May 4, 2018 Page 1 of 56

Press Clips

(May 4, 2018)

May 4, 2018 Page 2 of 56

CLIPS CONTENT

FROM THE OC REGISTER (PAGE 3)

Albert Pujols gets his 2,999th hit and Angels sweep Orioles

Ichiro Suzuki’s new job spoils hopes for matchup with Angels’ Shohei Ohtani

FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (PAGE 7)

Albert Pujols still chasing No. 3,000 after Angels rout Orioles

As Pujols pulls within one hit of another milestone, he still belongs more to St. Louis than Anaheim

Angels reflect on the awe-inspiring career of Ichiro Suzuki

For Angels’ Albert Pujols, this could be the big night

FROM ANGELS.COM (PAGE 15)

Angels sweep O’s as Pujols gets hit No. 2,999

On history’s doorstep: Pujols 1 hit from 3K

Ohtani disappointed he won’t play vs. Ichiro

Angels option Schimpf, recall Barria

These are the AL West’s best pitches

FROM MLB.COM (PAGE 22)

St. Louis cares about Pujols reaching 3,000

FROM MiLB.COM (PAGE 25)

MiLB announces April Players of the Month*

FROM THE ATHLETIC (PAGE 26)

“We’re all waiting for that one more hit”: After an electrifying night in Anaheim, Pujols is one away

from history

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (PAGE 27)

LEADING OFF: Pujols at 2,999, Dodgers-Padres in Mexico

Albert Pujols gets 2,999th hit, Angels blast Orioles 12-3

Pujols gets 2,999th hit, Angels beat Orioles 12-3

FROM CBS SPORTS (PAGE 35)

Pujols one shy of 3,000 as Angels face Mariners

FROM YAHOO! SPORTS (PAGE 36)

Ichiro leaves as next Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani arrives

FROM ESPN.COM (PAGE 38)

Radical Ideas Series: What if MLB teams could bid for more home games?

FROM KYODO NEWS (PAGE 42)

Baseball: Shohei Ohtani gets 2 hits as Angels sweep Orioles

FROM LARRY BROWN SPORTS (PAGE 43)

Shohei Ohtani disappointed he will not play against Ichiro

FROM SPORTING NEWS (PAGE 44)

3,000-hit club: Albert Pujols’ Cardinals career remembered, detailed by Tony La Russa

FROM FANGRAPHS (PAGE 48)

Albert Pujols and the Crawl to 3,000 hits

FROM ADWEEK (PAGE 52)

Unmetric: Houston Astros, Los Angles Angels Rode Social Growth Surges in April

FROM ORANGE COUNTY BREEZE (PAGE 54)

At-risk youth treated to VIP Angels baseball experience for staying in school and refusing to join a gang

May 4, 2018 Page 3 of 56

FROM THE OC REGISTER

Albert Pujols gets his 2,999th hit and Angels sweep Orioles

By Elliott Teaford

ANAHEIM — At one point Thursday, it seemed the Angels had an embarrassment of riches within their

grasp. Albert Pujols was one hit away from 3,000 for his Hall of Fame career, Mike Trout was halfway to

hitting for the cycle and Jaime Barria flirted with a no-hitter.

None of the three came to pass, though.

Pujols delivered a two-run double for the 2,999th hit of his career, sparking the Angels to a 12-3 victory

and a three-game sweep of the hapless Baltimore Orioles. Trout tripled, singled and scored two runs as

the Angels continued their assault on Orioles pitching.

Barria worked 5-1/3 no-hit innings before faltering in the sixth. He gave up two runs and four hits with

two strikeouts and two walks in only his third major league start, after an April 11 victory over the Texas

Rangers and a loss to the San Francisco Giants on April 22.

The evening promised history, but a crowd of 35,879 witnessed just another Angels victory.

It was hardly routine, however.

How could it be with Pujols on the verge of becoming only the fourth player in major league history to

record 3,000 hits and 600 homers? When it happens, perhaps as soon as Friday night against the

Mariners in Seattle, he’ll join an elite club of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Alex Rodriguez.

“It’s going to happen one day,” Pujols said. “The most important thing was that we won the game here

today. It would have been awesome for it to happen, but we played great, we swung the bats great. It’s

going to happen one of these days. It’s not about me, it’s about our team.

“It’s great. Don’t get me wrong.”

Pujols moved within one hit of 3,000 by scorching a double into the left-field corner off Orioles reliever

Miguel Castro in the second inning. He grounded out sharply to second base in his first at-bat, against

Baltimore starter Chris Tillman (1-5), who lasted only one inning.

Castro hit Pujols with a pitch in the fourth inning. Pujols then fouled out in the sixth and sent a lazy fly to

right to end the eighth and send most of the fans streaming toward the exits.

May 4, 2018 Page 4 of 56

Angels fans stood and roared during each of Pujols’ at-bats after his second-inning double, booing when

he was hit and groaning when he fouled out and flied out. Mostly, they sat and cheered as the Angels

completed their demolition of the Orioles, who are 8-23, last in the American League East.

“Pretty special,” Pujols said of the fans’ reaction. “We have great fans here. They support every player,

not just myself. They’re aware of the history that’s about to happen. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen

tonight. I had an opportunity to make it happen here. … It wasn’t meant to be this week.

“One of these days we’re all going to celebrate it.”

This one was over early.

Tillman didn’t miss many bats during a first inning in which nine Angels came to bat and he threw 33

pitches. The Angels scored five runs as six of their first seven hitters reached base. Pujols was the lone

out before Tillman retired Kole Calhoun and Martin Maldonado on flyouts.

The Angels added three more runs in the second.

Barria took an 8-0 lead after two innings and ran with it. The 21-year-old right-hander had given up only

two walks entering the sixth inning. A third batter, Pedro Alvarez, reached on Pujols’ fielding error with

two outs in the fifth. But that was it.

Barria then ran out of gas in the sixth. He gave up a one-out single to Trey Mancini that ended his no-hit

bid before giving up run-scoring singles to Manny Machado and Chris Davis as the Orioles trimmed the

Angels’ lead to 12-2. Blake Parker relieved Barria to start the seventh.

“He has a lot of poise for a young pitcher and a young person,” Manager Mike Scioscia said of Barria.

“He still has a lot of growth. He’s seeing what the beast is, major-league ballparks, major-league hitters,

and he’s making adjustments.”

Justin Upton had three hits and Shohei Ohtani and Andrelton Simmons had two apiece as the Angels

hammered out 15 hits. The Angels scored 27 runs in 12 games before the Orioles’ arrival at the Big A,

but had 25 during their three-game sweep of Baltimore.

Next: Seattle and the start of a three-game series Friday against the Mariners.

“We’re all waiting for that one hit and, hopefully, we’re going to get it tomorrow,” Scioscia said.

Ichiro Suzuki’s new job spoils hopes for matchup with Angels’ Shohei Ohtani

By Jeff Fletcher

May 4, 2018 Page 5 of 56

ANAHEIM — The matchup of every Japanese fan’s dreams is not going to happen this weekend.

A day before the Angels were to open a series in Seattle, and four days before the day that Shohei

Ohtani could start against the Mariners, Ichiro Suzuki accepted a front-office job with the Mariners for

the rest of the season.

Although there was some speculation that Suzuki might retire after the weekend, which could have set

up the perfect matchup with him against Ohtani in his final game, the Mariners scuttled that possibility

by taking Suzuki off the active roster on Thursday.

The 23-year-old Ohtani, who grew up idolizing the 44-year-old Suzuki, said in a statement he was

disappointed.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for him, what he has done for this game, our country and the

fans,” Ohtani said. “Sure I wish we could have played against him but wasn’t meant to be. I wish nothing

but the best for him moving forward.”

They still could meet. Suzuki is not retiring, only taking off the rest of this season.

Manager Mike Scioscia had seen enough of Suzuki. His 277 hits against the Angels are the most by any

player during Scioscia’s tenure.

“I was getting a little tired of him running and scoring so many runs against us,” Scioscia said, referring

to Suzuki’s prime with the AL West rival Mariners. “We all appreciate his immense talent. He certainly

beat up on us his share, but everybody respects him as a player and what he did. He played the game

the right way.”

Suzuki was the American League MVP and rookie of the year in 2001, the same year that Albert Pujols

won the NL rookie of the year. Although the two played in different leagues for most of their careers,

they faced off annually in the All-Star Game.

Pujols said he remembered Suzuki robbing him of hits with diving catches in the 2003 and 2010 All-Star

Games.

“I’m just happy and blessed to say I took the field and played against a legend,” Pujols said. “As soon as

he retires, he’s going to be a legend and a Hall of Famer.”

Garrett Richards said Suzuki played a special part of his big-league career. He was the first hitter

Richards ever faced in a major-league spring training game, in 2010.

“First batter of the game, he hit a chopper back to me,” Richards said. “It popped out of my glove just to

my right. I picked it up and he was already through the bag. Then he stole second, stole third. Then I

threw a slider in the dirt that kind of went to the side and he came home and scored.”

May 4, 2018 Page 6 of 56

BACK AT IT

Richards, who is starting on Friday night in Seattle, said he’s optimistic he and pitching coach Charlie

Nagy solved some issues with his delivery since the nine-run nightmare he endured the last time out,

against the New York Yankees.

“We watched some video and we spent some time simplifying my delivery and making it easier to

repeat,” Richards said. “It’s just a couple minor things here and there. Mostly my rhythm and tempo of

my delivery.”

