Watching all-time great baseball players age is both a frustrating and fascinating experience. Albert Pujols will never be able to recapture the dominance that gave him one of the greatest first decades in MLB history, as the aging process is unkind and irreversible. Even Barry Bonds with his late-career surge into the record books was a much different player than he was earlier in his career. Albert Pujols has seen something of a revival in 2015, hitting his American League-leading 21st home run of the season on Sunday. The 35-year old Pujols will never be able to get back to the form he had a decade ago, but he is hitting better than he has at any time in an Angels uniform.

With 10 home runs in June, Pujols already has his first double-digit home-run month since August 2010, when he hit 11 homers. His 149 wRC+ is higher than his final season in St. Louis, although the season did not begin as Pujols would have liked. After going 0-for-4 with a strikeout against the Rangers on April 24, Pujols was hitting just .177/.261/.355 in 69 plate appearances. In the 210 plate appearances since, Pujols has been on a tear, hitting .301/.352/.622 with a 173 wRC+ providing Mike Trout a worthy partner in an otherwise punchless Angels’ offense.

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When he accepted a 10-year, $254 million offer from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim last week, free-agent first baseman Albert Pujols ended a tremendous chapter in his baseball career. He also joined a team in California — the state with the highest tax rate in Major League Baseball for those who earn as much as Pujols.

Various sources have noted that Pujols’ decision to sign with the Angels, over the St. Louis Cardinals, could see him forgo millions more dollars to income taxes. Certainly, his leaving Missouri — where the highest marginal tax rate is 6%, plus the 1% local rate in St. Louis — now puts Pujols in a state where the highest tax rate is 10.3%.

But athlete taxation isn’t anywhere near as cut-and-dried as it might seem. Most definitely, it’s not simply comparing rates between states or multiplying a player’s salary by the highest rate. That’s not how it works. As we discussed earlier this offseason, the ‘Jock Tax’ is fairly convoluted and it’s far more intensive.

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While I’m sure they are still celebrating in St. Louis, reality is going to set in quick, as the Cardinals have a busy off-season ahead of them. Not only do they have to replace their hall-of-fame manager, but they have to decide what to do with the only first baseman the city has known for the better part of a decade: Albert Pujols.

There are numerous factors that are going to affect whether Pujols returns — and many of them difficult to quantify. Letting Pujols walk would be a public-relations nightmare, and it would certainly hurt the Cardinals at the gate – but I’m not going to pretend that I know what that magic number would be. There’s also the question of Pujols’ declining ability as he ages, and whether he will live up to what will inevitably be a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars. While I’m sure we’ll cover that topic in depth here at FanGraphs, that’s not what I want to cover today.

What I would like to suggest might sound blasphemous, but given the construction of their current roster — and downplaying the previously mentioned factors — it might not be the worst thing in the world for the Cardinals if Pujols walks away.

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The Cardinals and Lance Berkman agreed on a one-year extension on Thursday worth $12 million.

According to Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the deal includes a full no-trade clause. Though Berkman had retained 10/5 rights and signed a no-trade clause while with the Astros, he was without protection this season. The Cardinals weren’t very active in attempting to deal him as the trade deadline rolled around — much to the surprise of many analysts, myself included — and perhaps this is why. Then again, the events could be mutually exclusive as well, since he could have re-signed with the Cardinals even after being dealt this season. Unless, of course, he let the Cardinals brass know that trading him would detrimentally affect their odds of bringing him back.

Regardless, he’ll remain with the Cardinals through at least next season. But what position will he play? It’s easy to assume this is a great deal that makes everyone happy, but much more is potentially lurking beneath the surface.

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The Cardinals have a question to answer. What in the world are they going to do with Troy Glaus? The big slugger is a week into a twenty day rehab assignment in the minors and should be cleared to play by August. With Cardinal third-sackers combining for a pathetic .275 wOBA, you would expect that getting back a hitter like Glaus would be welcome news.

Unfortunately for St. Louis fans, Glaus can’t throw across the diamond without experiencing pain in his right shoulder. Swinging the bat is another thing, but that doesn’t seem to help the Cardinals. Well, that is unless they would consider some outside-the-box thinking, like say switching Pujols and Glaus to opposite sides of the diamond. Otherwise, Glaus will be limited to being one expensive pinch-hitter.

