The Angels won the bid for Pujols in 2011. He signed a 10 year $240 million contract with a no-trade clause. The risk for teams who offer these long extended contracts is they are expecting to have the Hall of Fame player who performed for the Cardinals for 11 years. That did not happen.
In his second season he batted .285 with 30 home runs. The second year he played in 99 games batted .258 with 17 home runs. After his first season with Angels, Pujols did not bat .285 again. It has been a lower average every year. Compare that to his eleven seasons with the Cardinals where he batted over .300 every year but his last when he hit .299.
His average with the Angels has been closer to .250 than .300. He did hit 40 home runs in 2015 but since then has hit over 30 only once. In that year of 40 home runs his batting average was only .244.
Pujols has played 9 of his 10 seasons of the contract and has appeared in only one All Star game. By the end of 2019, he had the lowest line drive percentage of all major league hitters at 15.3%. He also has the 2nd slowest sprint speed in the majors. In that year he batted .244 with 23 home runs while earning $28 million.
This was a huge financial investment with only average results at the best. Many people have listed this as the worst contract in baseball. What do you think?