Richards said he’s also trying to turn down the effort just a notch, which should help with control. He’s

walked 6.2 batters per nine innings so far this year, well above his average of 3.2 coming into the

season.

Richards said he still feels fine physically. Injuries have limited him to six games each of the past two

seasons. This will be his seventh start.

ALSO

Tyler Skaggs will follow Richards in the rotation, pitching on Saturday. That leaves Sunday as TBA. Ohtani

is scheduled to have a full bullpen session on Friday. If that goes well, he could pitch on Sunday. …

Matt Shoemaker (strained forearm) is scheduled to throw his first bullpen session since going on the

disabled list on Friday, Scioscia said. …

Blake Wood (elbow impingement) said he’s hoping to get on a mound in the next few days. He is

expecting to then pitch at least one game in the minor leagues. If all goes perfectly, he could return in

about a week. …

Keynan Middleton (elbow inflammation) is scheduled to throw a bullpen session sometime this

weekend, Scioscia said. …

Zack Cozart was out of the lineup on Thursday because of back tightness. Scioscia said he will play on

Friday. …

Infielder Ryan Schimpf was optioned to make room for Jaime Barría, who was promoted to start on

Thursday. The move left the Angels with eight relievers and five starters on the roster.

UP NEXT

Angels (Garrett Richards, 3-1, 4.88) at Mariners (Mike Leake, 3-2, 6.48), Friday, 7 p.m., Fox Sports West,

KLAA (830 AM)

May 4, 2018 Page 7 of 56

FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Albert Pujols still chasing No. 3,000 after Angels rout Orioles

By Bill Shaikin

Mike Trout ran across the clubhouse, from his locker to the one occupied by Albert Pujols.

Pujols had not yet taken the field for what would be this historic evening. He had not even taken batting

practice. So maybe it would not be accurate to label it a congratulatory call, but why the heck not?

Erick Aybar, the Angels' old shortstop, the guy who used to sit next to Pujols in the clubhouse, was on

the phone. The 3,000th hit would come sooner or later for Pujols, and Aybar was calling with a wish of

good luck.

Trout charged over, yelled something at Aybar over FaceTime. Trout laughed. Pujols laughed. This would

be a good night.

But, alas, not a milestone night. With a double in the second inning, Pujols got to 2,999 hits. He went

hitless in his three remaining plate appearances, and the chase for 3,000 will resume on Friday in

Seattle.

"One of these days, we are all going to celebrate it," Pujols said.

All was not lost for the Angels, not by any means. They pounded the Baltimore Orioles 12-3 to move into

a first-place tie with the Houston Astros in the American League West. Justin Upton and Luis Valbuena

had three hits, Trout tripled and singled, and the Angels piled up five runs in the first inning and all 12 by

the fourth inning.

Of the 19,246 men to play in the major leagues, only three have 600 home runs and 3,000 hits. Willie

Mays got there first, in 1970. Hank Aaron joined him in 1971. Alex Rodriguez got there two years ago.

The fourth and newest member of the 600-3,000 club will be Jose Alberto Pujols.

The home fans almost certainly will not see the moment in person, as the Angels play their next five

games in Seattle and Colorado. The fans tried to will Pujols to 3,000, loud in each at-bat and standing

and cheering in his final at-bat in the eighth inning, but he flied out.

"I think they are aware of the history that is about to happen," Pujols said. "Unfortunately, it didn't

happen tonight. It didn't happen this week. I had some opportunities to make it happen here.

May 4, 2018 Page 8 of 56

"At the end of the day, it is not about me. It's whenever the Lord wants. His time is perfect. My time is

not."

Pujols will join Hall of Famer Rod Carew as the only players to get to 3,000 hits in an Angels uniform.

Carew was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of the Minnesota Twins. Pujols almost certainly

will be inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with which he

got his first 2,073 hits.

In the fourth inning, as he approached the plate in his first shot at 3,000, the crowd rewarded him with a

standing ovation. It was wonderfully organic. No carnival barker on the public address system, no

cartoonish clapping hands on the video board, just a crowd well aware it could be sitting in on history.

The umpires put a special ball in play. The fans stayed on their feet, many on their toes, straining for the

best position to get a shot on their cellphone. The Angels players rushed to the top step of the dugout,

in position to rush the field if Pujols got a hit.

Pujols took two balls, and the crowd booed. He fouled off the next five pitches. He was then hit on his

rear end with a pitch. The crowd booed. One batter later, when the Orioles removed pitcher Miguel

Castro, the crowd booed him again.

Pujols got his next chance in the sixth inning, the crowd louder and more insistent in its encouragement.

He fouled out.

"We're all waiting for that one more hit," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.

Pujols so dominated the spotlight that Angels rookie Jaime Barria went almost unnoticed in extending

his no-hit bid through three, then four, then five innings. With one out in the sixth inning, Trey Mancini

singled for the Orioles' first hit, and the crowd saluted Barria with a nice ovation. Barria gave up three

more hits in the inning, his last for the evening, but still earned his second major league victory.

Fortune did not smile on Pujols in the first inning, but it smiled so widely on his teammates that it

guaranteed he would have more than a fair chance to get 3,000 on this night.

Of the first seven batters, Pujols was the only one not to reach base. He grounded out.

But the Angels battered Baltimore starter Chris Tillman and batted around in the inning. They led, 5-0,

and Pujols would get to bat again in the second inning.

He hit 2,999 that time, lashing a 96-mph fastball from Castro down the left-field line for a double. Better

yet, for a player who still measures his worth in runs batted in, Pujols drove in two runs.

May 4, 2018 Page 9 of 56

On the all-time lists, Pujols ranks seventh in home runs (620), ninth in runs batted in (1,935) and 32nd in

hits (2,999).

"One thing about Albert is he's not looking back and saying, I did this, I did that," Angels manager Mike

Scioscia said. "His nickname, the Machine, is not just for his hitting proficiency, it's like his will to play.

He comes out here every day and wants to help his team win a game.

"There is an incredible makeup you need to be that good for that long. He's obviously an exceptional

talent. You combine it with all the intangibles, and you see why he's in rarefied air for what he's

accomplished. Four guys, in all the careers in baseball of great, great players, to do what he's doing, I

think it says it all."

As Pujols pulls within one hit of another milestone, he still belongs more to St.

Louis than Anaheim

By Bill Plaschke

If the Angels are thinking about one day honoring Albert Pujols with a statue, there is something they

should know.

There already is one. It is 10 feet tall, bronze and stands outside a Sheraton hotel in suburban St. Louis.

"Lots of people in St. Louis are still excited about what he's doing, and still wishing it could be here," said

Brad Thompson, a St. Louis media personality who once pitched for the Cardinals.

If the Angels are thinking about one day retiring Pujols' No. 5 jersey, there is something else they should

know.

It's already essentially retired. The Cardinals have not allowed anyone to wear it since he left town for

Anaheim seven seasons ago.

"People are hoping he can return to St. Louis after his career ends, come to opening day in a red

Cardinal blazer, get a standing ovation, and live happily ever after," said longtime Cardinals fan blogger

Scott Wuerz.

As Pujols tantalizingly pulled within one hit of the magical 3,000 mark Thursday night at an increasingly

raucous Angel Stadium, one could not escape a sobering reality.

It feels as if the most decorated active professional athlete in Southern California actually belongs to

someone else.

May 4, 2018 Page 10 of 56

He's an Angel now, but, really, he'll forever be a Cardinal. He hit his 500th and 600th homers as an

Angel, but baseball history will remember him as a Cardinal. He is known for being a kind and generous

contributor to life in Orange County, but he still tugs deepest at the hearts of St. Louis.

Pujols, 38, stunningly left St. Louis in the winter after the 2011 season after one of the greatest 11-

season stretches in baseball history.

He came west for Arte Moreno's $254 million — about $54 million more than the Cardinals' offer. Yet in

doing so, he left behind a priceless legacy and love that, despite everyone's best efforts, have been

unmatched here.

"I will always think of him as a Cardinal," said Nick Wilhelm, a St. Louis real estate investor with two

signed Pujols jerseys hanging in his family's basement. "Here, he played for so long with his full

dominance in full display. There, he's a guy who plays next to Mike Trout."

It's not that Angels haven't embraced Pujols or that their fans don't love him. They certainly showed it

Thursday as he closed in on becoming only the fourth player with 3,000 hits and 600 home runs.

Facing the eight-win Baltimore Orioles, Pujols doubled down the left-field line in the second inning

against reliever Miguel Castro, bringing the announced 35,879 fans to their feet holding phones aloft for

his final three plate appearances.

In the fourth, after hitting five foul balls, he was hit in the butt by a Castro pitch, drawing a cascade of

boos. In the sixth, he fouled out against Mychal Givens. Then, in the eighth against Darren O'Day, he

flied out to right to send everyone groaning into the parking lot as the Angels finished a 12-3 victory.

Pujols was the center of attention on this night, but it only figures that he will quickly disappear. The

Angels now leave on a five-game trip and he probably will collect the milestone hit in Seattle or

Colorado.

For his entire time here, as his skills have slowly declined with age, his presence has been consistently

shadowed.

Playing in low-key Anaheim, Pujols has been lost among the many other Southern California sports

celebrities.

It hasn't helped that his tenure here began with Mike Trout and is winding down during the first year of

Shohei Ohtani. His visibility is even lessened when one considers how the Angels have struggled since he

arrived.