Let’s consider the crazy, um, I mean creative side for minute. Early in his career, Pujols played 96 games at the hot corner. According to UZR, he was worth -4 runs per 150 games; not great but by no means damaging given his numinous bat. While that was years ago, checking the results of Tango’s Scouting Report by the Fans, Pujols’ instincts and hands are nigh impeccable, both desirable traits in a third baseman. On the other hand, his arm strength rates as below-average, which is of course is less than what you would like. For what little it might be worth, based on his different grades for the various fielding skills, both Eric Chavez and Mike Lowell pop up in Albert’s similarity scores. So we know that Pujols is an elite defender at first, and chances are he could hold down the fort at third base just fine for the next few months.

Aside from limiting Glaus to pinch-hit duty, the other option would be trading him to an American League team looking for a DH, such as Detroit. This would most likely mean the Cardinals would have to eat most of the remaining $6 million left on his contract and getting little in return.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Pujols unselfishly asked to play third, but his manager dismissed the idea. Tony LaRussa is built his reputation as someone who will toy with lineups in order to gain even the slightest advantage, but doesn’t want to tinker with Albert. I definitely can understand the reticence when it comes to dealing with his superstar, but it seems to me that moving him to third for two months is hardly as big of deal as it initially appears to be. Considering the Cardinals have long been trolling the trade market looking to add a bat, giving away a Glaus for nothing would be a waste.

For the rest of the week I am going to be taking a position-by-position look at players, discussing the best and worst in certain measures. For those keeping score at home, we are going to begin with first basemen, position number three in your lineup key. According to our leaderboard page, there were 27 players that qualified for inclusion amongst first basemen, ranging from the brilliance of Albert Pujols to the, well, complete opposite of brilliance produced by Daric Barton. Via WPA/LI, Albert Pujols was over one and a half wins better than any other first baseman. He should be the senior circuit’s most valuable player, though that much is yet to be seen. Here are the top five in terms of context-neutral wins:

Albert Pujols, 6.48
Lance Berkman, 4.81
Mark Teixeira, 4.69
Adrian Gonzalez, 3.43
Carlos Delgado, 3.00

And the bottom five:

Daric Barton, -1.09
Kevin Millar, -0.85
Ryan Garko, -0.48
Paul Konerko, 0.02
Casey Kotchman, 0.22

Interesting how the fourth and fifth worst marks in this metric were still above average, which goes to show just how offensive-minded of a position first base can be. Speaking of offense, Ryan Howard led all first basemen with 48 home runs. Lance Berkman led with 18 stolen bases, which I am still having trouble wrapping my head around. Justin Morneau may not have lit the world on fire with longballs, and may not even be the most valuable player on his own team, let alone the league, but he did lead first basemen with 47 doubles.

James Loney and Conor Jackson tied for the lead with 6 triples apiece; somehow, Ryan Howard managed to hit four three-baggers. Straight out of the not-so-shocking department, Albert Pujols led with 104 walks, and struck out just 54 times. Unfortunately for Albert, Casey Kotchman fanned just 39 times, for the lowest total. But, Pujols posted the highest ISO at .296 and highest OPS at 1.114, so something tells me he wouldn’t let finishing second in least strikeouts amongst first basemen bother him too much.

Mike Jacobs, who hit for plenty of power this year but virtually refused to get on base any other way, swung the most, offering at 54% of the pitches thrown his way. Albert once again topped all first basemen, this time in contact made, as he was able to get his bat on 90% of the pitches he swung at. Kevin Youkilis, formerly nicknamed the Greek God of Walks, is still displaying excellent patience, so it is no wonder he led with 53.47% of pitches seen in the strike zone. After all, if he will not swing at a pitch outside the zone, why throw them with great frequency?

In the fielding department, Mark Teixeira led with a +24, followed by Pujols at +20, the surprising Joey Votto at +19, Lance Berkman at +18, and Carlos Pena at +14. Based on the WPA/LI and fielding data, Albert Pujols, Mark Teixeira, and Lance Berkman were the three best first basemen this year, with the order of Tex and Lance virtually being up to he who decides to arrange them in a given order. Plenty of first-sackers may hit for power, but these three displayed brilliance all around. Lastly, Geovany Soto likely has the Rookie of the Year award in the national league locked up, but Joey Votto had a very, very good year, largely under the radar, displaying both power and solid fielding skills. Hopefully for Reds fans he can build upon this year and not experience any type of slump next season.

When I heard that Eric was planning to do a piece on Albert Pujols today, I thought it might be interesting to go back and review that fateful draft when St. Louis found the future Hall of Famer in the 13th round.

