December 9, 2011

The BP Broadside

The Best First Baseman in Angels History

by Steven Goldman

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I caught myself about to write this sentence: “Albert Pujols will be the best first baseman in Angels history.” This is a tautological statement, completely unnecessary: with rare exceptions, Pujols is the best first baseman in anybody’s history. In terms of career warp, he is already 31^st on the all-time list, with only a couple of first-sackers leading him:
 

If you don’t consider Musial and Rose first basemen, or want to simply shout, “F—k you, Cap Anson!” as loudly as you can without getting arrested, that’s cool by me. Removing them means, Jim Thome, Dan Brouthers, and Willie McCovey sneak onto the list, all behind the Angelic Albert.

If Pujols hits anything like he has in the past at any time during the course of his contract, he will become not only the best peak-value first baseman in Angels history, but the best hitter, period. While future Hall of Famers such as Carew, Reggie Jackson, Frank Robinson, and Vladimir Guerrero passed through, and a few should-be-ins but aren’t and probably won’t be, such as Bobby Grich and Jim Edmonds, did some wonderful things while in town, there hasn’t been this kind of superman in Angels togs before. One important caveat: that Pujols still has some peak years left to give the Angels.

Tim Salmon was probably the best hitter to have his best years while he was actually playing for the Angels. A non-systematic review of the top ten offensive seasons in Angels history results in this list:
 

Pujols has a career .342 True Average, so we’re talking a cut above here—Salmon was a career .306, very good, but not of that quality.

As for first basemen, the Angels haven’t had much in the way of truly outstanding performances at the position:
 

The list is thin enough that it has room for partial seasons, albeit very good ones, from Carew (strike), Teixeira and Thompson (trades). These are all good years, but only Teixeira’s is of the MVP level associated with the truly great first basemen.

I suppose this is all trivia, but interesting trivia in that it shows how the Angels’ signing of Pujols is a break with club tradition. The club was famous for going after the big names during Gene Autry’s heyday, and we could spend a separate article discussing his many free agent signings and prospects-for-veterans deals. Trades such as—

December 6, 1979: Traded Willie Aikens and Rance Mulliniks to the Kansas City Royals for Al Cowens, Todd Cruz, and Craig Easton.

December 10, 1980: Traded Carney Lansford, Rick Miller, and Mark Clear to the Boston Red Sox for Rick Burleson and Butch Hobson.

May 12, 1982: Traded Tom Brunansky, Mike Walters, and $400,000 to the Minnesota Twins for Doug Corbett and Rob Wilfong.

—deserve to live in infamy. Yet, despite these moves and others, the Angels not only never rarely pursued the prototypical slugger at first base (Mo Vaughn is perhaps the only exception), they’ve had a difficult time keeping anyone there for very long. Their top 15 players in terms of games at first quickly drops off to players that didn’t even reach two seasons:
 

So, welcome to a brave new world of herculean first basemen, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. You took a big risk to get there and it might not work, but at least it’s a new vision of what Angels team architecture can look like.  
 

Steven Goldman is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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