"There's not as much romanticism around the Pujols name anymore," said Patrick Rishe, director of the

sports business department at St. Louis' Washington University. "Not only did he leave a great baseball

market, but he went to a place where they haven't been that good."

May 4, 2018 Page 11 of 56

Rishe travels to Los Angeles frequently on business, and he recently noted a common observation

among Southland sports fans.

"I've heard the name Zlatan more in the last two months than I've heard the name Albert Pujols in the

last 10 years," he said, referring to the new Galaxy star Zlatan Ibrahimovic. "You don't really hear people

talking about the Angels. And when you do, you heard Trout, then now you hear Ohtani."

Pujols declined an interview last week about these and other topics, relaying that he didn't want the

3,000-hit distraction until he reached it.

But the difference between his tenure here and St. Louis has indeed been startling.

He was a nine-time All-Star there. He's been an All-Star once since.

He won two World Series championships there. He hasn't won a playoff game since.

He won three MVP awards, two home run titles, two Gold Gloves and one batting title there. He's had to

be satisfied here with simply the respect of a team that marvels at his work ethic.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals have done just fine since Pujolsleft, going to the playoffs four times, advancing

to the National League Championship Series three times, and appearing in the World Series once.

By saving the $210 million they offered Pujols, the Cardinals were able to afford to keep franchise

cornerstones like Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright while using the

Pujols compensatory draft pick to acquire pitcher Michael Wacha.

Still, lots of folks in St. Louis miss him. Especially now. Especially this week.

"If he were getting his 3,000th hit in St. Louis, it would be an amazing story," Wilhelm said. "People

would be going crazy."

The schedule is expected to bring the Angels to St. Louis next season for the first time

since Pujolsdeparted. The Cardinals are probably hoping to build a week around it. Folks there say the

standing ovation will be memorable.

Considering Pujols signed a personal-services contract that could keep him with the Angels for 10 years

past the end of his contract — until 2032 — it might be one of the few times he can feel the love that he

left.

Pujols was given a couple of ovations here Thursday night. They were loud. They were fine. They were

one hit short.

May 4, 2018 Page 12 of 56

Angels reflect on the awe-inspiring career of Ichiro Suzuki

By Bill Shaikin

Ichiro Suzuki might have stopped just short of announcing his retirement Thursday, but he is six years

from being eligible for membership in the American Assn. of Retired Persons. When Suzuki made his

major league debut in 2001, Mike Trout was 9.

Little wonder, then, that Trout and Kole Calhoun dropped a more contemporary frame of reference as

they marveled aloud at Suzuki's accomplishments: Come on, the guy pounded out a record 262 hits one

year? That's 50 more than Jose Altuve!

As a member of the American League West, the Angels have been bedeviled by Suzuki for two decades.

For those too young to recall Suzuki at the height of his talents — he was the AL rookie of the year and

most valuable player for the Seattle Mariners in 2001 — Albert Pujols made an angelic comparison.

"This is the guy that was the Mike Trout," Pujols said, "back from '01 to probably 2015."

Calhoun was an Arizona schoolboy who lugged his glove to Cactus League games and asked players to

sign it. One spring, he got Suzuki to sign, and he forever became the best player to autograph that glove.

"No close second," Calhoun said.

The Angels visit Seattle this weekend, but the anticipation has been extinguished. Japan's most

successful major league player will not face Japan's most intriguing major leaguer. The 44-year-old

Suzuki will not have the chance to bat against the 23-year-old Shohei Ohtani.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for him, what he has done for this game, our country and for the

fans," Ohtani said in a statement. "I wish we could have played against him, but it wasn't meant to be. I

wish nothing but the best for him moving forward."

Pujols laughed about the one-word answer he would get when asking Suzuki about the secret to his

success: "stretch." He remembered Suzuki darting into the gap to rob him of an extra-base hit in the All-

Star game 15 years ago — possibly robbing him of that game's MVP award, won by the Angels' Garret

Anderson.

And he described fellow major leaguers awed by Suzuki's array of skills. If Suzuki wanted to hit 20 home

runs every year, Pujols said he could have.

"This guy could put the ball in the seats, any time," Pujols said.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia jokingly said that, while he did not know Suzuki very well, he got to see

plenty of him as he rounded third base and headed home in front of the Angels' dugout.

May 4, 2018 Page 13 of 56

"Every facet of the game was important to him, and he played every facet of the game with incredible

depth," Scioscia said. "He beat you with his glove. He beat you on the basepaths. He beat you in the

batter's box."

When he first saw Suzuki's unique mechanics at bat, Pujols said, he wondered whether the guy would be

able to hit in the major leagues. Ground balls were not forbidden then — talk of launch angles had not

yet arisen — but Suzuki sure hit a lot of them.

"Two hop to shortstop, beat it out," Pujols said.

Said the Angels' Ian Kinsler: "It didn't matter how far the left fielder played on the line, or how many

people you put on the left side of the field, he was either going to beat out a ground ball or find a hole

somewhere. His hand-eye coordination was insane."

In announcing he would take off his uniform and work in the Mariners' front office for the rest of the

season, Suzuki left the door open to play in 2019. He is a career .322 hitter, but he batted .205 this year.

"I don't think he's done," Pujols said.

"When I start using a cane, that's when I'll know I'm ready to retire," Suzuki told reporters in Seattle.

Suzuki had talked this spring about wanting to play until he was "at least 50."

"He might be able to play until 60," Pujols said. "Maybe you will have to get a wheelchair to get him

down to first base."

For Angels’ Albert Pujols, this could be the big night

By Bill Shaikin

Albert Pujols is true to himself, so true that he could not allow even the slightest of smiles to betray

whatever excitement might be stirring inside his heart.

This could be the night. The countdown could be over. The numbers could roll over.

There are four numbers on the big green Pujols sign at Angel Stadium. The 2 will turn into a 3. The other

three numbers will turn from 999 to 000.

Pujols needs two hits for 3,000. Thursday could be the night. He must be excited.

"No, not really," Pujols said late Wednesday.

May 4, 2018 Page 14 of 56

"It's going to happen one day. What am I focused on? My focus is on coming here and trying to help this

ballclub win. This is not the last game of the season. It would be nice to do it tomorrow. If it doesn't

happen, it will happen one day."

Pujols got two hits Wednesday. If he matches that Thursday, the party is on. If not, Pujols 3K figures to

be an out-of-state affair, with the Angels playing their next five games in Seattle and Colorado.

You might want him to hit 3,000 at home more than he does.

"It would be great for the fans that support you every day, but I don't want to put that pressure on

myself," Pujols said. "My goal is to try to go out there and try to help this ballclub to win."

The Angels have been here before. So has Pujols. He hit his 600th home run last June at Angel Stadium.

He prefers to reach milestones before he talks about them.

"He was the same way when he hit 600," Mike Trout said.

One of Pujols' hits Wednesday was a home run. That put him at 620. The only players with 600 home

runs and 3,000 hits: Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Alex Rodriguez.

"Everybody is almost in awe of it," pitcher Andrew Heaney said.

Everybody, that is, except Pujols, at least outwardly.

Shortstop Andrelton Simmons appears more enthused for Pujols than Pujols is for himself.

"He's focused on having good at-bats and trying to help us win games," Simmons said. "I don't doubt

that's what he's thinking.

"But everybody knows. It's like the elephant in the room. Nobody really says much about it. Just let him

play."

Chris Tillman starts for the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday. Pujols has four hits in 15 at-bats against

Tillman, which is not so great for Pujols. But Tillman has a 7.03 earned-run average this season, which

could be really great for Pujols, and for the chance to share the moment with the fans.

"Hopefully, he can do it tomorrow and finish it at home," Simmons said Wednesday night. "We all cheer

for him. We all want him to get it done so we can celebrate with him, be part of that special moment."

It would be inaccurate to say Pujols is invisible in Anaheim.

But it would not be inaccurate to say he is barely visible here. This is Trout's team, and Shohei Ohtani's

show. The presence of Mark Trumbo in the visiting dugout this series reminds us that Pujols might have

May 4, 2018 Page 15 of 56

been the best player in baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, but has never been the best player on his

own team with the Angels.

Trumbo had that distinction in Pujols' first month with the Angels. Then Trout showed up.

The spotlight is about to find its old friend. Of the more than 19,000 men to play in the major leagues,

only nine have hit 600 home runs, and only four of them have 3,000 hits as well.

That is worth a warm ovation from the home fans — the kind he used to enjoy all the time in St. Louis —

immediately after he gets the milestone hit. If that hit is going to come at home, it's Thursday or bust.

FROM ANGELS.COM

Angels sweep O’s as Pujols gets hit No. 2,999

By Avery Yang

ANAHEIM -- Albert Pujols knocked an RBI double down the left-field line for his 2,999th career hit in the

second inning Thursday. Each of his next three plate appearances warranted a standing ovation. But

alas, history didn't come on this night.

Though Pujols didn't notch his 3,000th hit, the Angels racked up 15 knocks, plowing past the Orioles, 12-

3, to complete a three-game sweep at Angel Stadium.

"At the end of the day, it's going to happen one of these days," Pujols said. "It's not about me -- this is

about our organization and our team."

The bats came alive for the Angels this series against the Orioles, who have a 5.21 ERA, ranked 28th in

the Majors. Entering the series, the Halos had lost nine of their last 12 games, scoring two or fewer runs

nine times during that stretch.

After scoring 10 runs on Wednesday and 12 on Thursday, the offensive tides may be turning back in the

Angels' favor.