Pujols was drafted out of a small school in 1999 called Maple Woods Community College. He signed about two months after the draft on Aug. 17 and did not make his pro debut until the following season. The 20-year-old hit .324/.389/.565 with 17 homers in 395 A-ball at-bats. Pujols also had 81 at-bats in High-A and 14 at-bats in Triple-A where he hit a human-like (gasp) .214/.267/.286.

Despite only having 14 at-bats above High-A ball, Pujols impressed the Cardinals in the spring of 2001 and the rest, as they say, is history.

But let’s take a step back even further and look at the actual draft where Pujols was acquired. The Tampa Bay Rays had the first overall pick and selected Mr. Josh Hamilton, another interesting story in his own right. The Marlins then took right-hander Josh Beckett and the Detroit Tigers took top college hitter Eric Munson, who found pro ball much more difficult. Other interesting first-round selections included Barry Zito (Oakland), Ben Sheets (Milwaukee), Brett Myers (Philadelphia), Alex Rios (Toronto) and… well, that was about it.

Some of the first round bombs included Corey Myers (Arizona), Josh Girdley (Montreal), Ryan Christianson (Seattle), and the Cardinals’ first-round pick Chance Caple.

Other draft steals included John Lackey (Los Angeles AL) and Carl Crawford (Tampa Bay) in the second round, Justin Morneau (Minnesota) in the third round, as well as J.J Putz, Erik Bedard and Aaron Harang in the sixth round. The next true steal was Pujols in the 13th.

Other big leaguers who were drafted in the 13th round of the 1999 draft include Justin Leone (Seattle), Frank Brooks (Philadelphia), Alfredo Amezaga (Los Angeles AL) and Jason Jones (Texas). Amezaga has had 1,200 MLB at-bats as a utility player, but Leone and Jones have combined for 210 at-bats and nine homers. Brooks has appeared in 12 big league games.

Look, we all know Albert Pujols is an absolutely tremendous baseball player. He is arguably the best player in baseball right now (Yuniesky Betancourt would give him a run), is a clear-cut hall of famer, and there are very few sane pitchers who actually look forward to facing him. A couple of months ago I wrote that he wasn’t being fairly treated in terms of both how good he is and how much coverage finds itself in his direction, because of this inherent comfort factor. Since we know he is fantastic, his performance has become more expected than admired, which I cannot stand. An OPS over 1.000 should “get people going” regardless of whether or not the player in question has reached that mark in just about every season of his career.

This year, even less press seems to consist of Albert-oriented focus, and he might actually be having the best season of his career. He rarely misses games, but being hurt for a bit this year will cause some of his raw totals to fall short of years past; his rates, however, are just as good if not better. In 118 games, Pujols is hitting .359/.467/.639, for a 1.106 OPS. Let that slash line sink in.

The only other time he came close to this was in 2003, when he hit .359/.439/.667, for an identical 1.106 OPS. The difference between the two years comes in the form of walks. This year, Albert has a 17% walk-rate, which is higher than any other season of his career. Coupled with a very low strikeout rate, Pujols has a BB/K of 1.95, meaning that he walks about twice for each strikeout. In terms of raw figures, that translates to 44 strikeouts and 86 walks. In fact, Pujols is the only player in baseball with a 17% or higher walk-rate that has a strikeout rate of under 20%.

Since his rookie season he has never fanned more than walked, and his BB/K has ranged from 1.49-1.95 since 2004. His patience is an enormous factor of his success that does not get mentioned much. Another of these factors is his fielding. You might not think it at first glance, but Pujols has been the best defensive first baseman in baseball at least since 2005. From 2005 until right now, Albert has been +87 plays better than an average first-sacker: +15 right now, MLB best +37 in 2007, MLB best +25 in 2006, and +10 in 2005.

To put that in perspective, not only is he probably the best overall hitter in baseball right now, he is also the best fielder at his position, which truly does elevate his value, regardless of how fielding metrics are perceived in the general public. I’ll end this with just some simple rankings:

BB/K: 1.95, 1st
BA: .359, t-1st
OBP: .467, 1st
SLG: .639, 1st
OPS: 1.106, 1st
WPA/LI: 5.19, 1st
REW: 5.73, 1st

Yeah, he’s pretty good, and could be in the midst of his best season to date.

