Albert Pujols is the most interesting thing in St. Louis baseball

Seven and a half years later, he returns

It’s been seven and a half years since Albert Pujols officially turned down the Cardinals’ offer to stay in St. Louis with the organization that drafted him and signed a contract to join the Los Angeles Angels on a 10-year, $240 million deal. Despite the Cardinals’ having played the Angels twice in interleague play, in 2013 and 2016, due to scheduling caveats, both of those series were played in Anaheim. That meant that Pujols had yet to play in Busch Stadium since Game 7 of the 2011 World Series.

The day the 2019 schedule was released, Pujols’ impending return immediately became the most anticipated baseball event in St. Louis of the last few years. The attendance numbers would live up to the hype. Friday night’s game was the second most attended game of the season and all three games clocked in inside the top 5.

When he was introduced to the crowd before his first at bats, Yadier Molina took his time rearranging the dirt around home plate to give the crowd ample opportunity to give Pujols a much-deserved ovation. And then the two friends and former teammates embraced.

Despite my claims that the Cardinals were starting Michael Wacha in this game to stack the deck in Pujols’ favor, he would get Pujols out in that first at bat. Then walked him on four pitches to a chorus of boos in his next plate appearance. Pujols would get his moment on Saturday night when he took Dakota Hudson deep and got a rare curtain call for an opposing player from the Busch Stadium crowd.

And then on Sunday night, as he dug into the box with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth, many Cardinals fans found themselves holing for a little Pujols magic with a grand slam. They wouldn’t get their wish though, as Pujols popped out to first base.

All told, Pujols went 4-for-11 in the series, those four hits are the most he’s had in a single series all season.

There was a level of tangible excitement around Pujols’ return that I haven’t felt around Cardinals’ baseball in quite some time. Especially considering the bitterness that seemed to exist when he left. The description of a “playoff atmosphere” were used more than once by multiple people to describe the feeling at Busch this weekend. It’s been a while.

This team has not played exciting baseball lately, and that’s a big reason why. The offense has struggled, logging the worst offense in baseball in June.

The team’s best player, Paul DeJong, leads all NL shortstops in Wins Above Replacement and was not among the top-4 vote getters at the position in All Star voting.

Part of that lack of excitement is the team waiting for its next Pujols.

As I posted on social media on Friday, Pujols’ worst season of his 11 in St. Louis was when he put up a 148 OPS+. For reference, OPS+ is a normalized way of looking at a player’s OPS, or On-base Plus Slugging. An even 100 is league average, which means that at his worst, Pujols was 48% better than the average MLB player.

I talked about the history of guys in MLB history who have done that as much or more than Pujols. But let’s look at it another way. Here’s a list of Cardinals players who have had a season where they had a 148 OPS+ or better since Pujols left:

No, I didn’t accidentally leave that bullet point blank. There are just no players who have done it. The best offensive season by a hitter in the post-Pujols era was Tommy Pham’s 144 OPS+ in 2017. And he’s no longer a Cardinal.

Perhaps it’s a little unfair to compare players to Pujols? After all, he’s Albert Pujols. He’s a lock in the Cardinals’ Mount Rushmore discussion. But since 2012, it’s been done 60 times by players on 20 different teams. None by Cardinals. Twice by a current Cardinal though, in Paul Goldschmidt who did it in 2013 and 2015.

The best hitter on this season’s Cardinals team has just a 118 OPS+.

Somehow while the club seems mired in the mud, they’re also just two games out of the division lead as the halfway mark approaches. There are needs that need to be addressed. Excitement that will need to be built. But for now, remembering Pujols and the amazing Cardinals’ teams that he was on during the best years of his career was enough.