It happened, and it was glorious. Boardroom goes deep into the numbers to produce a definitive roundup of Pujols’s pitching stats, including all the analytics from Statcast.
If you had “Albert Pujols pitching” on your Major League Baseball bingo card, well, take a bow. In fact, take a home run trot — faster than the ones both Luis Gonzalez and Joey Bart hit off the Cardinals’ all-time legend.
Ahead 15-2 entering the ninth inning at home against the San Francisco Giants, skipper Oliver Marmol decided to hand the ball to the beloved slugger and just kinda see what happened — and while the man gave up two dingers, the Redbirds won and the scenes were spectacular. At this point, if the question you still can’t shake from your mind is “WHY DID PUJOLS PITCH?!?”, the answer is because it’s awesome and baseball is awesome. At the age of 42 years and 119 days, he’s the oldest MLB player to make his pitching debut since Lena Blackburne (42 years, 225 days) for the 1929 White Sox.
Just for kicks, Blackburne was also Chicago’s manager at that time — but he can’t exactly measure up to Albert’s 681 career homers, can he?
Folks, enough patter. Onto Boardroom’s full, exhaustive breakdown of Albert Pujols‘s debut as a big league hurler, including some amusing deep metrics from Statcast.
Albert Pujols Pitching Stats
Pujols’ Career Pitching Stats
- IP: 1.0
- Pitches: 27
- Batters faced: 7
- ER: 4
- ERA: 36.00
- Hits allowed: 3
- Walks allowed: 1
- Strikeouts: 0
- Home runs allowed: 2
- Ground balls: 2
- Fly balls: 1
Pujols’ Pitch Arsenal
SLIDER
- Thrown: 18
- Average velocity: 62.3 m.p.h.
- Batting avg. allowed: .500
- Slugging % allowed: 2.000
CURVEBALL
- Thrown: 8
- Average velocity: 56.4 m.p.h.
- Batting avg. allowed: .500
- Slugging % allowed: 1.250
CHANGEUP
- Thrown: 1
- Average velocity: 64.6 m.p.h.
- Batting avg. allowed: N/A
- Slugging % allowed: N/A
NOTE: Pujols’ changeup did not produce a swing.
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Albert Pujols’ Pitch Movement
Advanced Pujols Pitching Metrics via Statcast
SLIDER
- Inches of drop: 53.7
- Expected batting avg.: .252
- Expected wOBA: .525
- Expected slugging: .843
- Hard hit rate: 50%
CURVEBALL
- Inches of drop: 78.1
- Expected batting avg.: .390
- Expected wOBA: .508
- Expected slugging: .865
- Hard hit rate: 50%
CHANGEUP
- Inches of drop: 51.5
- Expected batting avg.: N/A
- Expected wOBA: N/A
- Expected slugging: N/A
- Hard hit rate: N/A
OVERALL
- Strike zone rate: 33.3% (MLB average: 48.5%)
- Strike zone swing rate: 55.6% (MLB average: 66.8%)
- Strike zone contact rate: 100% (MLB average: 82%)
- Chase rate: 33.3% (MLB average: 28.3%)
- Chase contact rate: 100% (MLB average: 58.4%)
- Overall swing rate: 40.7% (MLB average: 47%)
- First-pitch strike rate: 42.9% (MLB average: 60.7%)
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