Is Albert Pujols Better Than Stan Musial?

Albert Pujols is one of the greatest players of the modern era, and many would say that he is among the greatest players to ever take the field in a Major League Baseball game. It comes as little surprise, then, that Pujols is looking to break the bank by signing the biggest contract in baseball history when (or before) he becomes a free agent at the end of the 2011 season. With contract negotiations between Pujols and his St. Louis Cardinals breaking down, it looks more and more like he will actually hit the free agent market. As a fun thought experiment, let's see how the 31-year-old Albert Pujols would stack up against a 31-year-old Stan Musial, who was undoubtedly the greatest Cardinal before Pujols came along, and may still be.

The salient points:

* Pujols' and Musial's careers lineup conveniently. While Musial got going at 20 and Pujols at 21, Musial's missed 1945 means that each man logged ten years through their age-30 season.
* Through those 10 years, Pujols has Musial beat in just about every counting stat, but it's fairly close. If you consider that Musial played a maximum of 154 games per season to Pujols' 162, things are closer. Even so, the only categories in which Musial clearly has an edge are triples and strikeouts.
* If we try to take out some era and ballpark effects, the result is much the same, with a slight bump for Musial. By the time he turned 31, Musial had racked up 74.3 wins above replacement to the 83.8 WAR that Pujols has in the books.

So, yeah, just about any way you look at it from an offensive standpoint, Pujols is at least the equal of Musial, and probably better, through their 30-year-old seasons. However, if both were on the market today, Musial likely wouldn't have missed that year due to military service, so the WAR count of these two gents would probably be nearly identical. Musial also played an arguably more important position, left field versus first base.

Even though these guys are very similar statistically, with a decent edge to Pujols in a lot of categories, it's interesting to note that Musial only has the stellar Hall of Fame resume that he does because of the years he logged after he turned 31. Stan the Man played pretty regularly until he was 42 and won the NL batting title when he was 36. He also racked up about half of his hits from age 31 on. This is not what you can normally expect from players, even the great ones, as they age. Can Pujols do the same?

Well, I suspect that what's really behind the rift between the Cards and their slugger is that the team knows the odds are against Pujols. He may not really even be 31 (lots of folks think he's older). He has the so-called "old-man" skills in spades, which is not necessarily a good thing. Big power, patience at the plate, and poor foot speed don't usually allow a player to age as well as someone who has good speed and warning track power, and who plays a more athletic position than first base. The latter group can migrate to right field or first base as they get bigger, stronger, slower, older. The former group generally has nowhere to go except the DH, the DL, and retirement.

Pujols keeps himself in great shape, though, so he may be able to buck the trend. Barry did it ... why not Albert? So do you take Prince Albert or Stan the Man for your $300 million over ten years? Tough call, but I think I might be inclined to let both of them walk, like the Cardinals are apparently willing to do with Pujols.