The Cardinals sign a one-year deal Albert Pujols back to st louis, according to Derrick S. Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Reports emerged a few hours ago that the club had a growing interest in reuniting. Now it seems to have borne fruit and the 42-year-old will return to the nest to become a cardinal again. Pujols are paid $2.5 million according to Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.
Pujols, 42, spent the first 11 years of his career with the Cardinals, playing at an unfathomable level and establishing himself as a future Hall of Famer. During that time he hit 445 home runs and hit an incredible .328/.420/.617 for a wRC+ of 167. He was one of the main reasons the club were constant competitors during this period, reaching the postseason in 7 of those 11 seasons and winning the 2006 and 2011 World Series.
As a result of this out-of-this-world winning streak, the Angels signed a ten-year, $254 million contract for the 2012-2021 seasons. Pujols continued to bat at levels above the league average for the first five years of this deal, despite being several notches below what he did as a cardinal. Things only got worse from there as he hit just .242/.291/.406 from 2017-2020 and posted a wRC+ of just 84. After 24 games last year, with just a few months left on his contract, the Angels released him. Surprisingly, he was picked up by the Dodgers, who planned to restrict the veteran hitter to a bench/pull role, primarily against lefties. The strategy worked quite well as Pujols hit 0.254/0.299/0.460 as a dodger, a wRC+ of 101.
The earlier report from The Athletic’s Katie Woo suggested the club were interested in bringing Pujols back for a reunion, but in a similar role to the one he had with the Dodgers last year. Now that the National League is set to have the designated batsman this year, it will be easier for the club to implement Pujols this way, using him as a pinch hitter or in the DH slot and trying to increase his right-hander exposure limit. Woo noted the club have traditionally shied away from move strategies in the past but this new manager has Oliver Marble plans to change that. Paul Goldschmidt is firmly entrenched as the club’s regular first baseman, meaning Pujols will be in the mix alongside DH/pinch-hitting duties Corey Dickerson, Lars Nootbar and Juan Yepez.
For Yepez, he seemed poised to make the team after a great year in the minors. Between double-A and triple-A last year, he scored 0.286/0.383/0.586 for a wRC+ of 154. Then there’s something else Nolan Gormanwho also spent last year between Double-A and Triple-A, scoring 0.279/0.333/0.481, wRC+ of 115. However, with Woo reporting that Yepez is only 24 and Gorman won’t turn 22 until May, the club is considering one Plan where they each spend a little more time in the minors to get regular reruns and wait for an opportunity to open up as the season progresses.
While Yepez and Gorman will certainly get their opportunities later, the narrative of the moment is that one of this generation’s biggest hitters is returning to where he started his career and thrived. He will also reunite with Jadier Molina and Adam Wainwrightlongtime Cardinals who have stood alongside Pujols through his greatest seasons, including those two World Series championships.