By Scottie Brownson  September 07, 2017

Now, you don’t earn a nickname as cool as the Machine without earning every essence of it, Albert “The Machine” Pujols was undoubtedly on track to become one of the best players in MLB history during the beginning of his career in St. Louis. He was truly a fantasy baseball player that everyone wish had the opportunity to draft with the damage he was doing at the plate. If you don’t quite remember how dominant he was, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and take a look at his stats he garnered as a Cardinal.

During his eleven year tenure, he accomplished an outstanding line of: .328 batting average, .617 slugging percentage, 2073 hits, 455 doubles, 1329 runs batted in, and 445 Home Runs. All of that was good enough for a 86.4 Wins above Replacement, so he nearly average 8 WAR a season. For personal achievements, he had nine all-star appearances, three NL MVPs, a batting title and helped lead the Cardinals to two world series championships (in 2006 and 2011). After all of this, Pujols was on track to be one of the best player ever so the Angels did what every team with an ample amount of payroll available would do and signed the slugger to a massive contract of ten years and $240M guranteed.

Since joining Anaheim, Pujols has been a little bit of a disappointment and not nearly the type of daily fantasy MLB player that he was in St. Louis. Over his six seasons as an Angel, Pujols has compiled the following statline: .264 batting average, .464 slugging percentage, 838 hits, 157 doubles, 547 runs batted in, and 160 Home Runs. All of this is equates to a 13.8 Wins above Replacement, and over his six seasons that averages out to just over 2 WAR a season.

Now WAR is supposedly the best advanced statistic that measures a single player effect on a team’s success and if you compare the two stats for two different teams; you will be able to see the steep drop off in production. He averages nearly six fewer wins a season and that is while he is only being asked to be the Designated Hitter where he is allowed to focus solely on his hitting. I’m not sure if the machine is running out of gas or if pitchers are figuring out which buttons to push to get him out but it is clear to see that the Pujols mega contract may go down as one of the worst and overpaid contracts in MLB history.000000Scottie Brownson is a fantasy sports enthusiast. And one of his favorite things to do is to write about fantasy baseball player .

Scottie Brownson is a fantasy sports enthusiast. And one of his favorite things to do is to write about fantasy baseball player .