Albert Pujols is having the worst season for a 37-year-old in MLB history

Albert Pujols has hit 23 homers, but that doesn’t mean he’s had a good season. Hell, Rougned Odor has 29 homers, and Sam Miller just wrote a whole column at ESPN about how Odor sucks out loud this season in spite of the dingers. Everyone is hitting homers, and 23 of them doesn’t make Pujols special, especially not when he’s slugging under .400 with a sub-.300 on-base percentage in spite of the long balls he has managed.

Really, saying Pujols hasn’t had a good season is understating the issue: Pujols is having the worst-ever season by a qualifying 37-year-old, because usually, when you’re that age and playing that poorly, MLB teams don’t let you keep piling up plate appearances. As Pujols has another four years and $114 million of contract left to him, though, well, the Angels are playing him. A lot.

Here, thanks to Baseball Reference’s Play Index tool, are the worst-ever age-37 seasons since 1901 for qualifying players:

We’ll get back to the contents of the table in a moment, but for now, let’s not make too much of Pujols being worth -1.6 wins above replacement in a season in which the Angels sit 1.5 games behind the Twins for the second wild card. It’s pretty convenient that those two numbers line up the way they do, but between WAR being an approximation and it not 100 percent directly tying to record and all that, you can’t declare with absolutely certainty that Los Angeles would have a postseason spot if they weren’t playing Pujols.

However, you can definitely imply it, and imply it strongly, because the spirit of what those two numbers represent carries real weight: if the Angels were using a replacement level player at DH, just some rando from the minors who barely held his own (but held it!) instead of Pujols, the Twins very well might be the ones chasing the Halos right now. If the Angels had someone better than replacement, well, wow, the sky is the limit you dreamer you.

And since Pujols is being paid $26 million this year, if you want to get into the “what if the Angels hadn’t signed Pujols?” game, well, it’s not too difficult to envision Los Angeles picking up someone who could outhit both Pujols and a hypothetical replacement level player.

Enough about all of that, though: Pujols is playing, the Angels don’t seem to think they have much of a choice in the matter given what they’re paying him, so let’s move on to the rest of that table and what it might mean for Pujols.

Here is what the rest of that table did the season following their historically poor age-37 season:

• Paul Konerko played one more season, and was even worse, amassing -1.1 WAR in just 81 games with an OPS+ of 64. This was his final season.
• Garret Anderson dropped to 80 games and also put up -1.1 WAR, except he one-upped Konerko by only managing an OPS+ of 29. It, uh, was also his final season.
• Steve Garvey appeared in just 27 games in 1987, and hit .211/.231/.276. You guessed it: this was Garvey’s final season.
• Charles O’Leary played 114 games in 1914 and amassed -1.1 WAR in the process, but it wasn’t his last season because he reappeared in 1934 — yes, 1934 — for one at-bat. And he got a hit! It’s actually a noteworthy hit, too, as it made O’Leary the last 19th century player to play in an MLB game, as well as the oldest player to get a hit and score a run: O’Leary was a few weeks shy of 59. Thanks, Wikipedia!
• Dave Kingman’s age-37 season was his last season, so Dave Kingman is officially the least prideful player on the list so far.
• Dode Paskert managed to rebound at 38 in 1920, putting up a 118 OPS+ and jumping up about 3.5 WAR in the process. Then 1921 came and his OPS+ dropped to 12, so, his sense of timing isn’t great, either.
• George Stovall called it a career after his age-37 disaster.
• Joe Carter was just as awful for the Orioles at 38 as he was at 37, but then he was traded to the Giants, and for 41 glorious, career-wrapping-up games, Carter was good at baseball once more. He then wisely rode off into the sunset after his best lengthy stretch since his early 30s.
• Finally, there’s Tommy Corcoran, who rebounded in 1907 at 38, but was still no good, and also limited to 62 games — the last 62 he’d play.

It’s not a promising list. The most significant rebound came from someone playing nearly 100 years ago, and then there was Carter, who inexplicably became the hitter people always talked him up as being for about 40 games before calling it a career. Also, not to hammer on this point too much, but Pujols is still owed $114 million after 2017, so the Angels really need to hope he’s going to be some kind of new model for old dude rebounds.

Speaking of models, maybe the Angels will pull a Yankees and try to talk Pujols into early retirement like New York did Alex Rodriguez. Chances are good it won’t work after one awful season given Pujols is younger with more years and money to go on his deal, but it’s maybe something to think about. The money is spent: there is no stopping that, and any negotiations about calling it quits are going to involve a payout for Pujols. The Angels sure could use a designated hitter capable of fulfilling the implied role contained within that position’s name, though, and if history is any indication, Pujols doesn’t seem like he has much of a chance of being that guy anymore.