How Albert Pujols went from a nostalgia signing to one of the hottest hitters in

29.08.2022, 10:38 sbnation.com

It’s totally okay for all of us to admit that when the St. Louis Cardinals signed Albert Pujols for his final season in Major League Baseball, we didn’t think much of it past this being a quaint little swan song for a guy that was going to waltz into the Baseball Hall of Fame with little-to-no problems at all. There wasn’t really much reason to believe that Pujols was going to do much more than put some smiles on the faces of longtime Cardinals fans who got to see one of their living legends put on the iconic redbird uniform for one more go around while possibly hitting a few dingers along the way. It’s fine to go out like that! In an era where fading star athletes are increasingly receiving their flowers when they can smell them as players, it made all the sense in the world that one of the greatest hitters of his generation was going to get a proper send-off playing in the city where he became a star. With that being said, it definitely didn’t seem like a competitive move from St. Louis — not when Pujols went into this season on the heels of five straight seasons where he finished in the negative in FanGraphs WAR while putting up anemic hitting numbers for his standards.