Cloning a Machine

September 10, 2009 | mriehn | Comments 4

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by Michael Riehn
Whiteyball Staff

Dear Managers,
Albert Pujols will hit a home run if you pitch to him. Seriously.

Signed,
Everyone with eyes and and a brain

Have the Cardinals cloned Albert Pujols and put him in Matt Holliday's body?

At what point do managers think that pitching to Albert with a man on base isn’t a good idea?  The man has been ridiculous this season, and 3 home runs in the past couple of days have put him on pace for his first 50 home run season and in the ballpark for the RBI lead (one behind Prince Fielder).

Question: What do you get when you have a lineup with Albert Pujols, and you add another Albert Pujols to that lineup?

Check out the on base, slugging and on base plus slugging percentages on the following two tables:

Albert Pujols  in 2009 (bold denotes leading the league)

Matt Holliday with the Cardinals

Answer: A team that has gone 32-11 since the trade (.744 winning percentage).

Albert Pujols is having the best season of his career.  Since he was traded to the Cardinals, Holliday has matched him.  He has done so with an unsustainable batting average, but this shows you how good he has been.  He’s been matching the best player in baseball, stride for stride.

In fact, Holliday has outhit Pujols since that July 24, 2009  date (barely).  This is Pujols numbers since the trade:

The first thing I take away from this is that Albert is as consistent as a metronome.  The second is that Matt Holliday has a pretty nice upside.

No matter what the prospects accomplish that the Cardinals traded away, this trade has been a success. Anytime you trade for a player and he does an Albert Pujols impersonation for a couple of months, you have something special.

It is always a risk trading good prospects, but most of them don’t turn out like Danny Haren (Cardinals to A’s) or John Smoltz (Detroit to Atlanta).  Most of them turn out pretty even, and some turn out like Mark McGwire (A’s to Cardinals).

That doesn’t mean that you constantly trade away your best prospects, but I believe the league currently overvalues its young players too much .

As the A’s showed us in the early 2000’s with on base percentage, you look to find undervalued players wherever you can get them.  Whenever there is a market that overvalues a commodity, you can exploit it by taking advantage of the undervalued (i.e., trading for an All-Star player).

Now Holliday is talking about sticking around past this year, and you have to think the additional revenue and “front office support” will make Albert more likely to sign with the team (this is the offseason to sign him, in my opinion).

The team is poised for a playoff run, and could be set up for years to come.  It’s a great time to be a Cardinals fan.

Filed Under: Baseball