Stop the presses!
Albert Pujols has hit his first home run of the season.
It’s about time. Pujols went the whole month of April without hitting a home run for the first time in his career. It also was the longest drought of his career. Many were starting to worry if Pujols couldn’t handle the pressure of the American League. Hopefully for his sake, and the displeasure of the rest of the AL West, that home run sparked something.
Pujols has had more than one hit in just three of his past 10 games. He clearly has struggled to adapt to the AL and possibly the pressure of his big contract. To be honest with you, I didn’t see this happening with his talent. I thought he was The Machine? Pujols is batting, .196, 1 HR, 7 RBI,10 R, .237 OBP, .532 OPS. The stat that surprises me the most (outside of his one home run) is his six walks to his 16 strikeouts. With exception to his rookie year, his walks normally outnumber his strikeout’s by far and many. It could attribute to Pujols trying too hard to get acclimated with his new team. I want to give him a pass, but he’s way too good. I know he started off slow then picked it up last year. It’s just hard to see a player of his caliber get off to this slow of a start.
We’ll see the next few games if that home run triggered something in Pujols and lifted the monkey off his back. The MLB needs Pujols to get going. I will say that the fact Pujols went this many games without a home run drew more crowds to Los Angeles, in hopes to try and see Albert’s first home run and possibly catch it. You know that could go for a ton on Ebay.
One more thing, I love what his teammates did in the dugout. When he came back after finally connecting on his first homer, his teammates left the dugout, then mobbed him like he was a rookie hitting his first home run. I loved that. It shows that everyone on that team is no different from Pujols and they all have that team chemistry regardless of their record.