TOWER GROVE -- While talking about the tendinitis that has invaded his left elbow recently and has caused him pain and problems with his swing, St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols revealed a little more about his other elbow, the one with the bigger issue.
Pujols had surgery last fall to remove bone spurs and floating foreign bodies in his right elbow, where there is still a torn ligament. Last season, the Cardinals' three-time MVP would often fiddle with his right elbow before stepping into the box for an at-bat. His wife later said that Pujols was manipulating tooth-sized bone chips that were loose in his elbow. The surgeon gave them to her in a jar as proof.
On Tuesday, Pujols missed only his second game of the season as he recovered from a cortisone shot to tame the tendinitis around his left elbow. He described the discomfort in his left elbow as more intense than anything he dealt with in the seven seasons since he initially injured the right elbow. He went on to say that the right elbow has not been an issue at all this season, and he offered up an example.
Check his homers.
Not the total number. But the direction.
"Probably over the last three years I haven't hit the ball over the right-field wall as much as I have this year, and straight to center field (too)," Pujols explained. "In the past I wasn't able to do that because of extension. I had to make an adjustment at the plate. It's working pretty well right now."
A few years ago, Pujols held out his two arms and showed how the right one was permanently, slightly bent. He could not straighten his arm because of the injury and gunk in the right elbow. That was preventing him from getting full extension on his swing, and he felt that limited his ability to drive the ball the other way -- to right field. Still, he never hit fewer than 30 homers and last season led the National League with 47 homers.
His sense that he is hitting more over the right-field wall or out to center is easy enough to check. So, I did.
At MLB.com, there are spray charts for hitters going back through Pujols' career. I went back to 2003, the season that he tore the ligament, and pieced together a snapshot of where Pujols has hit his homers at ballparks around the National League Central. Start with this season (total HRs):
Busch (17): 3 CF, 2 RF
Minute Maid (1): 1 CF, 0 RF
Wrigley (4): 1 CF, 0 RF
Cincy (3): 0 CF, 2 RF
Miller (3): 0 CF, 1 RF
PNC Park (1): 1 CF, 0 RF
And, keeping those spray charts in mind, here are the previous totals from 2003 to 2009:
Busch II/III (139): 16 CF, 10 RF
Minute Maid (17): 0 CF, 5 RF
Wrigley (14): 3 CF, 3 RF
Cincy (15): 4 CF, 1 RF
Miller (12): 1 CF, 2 RF
PNC Park (15): 4 CF, 5 RF
The numbers tell you a little bit about the ballpark (Minute Maid has that deep, deep, deep wall behind the miniature golf course in center field) and a little bit about the hitter. In the final season at Busch II, Pujols hit seven home runs to dead center field according to the spray charts. He has hit a total of eight in the first five seasons of Busch III. That supports his comment about not being able to drive the ball with extension to center, but it's hardly proves it.
Enter Hit Tracker.
The web site that maps and plots and calculates information for every home run hit in the majors has the specific details needed to better illustrate what Pujols is talking about -- and the improvement he's felt in that right elbow this season. You can check out the web site here, and please take a tour of all the info it offers. For the purposes of this discussion, though, there are two charts at Hit Tracker that best capture Pujols' comments:
Pujols homer scatter chart for 2006.*
Pujols homer scatter chart for 2010.*
*You can also see the charts attached to this article.
One glance at the 2006 chart and it's clear how often Pujols pulled the ball on the way to 49 homers that season. The next few years don't show it as dramatically, but it's still there.
At Hit Tracker, the gurus there put the ball field on an X-Y axis and track homers in relation with a virtual protractor and its right angle. The first-base line is at 45 degrees and the third-base line is at 135 degrees. It is possible then to slice up the field in arcs. I defined shots to center field as anything in the narrow space between 95.9 degrees and 85.0 degrees. Everything from 84.9 degrees to 45.0 degrees then is a homer hit the other way, or "over the right-field wall," as Pujols said. Indeed, he's hit more this season.
Hit Tracker's specific details go back to 2006, that 49-homer season for Pujols, and by checking the "degrees" of each homer he's hit sense you can illustrate his comment and what he's been able to do in 2010 with the repaired elbow that he felt he couldn't do in the several seasons before.
2006 ... 49 homers ... 5 CF ... 6 RF
2007 ... 32 homers ... 5 CF ... 5 RF
2008 ... 37 homers ... 7 CF ... 2 RF
2009 ... 47 homers ... 8 CF ... 3 RF
2010 ... 37 homers ... 10 CF ... 5 RF
It's obvious from those numbers that Pujols' 15 homers hit from center to right center to right this season trounce the totals from the previous four seasons. The most he had previous was 11 -- and both of those came in seasons when he hit more than 45 homers. So, the totals are up, the percentages are up and, clearly from his comment, Pujols' confidence in the right elbow is up.
Now, about the left elbow and that batting average ...
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CY PREDICTOR: Adam Wainwright's bid for the 2010 NL Cy Young Award has taken a hit during his run of five losses in six starts. He hasn't pitched poorly each of those games and he's been better than his stats (like Tuesday night), but it doesn't change the look of the slide.
The Cardinals' righthander remains one of only two pitchers who rank in the top five in the league in wins (18 -- 1st), ERA (2.50 -- 4th), strikeouts (199 -- 5th). The other, Philadelphia ace Roy Halladay, seems to be building the stronger case for the award. Bill Conlin, in this morning's Philadelphia Daily News, writes that Halladay "runs away with the NL Cy Young." The Cy Predictor says it's a little closer than that, but it's not Wainwright in second place behind Halladay.
The Cy Predictor is a formula devised by Bill James and ESPN's Rob Neyer. It's a cocktail of indicators from this season compared against voting trends from previous Cy Young Award ballots*. Last year, the Cy Predictor had Wainwright as the favorite, Chris Carpenter at No. 2 and the eventual winner, San Francisco's Tim Lincecum, at fourth. At this point this year, here is the Cy Predictor scores:
1. Roy Halladay, PHI ... 179.6
2. Heath Bell, SD ... 168.3
3. Adam Wainwright, STL ... 166.8
4. Ubaldo Jimenez, COL ... 165 2/3
5. Billy Wagner, ATL ... 156 2/3
* Speaking about the ballot ... This year's is different. I received the ballot a few weeks ago and for the first time it has five lines to fill in. The Cy Young ballot used to consist of voting for the top three pitchers in the league. The MVP, by contrast, has 10 spots on the ballot. This year, the BBWAA agreed to expand the ballot to avoid, in part, the bonuses that are tied to top-five, top-three finishes and can therefore be triggered by one vote.
FARMNIK REPORT: Memphis dropped Game 1 in the Pacific Coast League championship series, 5-3, on Tuesday at AutoZone Park. The Cardinals' Class AAA affiliate was the road team at their ballpark because of renovations going on at Tacoma's home. Shortstop Donovan Solano, who inherited the starting job when Tyler Greene went to the majors last week, had two RBIs in the game. Solano is hitting .533 in the playoffs for the Redbirds. Mark Hamilton, at first base, had two hits. Lefty Evan MacLane allowed five runs on eight hits through his 4 1/3 innings.
Read the coverage of the game and the seven baserunners the Redbirds stranded from beat writer Marlon Morgan in this morning's Commercial Appeal. RHP Brandon Dickson (11-8, 3.23 ERA) is scheduled to start tonight for Memphis in Game 2 of the best-of-five series.
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