ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The dreams of St. Louis Cardinals fans who wanted to see Albert Pujols make a triumphant return in the birds on the bat were crushed this week when the 41-year-old signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. There's a chance the "Pujols to St. Louis" campaign could be recharged this offseason, but we've now learned that the Cardinals believed they just weren't in the right situation, currently, to bring him home.
President of baseball operations John Mozeliak spoke to reporters on Tuesday and was asked to give some insight into how the organization reacted to Pujols being released and the possibility of offering him a deal to come to St. Louis again.
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Essentially, the Cardinals took a hard look at it and came to the conclusion that bringing Pujols back to St. Louis would really just give them more problems than solutions. Here's the full statement from Mozeliak:
“From an internal standpoint, we did analysis on what that may or may not look like for our club. In the end we though there were a lot of complicating factors on trying to make that work.
“Clearly the story of trying to bring him back would have had some very exciting narrative, but the reality of how much playing time and where that would fit in seemed to be very complicated for us at this time.”
Last week, Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III also confirmed that the organization had an internal discussion about Pujols, and came to the conclusion that it likely wasn't going to be a fit.
Pujols has started in each of his first two games with the Dodgers and has one hit and two RBI, with one strikeout in seven at bats. He's also played 16 innings at first base.
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We've still got about five months of baseball to be played this season, but come in the offseason we might be discussing if Pujols makes sense for a return to St. Louis. He'd be 42 by the start of the 2022 season.
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