N.Y. Sun: Kahrl: Barry Bonds Treatment Of Pujols Helping Cards

And so did Pujols scoring from second on a grounder to 2B tonight!

Even so, Pujols has this reputation as an RBI guy, and it’s been earned, however flexible the label itself might have to be on a year-to-year basis — whether he’s been among the best or not, he’s always been above average. Indeed, Pujols’s reputation is so important to the Cardinals that manager Tony La Russa has gone out of his way to maximize the value of Pujols’s at-bats with men on base by increasing the number of opportunities that Pujols might get hitting in the third slot of the lineup, doing so by batting his pitcher eighth and having a position player — usually shortstop Cesar Izturis — bat ninth. The math gets a bit involved, but it’s a solid proposition that having an essentially powerless position player, such as Izturis, swap places with the pitcher should theoretically help you score a few extra runs. Since this is what La Russa’s doing, who’s geeking who?

If you look at Pujols’s non-teammate-dependent stats, he’s been remarkably consistent in terms of average and power, in both his counting stats and his rate stats. The far more important news for fans in St. Louis is that their franchise slugger has been surrounded with an extended group of power sources that have helped the team move past the decline and subsequent disposal of former critical components such as Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen. There’s enough in the track records of Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan, and Eric Ludwick as power sources to make the gambit of walking Pujols intentionally a bad bet, and that’s without getting into whether or not former All-Star Troy Glaus can warm up to his new league. The Cardinals’ offense ranks second in the NL in on-base percentage, and second in Major League Baseball in BP’s total offensive metric, Equivalent Average. With Pujols on base and nevertheless still contributing the power for which he’s known, it’s not implausible to suggest they’ll be a better offensive ballclub than they were last year.