Mike Trout went 2-for-5 with a triple and two RBIs. He went 3-for-8 with a homer, six walks and three

RBIs in the series. He is second in the Majors with 11 home runs.

Justin Upton went 3-for-4 and has five hits in his last nine at-bats, starting with his walk-off single

Tuesday, which broke him out of a 5-for-45 slump.

May 4, 2018 Page 16 of 56

Shohei Ohtani went 2-for-3 with an RBI, showing indications that the mild left ankle sprain that delayed

his scheduled start on the mound Tuesday isn't affecting his bat. After entering the series in a 4-for-27

slump, Luis Valbuena went 4-for-9 with a homer and four RBIs over the three games vs. Baltimore.

"When you're swinging the way we did the last two nights, obviously it's fun," Angels manager Mike

Scioscia said. "We've been playing so many tight games these last 10 games, that it's good to break out."

Andrelton Simmons went 5-for-11 with four RBIs and four runs in the series. He currently has an eight-

game hitting streak and is slashing .327/.391/.510 this season.

"Everybody knows what we can do, we know what we can do, but we've still got to go out there and do

it," Simmons said. "We had a couple of bad series, bad games, but it's nice to see everybody start

waking up and swinging the bat good."

Jaime Barria had a strong showing on the mound in his third career start, carrying a no-hitter into the

sixth inning. He allowed two runs on four hits over six innings, striking out two and walking two.

"I think he has a lot of poise for a young pitcher and a young person," Scioscia said. "He still has a lot of

growth. He's seeing what the beast is: Major League hitters, Major League ballparks. And he's making

adjustments. … His stuff keeps getting better and better, more refined as he's gotten out there."

MOMENT THAT MATTERED Halos pounce early: The Angels' offense started quickly, plating five runs in the first. The inning started with an Ian Kinsler walk. Trout tripled in Kinsler, then Upton doubled in Trout to make it 2-0. After a Pujols groundout, Ohtani singled on a sharp line drive to right, scoring Upton, making it 3-0. Simmons added an RBI double, and Valbuena capped the rally with an RBI single. SOUND SMART Kinsler's career batting average against the Orioles (.343, 124-for-361) is the second highest vs. Baltimore of players who started their careers during or after 1939, behind only Ted Williams (.374).

YOU GOTTA SEE THIS

Upton's 114.9-mph single in the fourth was his hardest-hit ball since Statcast™ began tracking in 2015.

UP NEXT

The Angels will turn to Garrett Richards to start their series against the Mariners on Friday night at 7:10

PT. Richards will be making his first start against Seattle since Sept. 25, 2015. He is 5-4 with a 3.15 ERA in

18 career games (10 starts) against the Mariners. Richards will oppose Mariners right-hander Mike

Leake.

On history’s doorstep: Pujols 1 hit from 3K

By Maria Guardado

May 4, 2018 Page 17 of 56

ANAHEIM -- Albert Pujols is on the brink of history.

In Thursday night's 12-3 victory over the Orioles at Angel Stadium, Pujols lined a two-run double to left

field off right-hander Miguel Castro for his 2,999th career hit, extending the Angels' lead to 8-0 in the

second inning. Pujols went hitless in his next three plate appearances, shifting his march to 3,000 to

Seattle, where the Angels will open a three-game series Friday night.

"One of these days we're all going to celebrate it," Pujols said. "It just didn't happen here tonight."

Pujols, 38, is one hit away from becoming the 32nd player to reach 3,000 career hits. He would be only

the second Dominican-born player to accomplish the feat, after Adrian Beltre. He is vying to become

only the fourth player to collect 3,000 hits and 600 home runs, joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Alex

Rodriguez.

With his 3,000th hit, Pujols would move into a tie with Roberto Clemente for 31st on the all-time list.

On Friday night, Pujols will face Mariners right-hander Mike Leake. The Angels slugger is 4-for-11 with

an RBI and two walks in his career against the righty.

Pujols entered Thursday with 2,998 hits and grounded out in his first at-bat against Orioles right-

hander Chris Tillman in the first inning. Facing Castro again in the fourth with the crowd of 35,879 on its

feet, Pujols fouled off five straight pitches before taking a changeup off his left hip on a 2-2 count. He

jogged to first without incident. Facing right-hander Mychal Givens in the sixth, he popped out to first

base.

Pujols had one more chance in the eighth inning against side-arming right-hander Darren O'Day, but he

flied out to right field, much to the disappointment of the home crowd. With the Angels' next five games

in Seattle and Colorado, hit No. 3,000 will likely come on the road.

"I think they are aware of the history that is about to happen," Pujols said of the fans. "Unfortunately, it

didn't happen tonight. It didn't happen this week. I had some opportunities to make it happen here. At

the end of the day, it is not about me. It's whenever the Lord wants. His time is perfect. Mine is not."

Ohtani disappointed he won’t play vs. Ichiro

Mariners legend moves to front-office role ahead of series vs. Halos

By Maria Guardado

ANAHEIM -- It would have been a mega-event in Japan, a clash between two of the biggest baseball

stars the country has produced. The news that the Angels were targeting Shohei Ohtani's next start to

May 4, 2018 Page 18 of 56

come against the Mariners in Seattle this weekend prompted many to fantasize about a potential

matchup between the two-way phenom and his renowned countryman, Ichiro Suzuki.

But now, that hope won't be realized.

The Mariners announced Thursday that Ichiro will be transitioning to a front-office role, effective

immediately, and he will not return to the active roster in 2018. Ichiro clarified that he is not retiring,

and he didn't rule out a potential return next year, but the development erased the possibility of an

imminent encounter with Ohtani.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for him," Ohtani said in a statement released by the Angels.

"What he has done for this game, our country and the fans. I wish we could have played against him, but

it wasn't meant to be. Wish nothing but the best for him moving forward."

Angels first baseman Albert Pujols shares a unique bond with Ichiro, as they both debuted on April 2,

2001, and went on to capture the Rookie of the Year Awards in their respective leagues, marking the

beginning of their Hall of Fame careers. The two didn't cross paths often -- Pujols spent much of his

career starring for the Cardinals in the National League, while Ichiro electrified with the Mariners in the

American League -- but Pujols often admired the Japanese icon from afar.

"Pretty special player to be able to do what he did in the States," said Pujols, who heads to Seattle one

hit shy of 3,000 after getting No. 2,999 on Thursday. "Don't forget about what he did in Japan, those

years that he played there. Pretty unbelievable. A better person than a player. Great human being. Let's

see what he's going to do next. I don't think he's done yet. He might be done for this year, but I think he

might have a second shot coming up next year."

Asked if he had a favorite memory of Ichiro, Pujols cited a moment they shared at the 2003 All-Star

Game on the South Side of Chicago. Pujols lined a pitch from Jamie Moyer to right field, but Ichiro ran

into the gap and made a leaping grab to deny him a hit.

"I could have easily had a chance to win that MVP in '03, and he made a great play," Pujols said. "Then,

he got on later on first base, and I told him, 'Hey, man, why do you have to do it like that? It's the All-

Star Game.' And he said, 'Hey man, I just play hard.' He was just a fun guy to play against."

Ohtani, who missed his scheduled start against the Orioles on Tuesday because of a left ankle sprain, is

scheduled to throw a bullpen session Friday, which could set him up to pitch Sunday's finale at Safeco

Field, though the Angels have not yet made an official announcement. Garrett Richards and Tyler

Skaggs will pitch the first two games of the series.

The ankle sprain is no longer an issue for Ohtani at the plate. He started at designated hitter and batted

fifth on Thursday for the third consecutive game against the Orioles, collecting two hits in three at-bats

with a walk, scoring twice and driving in a run.

May 4, 2018 Page 19 of 56

Injury updates

• Infielder Zack Cozart was not in the lineup Thursday due to back tightness, but manager Mike Scioscia

said he is expected to return on Friday.

• Right-hander Matt Shoemaker (right forearm strain) is slated to throw a bullpen session Friday for the

first time since landing on the disabled list on April 3.

• Right-handed relievers Blake Wood (right elbow impingement) and Keynan Middleton (right elbow

inflammation) continue to progress and are getting close to throwing off the mound, according to

Scioscia.

Angels option Schimpf, recall Barria

Right-hander tabbed for start vs. Orioles

By Matt Kelly

The Angels optioned infielder Ryan Schimpf to Triple-A Salt Lake and recalled right-handed

pitcher Jaime Barria in a corresponding move Thursday.

Barria was scheduled to start Thursday's matchup against the Orioles in Anaheim. The rookie went 1-1

with a 3.86 ERA over his first two starts for the Angels this season, and he memorably locked horns with

Giants first baseman Brandon Belt in a modern-record 21-pitch at-bat on April 22. Barria allowed two

earned runs over two innings in that start (his most recent outing with the Angels), including a scoreless

first after he had thrown 49 total pitches.

Schimpf, acquired in late March in a trade with the Braves, has gone 1-for-5 with a home run and two

walks while also striking out three times for Los Angeles in the early going.

These are the AL West’s best pitches

By Brian McTaggart

HOUSTON -- Hitters in the American League West don't get much of a break when it comes to facing

dominating pitching. From former AL Cy Young Award winners Justin Verlander and Dallas Keuchelin

Houston to Japanese star Shohei Ohtani in Anaheim and up-and-coming lefty Sean Manaea in Oakland,

the quality arms are deep.

