Pujols 600 Home runs!

[HRBAKER]

I would hope some one would not be bitter bc you refused to pay them 24 mil a year.

[Snapolit1]

He gets almost as much hype as a Yankee catcher who played well for 8 weeks last year.

[Peter_Spaeth]

He's had 3 100 RBI seasons in LA and is well on his way to another one. Sure he dropped off a bit from the level at which he had been amassing record numbers, but it's not exactly like he's been bad.

[nat]

Considering that he's a DH now he's been ... adequate. And is making way too much to be a merely adequate DH. I always hate seeing the greats lose a step.

Players usually don't get a say on which cap they wear on their plaque. IIRC Wade Boggs asked for a Devil Rays cap and the hall said "no".

[clydepepper]

I sure hope that he has accomplished this 'without help'.



.

[nat]

There's no reason to think that he's had help. They've been testing for almost his entire career and he's never come back positive. He also has a very ordinary aging pattern. He was good when he was young, got better in his late 20's, and has dropped off as he's gotten older. The only thing really unusual is how good he was, but by definition great players are unusual. The really suspicious aging patterns are the "double peaks", where a player is great in his late 20's (like normal), declines, and then is great again (this is what Bonds did). That kind of aging is possible but very very unlikely to happen naturally. And Pujols hasn't been doing it, he's been getting worse (with normal ups and downs) as he's been moving through his 30s.

He's also kept the skills that you expect a player to naturally keep as he gets older, and lost the ones that you expect him to lose. He's still got his power, and power is often the last skill to go. But his batting average has cratered - as expected. Batting average is in part a product of players being able to leg out infield hits, something that older players have trouble doing. Defense is also one of the first skills to go (usually), and Pujols went from being an extraordinary defensive player to being a DH. (He was only a first baseman because he hurt his arm and couldn't play the outfield any more, and they already had Rolen - an all-time great defensive 3B - on the other side of the diamond. On any other team he'd have spent his career at third.)

So, of course anything is possible, but none of the evidence indicates that Pujols had any help. He's just a great player.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by nat

There's no reason to think that he's had help. They've been testing for almost his entire career and he's never come back positive. He also has a very ordinary aging pattern. He was good when he was young, got better in his late 20's, and has dropped off as he's gotten older. The only thing really unusual is how good he was, but by definition great players are unusual. The really suspicious aging patterns are the "double peaks", where a player is great in his late 20's (like normal), declines, and then is great again (this is what Bonds did). That kind of aging is possible but very very unlikely to happen naturally. And Pujols hasn't been doing it, he's been getting worse (with normal ups and downs) as he's been moving through his 30s.

He's also kept the skills that you expect a player to naturally keep as he gets older, and lost the ones that you expect him to lose. He's still got his power, and power is often the last skill to go. But his batting average has cratered - as expected. Batting average is in part a product of players being able to leg out infield hits, something that older players have trouble doing. Defense is also one of the first skills to go (usually), and Pujols went from being an extraordinary defensive player to being a DH. (He was only a first baseman because he hurt his arm and couldn't play the outfield any more, and they already had Rolen - an all-time great defensive 3B - on the other side of the diamond. On any other team he'd have spent his career at third.)

So, of course anything is possible, but none of the evidence indicates that Pujols had any help. He's just a great player.

I think the reason for doubt has as much to do with his physical appearance as anything.

[Davino]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

I sure hope that he has accomplished this 'without help'.



.

I'm 100% sure that he used/uses steroids.

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by Davino

I'm 100% sure that he used/uses steroids.

You came back from 3 years of inactivity to bump a 2 month old thread for no other reason than to make an adversarial assertion that you can't backup?