes set.  Like I said before, he lookes unsettled in the box.

I am just giving a run down of the at bats as I see them for Max's sake, since he cant see them.

Pujols took a BP fastball up the middle to record a hit in tonights game.  He was leading off in the 9th with a 3 run lead.

This is only my opinion, but I think Pujols is the type of person who places a lot of added pressure on himself.  In the current situation, it is very easy to add such pressure.  Think of the following:

- His agent left the agency he was working with and set out on his own.  If Lozano can get a once in a lifetime deal for Pujols, he probably sets himself up with Boras as the top agents in baseball. 

- Despite the MLBPA's quick dismissal of Larussa's comments, I do think the union is pressuring Pujols to set the bar as high as possible.

- As we saw on the 60 Minutes feature, Pujols devotes some of his personal resources to helping the impoverished in the DR.  The more he makes on this next contract, the more people he can help.

- The team isn't as good or deep as it once was and relies more on production from Pujols.

I suspect if I took some time I could come up with more, but there's 4 reasons, all of which have someone other than Pujols as the primary beneficiary.  But there was one thing about the 60 Minutes feature that may be telling.  After more than a decade, Pujols still feels slighted by being passed over so many times in the draft.  I've personally thought that he didn't care about being the highest paid player in the game, but that may be wrong.

AP, in an earlier post you asked how much does an off-year affect Pujols' value.  Obviously, I'm just speculating, but I think it has a significant effect--particularly on the length of the deal.  People are already talking about the risks of giving an 8-10 year deal to a 32 year old player.  How much more concern is there if that 32 year old player is coming off the statistically worst season of his career.  If Pujols doesn't finish the season with "Pujols numbers," I could see it dragging him from an 8+ year deal to a 5-7 year deal.  That's a lot of money.