May 4, 2018 Page 20 of 56

Of course, every good pitcher has his bread-and-butter pitch, his go-to choice to produce bad swings

and long walks back to the dugout by opposing hitters. How and when the best pitchers in the AL West

use their fiercest pitches is a well-crafted science. Sometimes it's to set up other pitches and sometimes

it's to end at-bats -- to stop the hitter in his tracks.

In the case of Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr., he uses his curveball as much as he can. It's that good.

But so are Ohtani's splitter and Edwin Diaz's slider in Seattle.

So, step to the plate if you dare for a breakdown of the best pitch thrown by a pitcher on each team in

the AL West and how they taunt opposing hitters with them.

Angels

The pitch: Ohtani's splitter

How he throws it: Ohtani throws his splitter with his right index and middle fingers spread wide over the

seams.

How he uses it: Ohtani's splitter is a devastating swing-and-miss pitch and is typically not thrown in the

strike zone.

What it does: Ohtani's splitter, which averages 88 mph, operates like a changeup and plays well off his

upper-90s fastball. The splitter comes out of Ohtani's hand like a fastball before diving away from hitters

at the last second.

What they say about it: "His splitter just kind of drops off the table," Zack Cozart said. "Looks like a

strike I feel like almost every time, but it never is. It just drops below the zone. That's how it comes out,

the same as his fastball. It makes it tough as a hitter."

Statcast™ fact: Ohtani's splitter has a 59.6 percent strikeout rate, with 17 of his 26 punchouts coming on

the pitch this season.

Astros

The pitch: McCullers Jr.'s curveball

How he throws it: McCullers puts the nail of his right index finger on the seam of the ball right above

the Major League Baseball logo and the middle finger on the longer seam to the right. The thumb is

below the ball on the seam to the left of the index finger. From there, it's all about force and throwing it

as hard as he can. He produces more swings and misses and more ground balls than most other

curveballs.

How he uses it: Often. McCullers throws nearly 50 percent curveballs, to go along with a fastball and an

ever-developing changeup. Last year in the playoffs, he threw 24 consecutive curveballs to finish off the

May 4, 2018 Page 21 of 56

Yankees in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. When other pitches aren't working the

way he'd like, McCullers can rely on the curveball to get swings and misses and ground balls.

What it does: Against lefties, he tries to make a more conscious effort toward throwing a true 12-to-6

curveball, and against right-handers he wants to give the pitch more of a sweeping motion.

Statcast™ fact: McCullers' ground-ball rate on his curve is 63.4 percent. That ranks 10th among 65

starting pitchers (minimum 10 batted balls). Last year, his ground-ball rate was 60.6 percent.

A's

The pitch: Manaea's slider

How he throws it: Manaea uses a low release point, so the ball comes out almost under his hand. It

makes his fastball and changeup look exactly the same.

What they're saying about it: "The breaking ball has more topspin, whereas the fastball has backspin,"

A's pitching coach Scott Emerson said. "But if [Manaea] keeps both pitches tight, it's hard to recognize

that difference. The right-handers think fastball away and then his slider darts in, while lefties think

fastball in and then it darts away."

Statcast™ fact: Manaea has thrown the slider with only 17.5 percent of his pitches this season, but it's

produced by far his lowest expected batting average among his three pitches (.220).

Mariners

The pitch: Diaz's slider

How he throws it: Diaz grips the ball with most of the pressure on his middle finger and thumb, a grip he

adopted from veteran Joaquin Benoit two years ago. That was a change from more of a two-finger grip

he deployed as a young starter coming up through the Minor Leagues. He says the grip allows more

depth and dive to the slider as it approaches the plate.

How he uses it: Diaz possesses a high-90s fastball that hitters need to gear up for. So, having the hard

slider coming out of the same "tunnel" to counter that heater has been a difference-maker for him.

Normally, Diaz will set hitters up with the fastball and then bring the slider, but he'll start some batters

off with the slider if he thinks they're sitting on the heat.

What they're saying about it: "He's got arms and legs coming at you and is just so aggressive with it,"

Mariners catcher Mike Zunino said. "Besides the spin and the break, he's just coming at you on all

cylinders and you have to be ready for 100 mph and that just makes the slider play even more."

Statcast™ fact: Opponents have whiffed on 70 percent of their swings against Diaz's slider, the highest

rate among the 54 pitchers who've induced at least 50 swings on that pitch this year. Opposing batters

are 0-for-22 with 17 strikeouts in at-bats ending on his slider heading into Wednesday's games.

May 4, 2018 Page 22 of 56

Rangers

The pitch: Bartolo Colon's fastball

How he uses it: Colon throws a fastball -- either four-seam or two-seam -- 80-82 percent of the time.

Occasionally he breaks 90 mph, but averages 87.8. That is the third-slowest fastball for a pitcher who

has thrown at least 200 of them so far this season. Colon will throw a heater in all counts but specializes

in getting ahead of hitters. He throws first-pitch strikes on 64.4 percent of batters, 15th best in the AL.

The 44-year-old induces hitters to make contact, as 22.2 percent of his pitches are put in play, the

highest mark in the AL.

What it does: The four-seamer is used mainly when he is ahead in the count. Colon will go with the

sinker when he is behind or late in the count. He is a ground-ball pitcher with a sinker that goes away

from left-handed hitters. But he is not afraid to throw up in the strike zone to change the batter's eye

level. According to the Statcast™ detailed zone chart, Colon has thrown 37 pitches in the lower third of

the strike zone or below. He has also thrown 37 pitches in the upper third of the zone or above.

What they say about it: "He knows what he is doing: Work fast, throw strikes and change speeds. Every

one is an individual battle, but most important is being able to locate your fastball on both sides of the

plate. Young pitchers need to be able to establish their fastball. That's what we are missing in baseball.

People don't how to establish their fastball as well as they should. They just want to see velocity. Bartolo

knows how to pitch." -- Rangers assistant pitching coach Dan Warthen

FROM MLB.COM

St. Louis cares about Pujols reaching 3,000

Could an eventual reunion be in the cards?

By Will Leitch

Sometime soon, Albert Pujols is going to become the 32nd player in MLB history to reach 3,000 hits, and

the fourth to also have more than 600 homers (Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Alex Rodriguez are the

others). He will do so as a member of the Angels, with whom he has played the past six-plus seasons

and, presumably, will play the next three.

Pujols' pending milestone has been noted and appreciated in baseball circles, but all told, it has been

relatively muted, as far as these things go. When Derek Jeter was approaching his 3,000th hit, it felt as if

baseball itself had to stop every time he so much as approached the on-deck circle. But Pujols' quest is

arguably the third-most compelling story on his team, behind the ongoing Shohei Ohtani extravaganza

and Mike Trout doing his usual extraordinary things. Pujols was the king of the sport six years ago, with a

May 4, 2018 Page 23 of 56

future that hinted at all sort of historic milestones. And now that he's about to reach one of the shiniest

ones ... it doesn't seem like that many people care.

But know: People in St. Louis care. They might care too much.

Since Pujols left to sign with the Angels after that 2011 World Series, the attitude of Cardinals fans

toward the player once so beloved in St. Louis that he was bestowed with the nickname "El Hombre,"

placing him alongside Stan "The Man" Musial, the franchise's patron saint, has evolved. At first, the

Halos' usurping of the Cards' 11-year star was met with anger, partly toward the Angels, but mostly

toward Pujols and his wife, who had said she and her husband were "insulted" by the Cardinals' offer of

five years, $130 million. But as far as these things go, that anger dissipated rather quickly, for four

primary reasons:

• The Cardinals had just won the World Series in the most thrilling way imaginable, and it's tough to stay

too mad about anything right after something like that.

• The quotes from Pujols and his wife after he left were hardly that inflammatory in the grand scheme of

matters, and once everyone calmed down, they were at last understood as such.

• The Cardinals had immediate success in the wake of Pujols' departure, reaching the National League

Championship Series three straight years after he left and the World Series in 2013.

• Pujols stopped being the best hitter in baseball ... and his drop-off in performance has been severe.

This is the primary reason.

The decline of Pujols in recent years has been well-documented, but it's worth looking a little closer at

just how different a player he has been in Los Angeles than he was in St. Louis.

Here are his slash lines for each team, along with total WAR (per FanGraphs) and, notably, total salary:

Cardinals (2001-11):.328/.420/.617, 81.3, WAR, $104 million

Angels (2012-present):.261/.317/.458, 6.8 WAR, $153 million (with $87 million left)

Pujols' slash line with the Cardinals is basically Barry Bonds' career slash line; but with the Angels, it

is Jay Bruce's (a little worse, actually). And the past two seasons have been particularly gruesome. In

2017, Pujols had a -1.9 WAR, making him one of the worst players in baseball. He started that year with

a higher career WAR than Chipper Jones, who retired in 2012, but finished it below him. This year isn't

going much better. Pujols has a .266 OBP, which is 161st out of 178 qualified hitters.

So this certainly has something to do with the lack of fanfare for Pujols' 3,000th hit as well, right? It feels

a little wrong to focus too much attention on Pujols at this moment in his career. We want to remember

him for what he was, rather than what he is at this moment, the same way we all try to forget that Willie

Mays finished his career with the Mets. (Though it's worth pointing out that he was, in his final days, still

May 4, 2018 Page 24 of 56

better than Pujols is right now.) You want to remember Pujols for his prime, rather than this lamentable

decline.

