Revealing Albert Pujols’ potential path to 700 career home runs

Albert Puyol’s quest for baseball immortality has reached his limit as he is just 5 homers away from joining the super-exclusive 700 Homer Club with 26 remaining in his Cooperstown career regular season.

It’s all very exciting.

Of course, this is not a regular milestone. It’s not about finishing 3-for-4 with a .300 batting average on the last day of the season, or throwing a seven-inning suspension to drop the season ERA below the magic 2.00 mark. That would be historic.

The only three players to reach 700 are Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds. Puyols, if he gets there, will be the first player born outside the United States to join the exclusive club. That’s obviously a big deal for Pujols, 42, but probably even more so for Dominican Republic baseball fans, and possibly every Latin American player who looked up to and learned from him throughout his Hall of Fame career.

That’s a pressure on Puyols, as well as the guy who makes lineup cards every night. Oliver Mulmore’s first year coaching the Cardinals — 6 1/2 years younger than Pujols, by the way – had to balance Pujols’ pursuit with the club winning the NL Central and making sure they were in Position goals in the playoffs.

“It’s been in my head. I get it,” Mulmore said before Friday’s game against the Cubs. “They wanted to give him a chance to hit 700. I’m no different tonight than anyone else in these seats. Trust me, I want to see that too.”

Pujols didn’t hit a homer Friday, but did grab two PAs off the bench. He started Saturday (1-3 walk) and came off the bench Sunday, hitting a two-run homer.

That was his 16th of the season and his ninth since Aug. 10. In the final segment, he hit .369 with a 0.425% base hit percentage and 0.831% smack percentage. He looks a lot like Vintage Pujols, the player who left St. Louis for an incredible 11 seasons in free agency after the 2011 season.

It feels like the end of a picture book. But this is easier said than done.

Here’s the plan, folks: “Mapping him with right-handers, and of course any lefties, is something we’re going to do in the future,” Marmore said.

How does it look?

For the next nine games, the Cardinals are expected to face only one left-handed starter, Milwaukee’s Eric Claure, on Sept. 13. The Buccaneers’ September 9 starter is unknown, but they don’t have a left-handed starter on their current roster, so we’re assuming that won’t happen.

This is not ideal. Starting every nine games won’t get Pujols to 700.

When Marmol talks about “matching” Pujols with some righties, it basically means he won’t face the hardest throwing righties with nasty stuff, but he’ll see softer (relatively speaking) thrower. Think of it this way: If right-handers were a regular part of Pitching Ninja’s Twitter feed, Pujols probably wouldn’t be in the starting lineup. If the pitcher isn’t, there’s still a chance.

Will this change on the track? Possibly, but we’ll get to that later.

First, let’s see how it’s been used over the past few weeks. The Cardinals have played 20 games since Aug. 18. Puyols started 11 times, scoring 8 of them. Don’t expect this to change. If you buy a ticket to the remaining Cardinals games, you’re almost certain to see Pujols play at least once.

“At the end of the day, you know what you’ve got to do, you’re chasing the pitch you’re looking for, just trying not to overdo it,” Puyols said after the game, according to the St. Louis Post-Post. “Some nights you’ll get through, some nights you won’t. Well, you just enjoy the nights you do, and I’ll enjoy them tonight.”

The grand slam he hit in the third inning on Aug. 18? That was the dagger in the Cardinals’ eventual 13-0 win against the Rockies. This suggests that Marmore will be aggressive with Puyols, using him in key situations, but also giving him play and pitching, which is where he’s best on offense. In a home run against the Cubs, Puyols beat Lars Notebar for the starting batsman. Against the Rockies, he batted for No. 2 hitter Brendan Donovan.

In 114 games against the southpaw that year, he hit .366 with 12 home runs and a 1.191 OPS. Only one player has more home runs than Puyols in the majors: 13-year-old Aaron Judge. Only two players have better OPS: NL MVP contenders Paul Goldschmidt (1,379) and Austin Riley (1,197).

“I think it navigates to a position where he can be successful,” Malmore said, “but he still plays really well, he really is.”

That’s why you might see Pujols in DH against a right-hander he might play against in May. He had good results against right-handers, and time was running out.

So there is another factor at play. Winning the division is very important. If the Cardinals win the NL Central, they will host all three first-round games in a best-of-three innings format this year in a modified playoff scenario. If the Brewers catch them, the sharp drop could mean the Cardinals will miss the playoffs. If the Brewers catch the Cardinals and somehow St. Louis still claims the wild-card spot, they’ll be on the street for every one of this best-of-three innings. not ideal.

By the end of the trade deadline, the Brewers had a three-game lead in the middle, and it looked like a battle was looming. But Milwaukee was falling apart a bit — a fiasco against the Rockies on Tuesday night, a 10-7 loss by nine points after the seventh inning, was symbolic — and the Cardinals have played well since the deadline. Suddenly, the Cardinals led the Brewers by 8.5 points. With 26 games, it’s a very comfortable position.

As the game wears off, it’s conceivable that Marmore has Puyolce’s name in the starting lineup for most of the night in the starting DH. When you combine 700 chases with solid ABs against righties with finished playoff positioning — Cardinals have little chance of jumping to No. 2 seed with a first-round bye — Marmore can No openly being enemy #1 for not giving Pujols as much AB.

Then again, Marmol would like to see 700 as well.

“There are times in this game where you step back and stop being stuck in the game and become a fan for a minute and experience it like everyone else, and that’s one of those things,” Puyols said on Sunday. After the game he said he hit a home run.

For all the feel-good stories surrounding Pujol’s search for 700, don’t think he’s going to get any funky pitches. A reporter jokingly asked Cubs executive David Rose if that would happen in the Cubs series.

“This guy has had enough of my sacrifice, that’s for sure,” Rose said. “I was in Cincinnati when he was as good as ever. He’s had a really good career and 600 — okay for now. If we leave, he can get 700.”

In the Cardinals’ last 26 games, they have faced the Buccaneers most often — nine times, including the last six of the season, three at Busch Stadium and then three at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. This is basically Pujols’ second home during his time with the Cardinals. In 97 games there, he has career averages of .351 and 32 home runs. Think of it this way: Only 13 players have hit more home runs on the field since their debut in 2001, and they’re all Buccaneers and all have played at least 213 games there.

Oh, and Puyols has two home runs in the three games there this season.

Lock people up. This should be an interesting journey.

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