Cardinals sign Albert Pujols

Cardinals finalize one-year deal Albert Pujols back to st louis, According to Derek S. Gould from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Just hours ago, reports surfaced that the club has growing interest in reunion. Now it looks like it has paid off and the 42-year-old will be back in the nest to be a Cardinal again. $2.5 million will be paid out by Pujols, According to Mark Vinsand 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 Fame. In that time, he made 445 home runs and put up an incredible .328/.420/.617 for 167. It was the main reason the club was always competitive at the time, making post-season in 7 of those 11 seasons and winning the World Championship in 2006 and 2011.

Building on this underworld success, he was signed by the Angels to a ten-year, $254 million deal covering the 2012-2021 seasons. Pujols continued to reach above the league average during the first five years of that deal, despite a few notches below what he did as a Cardinal. From there, things only got worse, coming in at just 0.242/.291/.406 from 2017 to 2020, producing just a WRC+84. After 24 games last year, with only a few months remaining on his contract, Angels was released. Surprisingly enough, he was chosen by the Dodgers, who planned to limit the veteran hitter to a seat/platoon role, pitting against mainly lefties. The strategy worked well enough, Pujols hitting .254/.299/.460 as a Dodger, WRC+101.

Previous report from Katie Wu from The Athletic He indicated that the club was interested in bringing the Pujols back for a reunion, but in a role similar to the one he played with the Dodgers last year. Now that the National League has a designated hitter this year, it will be easier for the club to implement Pujols in this way, as he is used as a discus hitter or in the DH slot, in an effort to limit his exposure to right-handers. Wu noted that the club has traditionally steered clear of platoon strategies in the past, but that new manager Oliver Marmol plan to change that. Paul Goldschmidt Strongly entrenched as the club’s first starting player, which means Pujols will be in a mix of DH/Hits side by side Corey DickersonAnd the Lars Notbar And the Juan Ypez.

For Yepez, he seemed ready to make the team after a great year at the Palace. Between last year’s Double-A and Triple-A, it hit .286/.383/.586, for a WRC+ of 154. Then there Nolan Gormanwho also spent the last year between Double-A and Triple-A, scoring .279/.333/.481, a WRC+ of 115. However, Woo states that because Yepez is only 24 and Gorman hasn’t turned 22 A year to May, the club is considering a plan in which they each spend a little more time getting regular representatives, waiting for the opportunity to open up as the season progresses.

While Yepez and Gorman will certainly have their chances in the future, the narrative of the moment is that one of the greatest hitters of this generation returns to where he began his career and thrived. He will also meet with Molina runs And the Adam Wainwrightold Cardinals who have been alongside Pujols in his greatest seasons, including two World Championships.