And there is no place that remembers Pujols' prime better than St. Louis. For my money, the greatest

Pujols game was July 20, 2004, on the best Cardinals team of my lifetime, a game the Cards trailed 7-1

after two innings before Pujols just kept blasting them back, hitting three homers (and also a single and

a double), culminating in a ninth-inning homer off LaTroy Hawkins to complete the comeback with a 10-

8 lead.

There are of course hundreds of others, ultimately ending with that 2011 World Series, in which Pujols

hit three homers in a game and eventually scored on David Freese's infamous last-pitch triple. In St.

Louis, Pujols is not a player in decline or a financial albatross. He remains eternally 31, raking; Ted

Williams in his prime, El Hombre. Who can stay up late enough to find out what's happening in Anaheim

anyway?

Another main reason for this helpful forgetfulness: Pujols has yet to return to Busch Stadium. Thanks to

a scheduling quirk caused by the 2016 political conventions, the Angels still haven't visited St. Louis since

he left. According to Derrick Goold at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, MLB has promised a trip in 2019, at

last. Pujols has played the Cardinals in Anaheim, and it did look weird.

Thus: Pujols' impending 3,000th hit has captivated St. Louis this week. The hot debate: Would this be a

larger deal nationally if Pujols had never left St. Louis? If he were going for his 3,000 hit for the same

franchise, becoming only the second Cardinals player to reach 3,000 hits with the team (other than

Musial, of course), would this be a Jeter situation or even a Craig Biggio situation? For that matter:

Would the Cards have had the success they've had since Pujols left if his decline had happened with

them rather than the Angels? Would Cardinals fans still love him as much had he fell off the cliff like this

in front of the fans who saw his glory years? And, perhaps most enticingly: Is there a potential thawing,

even a reunion, waiting in the wings someday?

This last point is a big one, probably the biggest one, because 3,000 hits is a milestone, when you start

talking about milestones, you start talking about the Hall of Fame. It would seem obvious, when Pujols is

eventually elected to the Hall, that he would wear a Cardinals hat on his plaque. He played more years

there, he won two World Series there, won three National League MVP Awards there. But the Angels

thought of this when they signed him, giving him a notorious (in St. Louis anyway) 10-year "services

contract" that pays him $1 million a year for 10 years after he retires, which wouldn't just complicate

the Hall of Fame that matter, but also potentially keeps Pujols out of St. Louis' Opening Day festivities, in

which Cards Hall of Famers all return, wear gaudy red jackets and are paraded around as legends.

These "services contracts" are often ignored or discarded when one's career actually ends, but a million

bucks a year is a million bucks a year. As long as that contract still exists, it'll still feel uneasy for the

Cardinals and their fans to truly embrace Pujols the way the years have slowly made more likely, and

amenable, to happen. Cards fans watch Pujols from afar, seeing him reach milestones he did almost all

May 4, 2018 Page 25 of 56

the heavy lifting for in St. Louis, ready for love him again, to do what we all do, or at least try to do, as

we get older: Remember the good times while letting go of the bad. If there can be a "Roseanne"

reunion, there surely can be a Pujols-Cardinals one.

Both the Cardinals and Pujols have their own concerns right now, independent of Pujols' milestone

chase: They are, after all, both firm postseason contenders. But to see him reaching this vaunted

number of 3,000, and not being a part of it, and seeing how few others seem to appreciate it the way

Cards fans wish they could ... it points to an emotional breakthrough down the line, the two sides

returning to each other for the sake of each other.

It may just have to wait until next year, when Pujols and the Angels finally make it to Busch. Pujols will

have his 3,000 hits by then. That 3,000th hit will happen very soon, and it will be greeted with polite

appreciation and a standing ovation. But it'll be nothing like the roar that comes from Busch next year. It

may have taken nearly eight years, but by then, both sides will at last be ready.

FROM MiLB.COM

MiLB announces April Players of the Month*

Each winner will receive an award from Minor League Baseball

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Minor League Baseball today announced the Player of the Month Award

winners for each of the 10 full season leagues for the month of April. Each winner will receive an award

from Minor League Baseball in recognition of the honor.

Salt Lake Bees (Angels) outfielder Jabari Blash led the Pacific Coast League in total bases (61), extra-base

hits (17), slugging percentage (.884), OPS (1.347) and tied for the league lead in home runs (nine). Blash

was second in the PCL in on-base percentage (.463) and was third in RBI (22). Blash is the only player in

professional baseball to post an OPS over 1.300 in April and his nine home runs in April were tied for

second-most in pro ball, one behind New York Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius . Blash, 28, was

originally selected by Seattle in the eighth round of the 2010 draft out of Miami Dade South Community

College

*Article edited to include only Angels-related material.

May 4, 2018 Page 26 of 56

FROM THE ATHLETIC

“We’re all waiting for that one more hit”: After an electrifying night in Anaheim,

Pujols is one away from history

By Steve Dilbeck

It was so close, it felt inescapable. Albert Pujols had doubled in two runs in the second

inning Thursday and now was one measly hit away from the 3,000 career mark.

When he came to the plate in the fourth, the entire crowd rose to its feet, cell phones at the ready to

record history. The energy level quadrupled in a heartbeat. Teammates all stood against the dugout

railing.

Miguel Castro, a 23-year-old Orioles right-hander, threw two balls before Pujols fouled off five

consecutive pitches. Pujols seemed on him, and the crowd sensed history.

And then Castro hit Pujols in the hip with a pitch and an entire stadium seemed to sigh.

“It was tight,” said Angels shortstop Andrelton Simmons. “It was pretty cool seeing everybody on edge,

trying to see what was going to happen. He put up a couple of good at-bats.

“That one at-bat where he got hit, I think everybody knew it was about to happen. Can’t control that,

but he’ll get it soon enough.”

Indeed, the season remains young but now it’s highly unlikely Pujols will accomplish his feat of becoming

the fourth player in baseball history with over 3,000 hits and 600 home runs before the home crowd.

The Angels start a five-game road trip Friday in Seattle.

Pujols, not adept at displaying his feelings, seemed to shrug when the night was over. He had two more

opportunities Thursday but fouled out in the sixth and flied out to right in the eighth, the crowd again

standing for every pitch. The Angels beat the Orioles 12-3 to sweep the three-game series, so things

were still fine with the barrel-chested slugger.

“I have 130-some games left, so it’s going to happen one day,” Pujols said. “We won the game today. It

would have been awesome to happen [here], but we played great, we swung the bat great.

“I just need to focus on trying to help my team to win. One of these days we’re all going to celebrate it.”

There was Carly Simon-level anticipation for results that ultimately only teased at a remarkable

achievement.

May 4, 2018 Page 27 of 56

“He’s in rarified air,” said Angels manager Mike Scioscia.

Last summer Pujols hit his 600th home run in typically theatrical fashion, belting a grand slam in Anaheim

off Twins ace Ervin Santana. Given his flair for the dramatic, it was almost surprising when he didn’t

come through Thursday.

“Kinda surprised, because he’s known for the spectacular on a big occasion,” Simmons said. “I guess it’s

all right. You can’t do it every time, but I’m excited for him still and confident he’s going to do it the next

game.”

Scioscia said for the most part, the dugout was unaffected by the crowd’s reaction. They were too

focused on the game.

“You’re looking forward to that hit but it’s not like you’re sitting there just putting all your attention on

it,” he said.

Scioscia said what impressed him most was Pujols’ initial at-bat in the first when he grounded out. The

Angels had already scored two runs against Baltimore’s Chris Tillman and had Justin Upton at second

with a double and no outs, when Pujols bounced out to second, advancing Upton to third.

“Albert is playing the game of baseball,” Scioscia said. “He’s going to let the numbers fall in wherever

they may. That was really impressive, his first at-bat, to understand there are still team at-bats involved.

Although he’s chasing an incredible goal, he knows it’s important for us to try and win games.”

The Angels went on to score five runs in the first.

“I want Albert to get a hit every time he goes up there,” Upton said. “We were hoping that he could do it

here in front of the home fans, but at the end of the day we have a lot of baseball to play. We’re pretty

confident Albert’s going to get another hit.”

Undeniably, an obvious sense of inevitability remains. The Angels have 131 games left to play. And

somewhere in there will be one very big hit.

“We’re all waiting for that one more hit, and we’re going to get it, hopefully tomorrow,” Scioscia said.

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LEADING OFF: Pujols at 2,999, Dodgers-Padres in Mexico

A look at what’s happening all around the majors today:

May 4, 2018 Page 28 of 56

PUJOLS’ PURSUIT

Albert Pujols has 2,999 hits as Los Angeles opens a series at Seattle. Pujols got three shots at 3,000 after

reaching striking distance with a two-run double in the second inning, but he couldn’t get the hit before

the Angels began a five-game road trip. He’ll try to reach 3,000 against Seattle’s Mike Leake.

MEXICAN FLAVOR

Major League Baseball returns to Mexico in the regular season for the first time in nearly two decades

when the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego play a three-game series in Monterrey. It’ll be a matchup

of promising rookies when Joey Lucchesi starts for the Padres against Walker Buehler at Estadio de

Beisbol Monterrey.

The previous visit was opening day in 1999 when Mexican native Vinny Castilla helped Colorado top the

Padres. The first trip was in 1996, with Mexican star Fernando Valenzuela leading San Diego over the

Mets to begin a three-game series.

ENCORE, ENCORE

Pirates rookie Nick Kingham makes his second career start. His first one went pretty well — in his major

league debut last weekend, he took a perfect game into the seventh inning against St. Louis before it

was broken up. The 26-year-old right pitches vs. the Brewers at Miller Park.