Around this time of year those who write or analyze, be it in the mainstream media or the blogosphere, tend to get involved in posts discussing end of season award-winners. Heck, even Dave and I joined the fray yesterday in discussing the AL Cy Young Award with regards to Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. In the comments sections of both of our articles, the conversation surrounding who will win the award vs. who should win the award began to surface. Conversations like this seem to sprout up all over the place so I figured a post was in order to attempt to figure out why they exist and where they come from.

For starters, the idea of someone who should win something vs. someone who will win the same thing implies that the eventual winner is not deserving of whatever it is he is winning. In our case, an award like the MVP or Cy Young. Those in the camp of the former are seceding that their guy is not going to win the award but that he should. And, when they say he should, it really means that if they were voting, the results would be much different.

This then implies those voting are wrong in their decisions.

Some of the time they are, but really, do those voting on the awards get it wrong all the time? And who is deciding the criteria with which to gauge their decisions? These awards are voted on by mainstream writers, ones who generally are not well-versed in much other than batting average or win-loss record. Most of the time, us in the sabermetrics community mock their lack of statistical prowess but, for me at least, I don’t truly get bothered unless the author blatantly misuses or quotes numbers out of context.

Saying, for instance, that Adam Dunn lacks value because he has a .230 BA annoys me because the writers are making a definitive claim about his worth while using a metric that does tell us something, but nowhere near enough to make such a claim. On the other hand, if someone says that Player X could win the MVP award because he made the most impact on a good team and has a lot of home runs, RBIs as well as a high batting average, I really do not get that bothered. Sure, I know that there are plenty of other, better metrics out there to truly measure worth, but I don’t really care much about the awards. It isn’t going to effect me if someone “undeserving” wins.

See, for us who analyze stats and base judgments on a series of metrics, awards just aren’t that meaningful other than for posts discussing, for instance, why David Wright or Matt Holliday was more deserving than Jimmy Rollins… or why Johan Santana should have won instead of Bartolo Colon in 2005. Do I wish those making these decisions were a bit more educated with regards to evaluating players? Of course… but I’m not going to let it ruin my day that they vote for the wrong person, unless of course the losing player had planned on splitting his award bonus with me.

I guess my point here is that those of us who understand how to evaluate a player better shouldn’t care so much about the awards and should leave it to the people who care more about impact on the game from what they see rather than what some numbers may suggest. As in, why get involved in something or get bothered by something we should care about very little, if at all? Leave the WPA/LI, VORP, BRAA, and UZR to us analysts to do our jobs and properly gauge the true talent levels of players, but let’s not bring them into MVP or Cy Young discussions when we know that the percentage of voters who utilize and understand these metrics is likely much lower than Adam Dunn’s percentage of hits/at-bats.

Scorching starts from unexpected players are great for the game of baseball as they remind us anything can happen. Who expected Edinson Volquez to jump out of the gate like this? Similarly, insane starts from usually great players often hog the media spotlight as well (See: Lance Berkman, Chipper Jones, Chase Utley). One thing in common for both of these groups is that they obstruct our knowledge or view of great players off to great—albeit not insane—starts.

That’s where Albert Pujols comes in. Arguably the best offensive player in the game today, Pujols has seemingly been lost in the shuffle this season. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many House MD reruns instead of ESPN but, if I recall correctly, the only times Pujols has really been seen in-depth on the channel are when he almost fought Brandon Backe and when he single-handedly took out the Padres battery.

If he was posting average or below average numbers this might make more sense, but, as of right now, Pujols currently has a .366/.486/.644 slash line, a 1.130 OPS, and 14 HR-39 RBI. Could the problem be that consistency is boring? We know Pujols will perform at a high level so it isn’t as meaningful as it would be if, say, Ryan Ludwick was off to a really hot start? As odd as it may be, the consistency=boring aspect of fandom is very true. Not to say fans don’t appreciate the performance but the unexpected players performing great seem to bring the spontaneity that sparks excitement.

So, in honor of the still-just-28 yrs old Pujols, here are his current ranks:

5th in WPA, 2.49
3rd in BA, .366
2nd in OBP, .486
4th in SLG, .644
3rd in OPS, 1.130
3rd in BRAA, 27.72
2nd in REW, 2.75
2nd in WPA/LI, 2.82
1st in BB, 47

Pujols ranks in the top five, in all of baseball, in these categories and, not surprisingly, those in front of him in many of them are: Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman, Chase Utley, and Josh Hamilton. It’s human nature to like the other stories better than Pujols’s hot start but do not mistake him not being featured in magazines and television shows as often with a decline in performance. He’s still Albert Pujols and, if his BB and K rates are any type of indicator, he’s still improving.