LOOKING GOOD

The Atlanta Braves — the NL East-leading Atlanta Braves — return to SunTrust Park to host San

Francisco. Fueled by Ronald Acuna Jr., Ozzie Albies and Mike Soroka, the three youngest players in the

majors, Atlanta has won five in a row.

This is the latest in a season the Braves have been in first place since July 20, 2014. Mike Foltynewicz

starts against the Giants.

WELCOME BACK

Kris Medlen is set to start for Arizona at Minute Maid Park against the Astros. The 32-year-old righty last

pitched in the majors in 2016 with Kansas City. He’s been beset by injuries, including a pair of Tommy

John surgeries, since coming up with Atlanta in 2009. Gerrit Cole (2-1, 1.73 ERA) starts for Houston. Cole

set the AL record for strikeouts in April with 61.

MISSING MIGGY

May 4, 2018 Page 29 of 56

Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera’s return to the lineup was brief. After missing three games with spasms in

his biceps, he made an early exit Thursday because of a strained hamstring. He’ll test it before Detroit

plays again in Kansas City.

Albert Pujols gets 2,999th hit, Angels blast Orioles 12-3

By Greg Beacham

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — The Angel Stadium crowd rose in breathless unison when Albert Pujols stepped

up for his final try at his 3,000th career hit before the Los Angeles Angels left town on a five-game road

trip.

The unnatural silence was broken by the crack of Pujols’ bat, but the ball popped harmlessly into right

field.

Although those Angels fans got to see No. 2,999, Pujols’ milestone hit remained tantalizingly out of

reach Thursday night.

They still roared for their slugger and for another blowout win by their surging team.

Pujols had a two-run double for his 2,999th career hit, and Luis Valbuena and Andrelton Simmons drove

in three runs apiece in the Angels’ 12-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles.

“Obviously, I wanted to do it here,” Pujols said. “But it wasn’t meant to be this week.”

After moving to the brink of becoming the 32nd member of the 3,000-hit club in the second inning, the

38-year-old Pujols couldn’t reach the mark in his final three plate appearances. He had hoped to do it for

his Anaheim fans, but he’ll have to try again Friday in Seattle.

“It was pretty special to hear them,” Pujols said. “They’re aware of the history that’s about to happen.

They support every player, not just me.”

After getting hit by a 2-2 pitch in the fourth and being retired on a foul popup in the sixth, Pujols flied

out to right in the eighth against Darren O’Day. When he finally reaches the mark, Pujols will join Hank

Aaron as the only players with 600 doubles and 600 homers among their 3,000 hits.

But he’ll probably do it at Safeco Field instead of the Big A.

“We were hoping he could do it here, and he had some great at-bats,” said Justin Upton, who had three

hits. “He just didn’t get that last one. It happens.”

May 4, 2018 Page 30 of 56

The Angels didn’t need any more offense from Pujols while sweeping the three-game series and scoring

25 runs against Baltimore’s beleaguered pitching staff.

Mike Trout started the bonanza with a run-scoring triple during a five-run first inning, and he added an

RBI single in the three-run second to chase Chris Tillman (1-5).

Angels rookie right-hander Jaime Barria (2-1) took a no-hitter into the sixth inning of his third career

start, finishing with six innings of four-hit ball.

Pujols doubled against Miguel Castro in the second inning, scoring Trout and Upton to put the Angels

ahead 8-0. Simmons then got a two-run double and Valbuena added a two-run single in the fourth for a

12-0 lead.

Manny Machado drove in two runs for the last-place Orioles, who have lost 15 of 18.

“We got in another big hole early on,” Baltimore manager Buck Showalter said. “We had to ask our guys

to get out of another one, and it’s tough.”

TILLMAN’S TROUBLE

Tillman got only three outs while yielding seven hits and seven runs in a disastrous start in his

hometown. Showalter declined to speculate on whether the longtime Baltimore starter’s spot in the

rotation could be in trouble, but five of Tillman’s six starts this season have been fairly rough.

“There’s a lot of things that have been going wrong, but we know what we’re capable of,” Tillman said.

“It’s not fun, but I know the work that’s going in. I’ve just got to keep working and executing and playing

better.”

BARRIA’S BRILLIANCE

While the stadium focused on Pujols’ quest, Barria dominated the Orioles’ lineup. The 21-year-old

Panamanian prospect didn’t allow a hit until Trey Mancini’s one-out single in the sixth.

Barria is in his third stint with the Angels this season, coming up and down from Triple-A Salt Lake to

patch the holes in Los Angeles’ injury-plagued rotation. The right-hander worked quickly and efficiently

against the Orioles’ struggling lineup, allowing only two walks in the first four innings.

Baltimore strung together four singles and scored two runs in the sixth, but Barria pitched his way out of

the inning and left to a standing ovation.

SHOHEI SHOW

May 4, 2018 Page 31 of 56

Angels star Shohei Ohtani went 2 for 3 with two singles and a walk, scoring two runs and driving in

another. The Japanese two-way sensation had the fifth multihit game of his rookie season.

TRAINER’S ROOM

Orioles: Chance Sisco was back behind the plate after leaving Tuesday’s game when his head collided

with Pedro Alvarez’s elbow while they chased a foul popup. Sisco said he had a facial bruise, but no

concussion symptoms.

Angels: The starting rotation is still a carousel thanks to early season injuries for Matt Shoemaker, J.C.

Ramirez and Nick Tropeano, among others. Barria came up to take a turn, and the Angels sent OF Ryan

Schimpf back to Triple-A Salt Lake to make room.

UP NEXT

Orioles: Andrew Cashner (1-4, 4.76 ERA) takes the mound for the opener of a weekend series in

Oakland.

Angels: Garrett Richards (3-1, 3.58 ERA) looks to rebound from a miserable start last weekend against

the Yankees when the Angels open a series at Seattle. Richards hasn’t faced the Mariners since 2015.

Pujols gets 2,999th hit, Angels beat Orioles 12-3

By Greg Beacham

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Albert Pujols had a two-run double for his 2,999th career hit, and Luis Valbuena and Andrelton Simmons drove in three runs apiece in the Los Angeles Angels’ 12-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday night.

Pujols did not get a hit in his final three plate appearances after moving to the brink of the 3,000-hit club in the second inning. He gets another chance Friday in Seattle.

Angels rookie right-hander Jaime Barria (2-1) took a no-hitter into the sixth inning of his third career start, finishing with six innings of four-hit ball.

Manny Machado drove in two runs for the last-place Orioles, who have lost 15 of 18. Chris Tillman (1-5) recorded just three outs and was charged with seven runs.

MARINERS 4, ATHLETICS 1

SEATTLE (AP) — Dee Gordon had a big night on the bases, Nelson Cruz hit a two-run homer and the Mariners won their first game since Ichiro Suzuki was moved from the roster to the front office.

May 4, 2018 Page 32 of 56

Hours after the Mariners announced Suzuki’s new role for the rest of 2018, Gordon gave the longtime Japanese star a fitting tribute. With “Thanks 51” written on his cap, Gordon went 3 for 4, stole two bases and scored twice.

Chasen Bradford (3-0) pitched 2 1/3 innings for the win, and Edwin Diaz handled the ninth for his major league-leading 13th save.

Oakland ace Sean Manaea (4-3) gave up four runs and six hits in six innings.

YANKEES 6, ASTROS 5

HOUSTON (AP) — Aroldis Chapman struck out AL MVP Jose Altuve on three straight 101 mph fastballs with two on to end the game, and the Yankees got a key hit from rookie Gleyber Torres during a three-run rally in the ninth inning.

The Yankees won a wild one to take three of four from the team that beat them in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series last October.

New York took a 3-0 lead into the seventh, trailed 5-3 going into the ninth and let a bounced third strike give the Astros their final chance.

Evan Gattis fanned but reached on Chapman’s two-out wild pitch, and George Springer followed with a single. Altuve went down swinging, giving Chapman his seventh save.

Chasen Shreve (1-0) got the last two outs of the eighth for the win. Will Harris (1-2) got the loss.

NATIONALS 3, PIRATES 1

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trea Turner and Ryan Zimmerman homered in the sixth inning, helping Washington complete a four-game series sweep.

Jeremy Hellickson and four relievers combined on a five-hitter for Washington, which has won a season-high five in a row.

Sammy Solis (1-1) retired the only batter he faced, ending the sixth to keep the game scoreless. Sean Doolittle recorded the last five outs for his sixth save.

Pittsburgh’s Trevor Williams (4-2) allowed only two runners over the first five innings. Wilmer Difo led off with a single, and after Bryce Harper flied out, Turner hit his second home run of the season.

Two batters later, Zimmerman connected for his fifth homer.

BRAVES 11, METS 0

NEW YORK (AP) — Julio Teheran took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning, 20-year-old Ronald Acuna Jr. hit his second big league home run and Atlanta finished a three-game sweep that vaulted the young Braves into the NL East lead.

May 4, 2018 Page 33 of 56

Kurt Suzuki, Acuna and Nick Markakis homered as Atlanta built a 6-0 lead against Jason Vargas (0-2), and 21-year-old Ozzie Albies went deep off an equally shaky Matt Harvey.

The Braves opened a 1 1/2-game division lead, the latest in a season they have been in first place since July 20, 2014.

Teheran (2-1) was virtually untouchable until Asdrubal Cabrera doubled down the right field line with two outs in the seventh.

DODGERS 5, DIAMONDBACKS 2

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona reliever Jorge De La Rosa threw a pair of run-scoring wild pitches during an eighth-inning rally that sent the Dodgers to the victory.

The Dodgers scored four times in the eighth and handed Arizona its first two-game losing streak this year. The four-game split ended the Diamondbacks’ string of nine straight series victories to start the season.

J.T. Chargois (1-0) pitched a scoreless seventh to get the victory. Kenley Jansen earned his fifth save with a perfect ninth.

Fernando Salas (3-2) got the loss.

BLUE JAYS 13, INDIANS 11, 11 INNINGS, GAME 1

INDIANS 13, BLUE JAYS 4, GAME 2

CLEVELAND (AP) — Jose Ramirez hit a two-run homer and Adam Plutko won his first major league start as Cleveland split an extra-long doubleheader with Toronto.

The victory in the second game was No. 1,500 for Terry Francona, who became the 24th manager to reach the milestone.

Erik Gonzalez had four RBIs for Cleveland. Plutko (1-0) allowing three runs — all on homers — and six hits in 7 1/3 innings.

Blue Jays right-hander Joe Biagini (0-1) was tagged for 10 hits and six runs in 4 1/3 innings.

In the opener, Toronto’s Yangervis Solarte hit his first career grand slam with two outs in the 11th inning. Solarte went 8 for 10 with seven RBIs in the doubleheader.

Tim Mayza (1-0), Toronto’s sixth reliever, pitched one inning for the win.

Francisco Lindor homered twice for the Indians. Tyler Olson (0-1) got the loss.

RANGERS 11, RED SOX 5

May 4, 2018 Page 34 of 56

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Nomar Mazara drove in five runs while homering in his third straight game, and the Rangers handed former AL Cy Young Award winner David Price his third loss in a row.

Mazara hit a two-run double off Price (2-4) in the third. He belted a towering three-run homer in the fourth as the first batter after Price was pulled from the game. Mazara’s sixth homer gave Texas a 10-3 lead.

Mookie Betts connected again for Boston in the third, his major league-leading 12th homer coming a day after he went deep three times at Fenway Park against Kansas City. Betts also had a two-run double and a sacrifice fly.

Mike Minor (3-1) worked six innings for the win.

WHITE SOX 6, TWINS 5

CHICAGO (AP) — Trayce Thompson homered with two out in the ninth, and the White Sox stopped a four-game slide.

Thompson connected against former White Sox reliever Addison Reed (0-2), driving a 3-1 pitch 403 feet to left. It was Thompson’s third homer in 43 at-bats this season and third game-ending shot of his career.

Chicago trailed 5-1 in the fourth inning. Nate Jones (2-0) got the win, retiring his only batter.

Logan Morrison went deep in his first three-hit game for the Twins.

ROYALS 10, TIGERS 6

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Lucas Duda had three hits and drove in four runs, leading Kansas City to the victory.

Salvador Perez, Jorge Soler and Alex Gordon homered for the Royals, who have quietly gotten on track offensively after a miserable start.

Kansas City pounded out 13 hits in all against Mike Fiers and the Tigers’ bullpen. Reliever Chad Bell (0-1) allowed five runs and five hits in 1 2/3 innings.

Eric Skoglund wasn’t much better on the mound for Kansas City, but Kyle McCarthy (3-0) wiggled out of a key sixth-inning jam before pitching a clean seventh to earn the victory in relief.

Detroit slugger Miguel Cabrera left with a strained hamstring in the sixth inning. He planned to test it on Friday.

May 4, 2018 Page 35 of 56

FROM CBS SPORTS

Pujols one shy of 3,000 as Angels face Mariners

Fans at Safeco Field won't get to see an Ichiro Suzuki-Shohei Ohtani showdown this weekend.

By STATS

Fans at Safeco Field won't get to see an Ichiro Suzuki-Shohei Ohtani showdown this weekend.

But they might get to see the Los Angeles Angels' Albert Pujols reach a career milestone.

The possibility of a Suzuki-Ohtani matchup ended Thursday, when the Seattle Mariners announced the

veteran outfielder from Japan will transition into a front-office role.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for (Suzuki)," Ohtani said in a statement released by the Angels.

"What he has done for this game, our country and the fans. I wish we could have played against him, but

it wasn't meant to be. Wish nothing but the best for him moving forward."

Ohtani, the two-way sensation, missed a pitching start Tuesday against Baltimore with a left ankle sprain

but has been in the batting lineup as the designated hitter. He's scheduled to throw a bullpen session

Friday. If all goes well, he could start the series finale Sunday in Seattle.

Pujols, who got his 2,999th career hit Thursday night against the Orioles, made his major league debut

on April 2, 2001, the same day as Suzuki. Pujols, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, was named the

National League Rookie of the Year that season, while Suzuki received the American League's award.

"Pretty special player to be able to do what he did in the States," Pujols said. "Don't forget about what

he did in Japan, those years that he played there. Pretty unbelievable. A better person than a player.

Great human being. Let's see what he's going to do next. I don't think he's done yet. He might be done

for this year, but I think he might have a second shot coming up next year."

Indeed, the 44-year-old Suzuki insisted he's not retiring.

"When I start using a cane, that's the time that I think I should retire," Suzuki said.

The Mariners open next season in Tokyo against Oakland, with expanded 28-man rosters allowed for the

two-game international series.

It wouldn't be a surprise to see Suzuki suited up for those games, but he seems at peace with whatever

happens.

May 4, 2018 Page 36 of 56

"The past two months have been the happiest I've been," he said. "I knew the day would come when I

would have to walk away. But the Mariners have given me this opportunity to stay on. Obviously with

my teammates and how great they've been and how much they mean to me and how much I want to

help is the reason I wanted to stay on and help in any way I can."

Suzuki will be a special assistant adviser for the Mariners, although he still took part in batting practice

Thursday.

"This doesn't close the door on Ichiro's playing career, I'd like to make that clear," Mariners general

manager Jerry Dipoto said. "We intend that whenever is the appropriate time for Ichiro to retire, that

that will happen as a Mariner. But we don't think we're at that point yet either."

Friday night's series opener will feature Angels right-hander Garrett Richards (3-1, 4.88 ERA) going

against Mariners right-hander Mike Leake (3-2, 6.48). Richards is 5-4 with a 3.15 ERA in 18 career

appearances (10 starts) against the Mariners. Leake is 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA in two career starts against

the Angels.

FROM YAHOO! SPORTS

Ichiro leaves as next Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani arrives

By Tim Brown

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Here, where he’d arrived after nine seasons (and nearly 1,300 hits) in Japan, hardly

anyone had seen someone hit a baseball like Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki did. Not as in

where it landed, though more of the balls he hit were brilliantly placed or, perhaps, depending on one’s

perspective, maddeningly placed. But the manner in which he got the bat to the ball, his body half in the

batter’s box and half out, his hands the last to go, the last to leave, everything else hell-bent for first

base.

You thought it was odd.

“Of course you did,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said Thursday night, on the occasion of Ichiro’s –

what? – retirement? Sabbatical? Promotion? “Everybody did.”

Then an Arizona Diamondback, Showalter had visited Japan to see this reputedly wonderful player who

would become an American sensation, returned and reported, “He was bigger than Michael Jordan over

there. I came back and told people here and they didn’t believe it.”

May 4, 2018 Page 37 of 56

Turned out, Ichiro would be about that size wherever he played, slender as he was, belt loops drawn

and cinched well over his hips, right jersey sleeve plucked just so. He’d coil over his left leg, load up back

there, gather those 170-or-so pounds and slash away, his spindly legs leading the jail break.

“Pretty unique,” said Albert Pujols, himself one hit shy of 3,000 and 90 behind Ichiro. “Coming from

Japan, those guys really have a good technique.

“The best thing they do, they keep their hands back. That’s a huge part of hitting.”

He admitted upon seeing Ichiro for the first time, in 2001, he’d mused, “I don’t know if it’s going to work

out.”

Ichiro had 242 hits that year as the American League’s Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

Two-hundred-and-eight the next. Then 212. Then a record 262, all on his way to 10 consecutive seasons

of at least 206 hits. He hit the way he did, the special way he did. They pitched him away and played him

away, and that didn’t work, as there was hardly a shortstop in the league who could throw him out from

the hole. So they pitched him in, and he’d beat them there. Hell, his swing was made for that.

Or, he’d bunt. And the opposing manager would push his cap back on his head.

“Really,” Showalter thought the first time he saw that, “he’s going to do that too?”

Ichiro would have what amounted to two Hall of Fame careers, one in Japan, where he batted .353 over

nine seasons, and one here, where he accumulated 3,089 hits and a .311 average and 509 steals and All-

Star Game appearances and Gold Gloves and the adoration of U.S. baseball fans who’d hardly seen

anything quite like him. He could run and throw and, every once in a while, some say only when he

really wanted to, he’d pop one of his 117 home runs.

So, of course it was odd when Thursday the Seattle Mariners, Ichiro’s ballclub for 1,859 of his 2,651

major league games, announced Ichiro would be taken off the roster, would be added to the front

office, and would not be retiring. Because Ichiro always was charmingly odd, from his game to his outfits

to his out-there personality to his promise he would play until he was 50, still six years to come.

“Let’s see what he does next,” Pujols said. “I don’t think he’s done yet. Maybe he’ll play into his 60’s. Get

him a wheelchair.

“This was a guy who was probably Mike Trout in ’01 and ’02. Everybody stopped what they were doing

to see him. … As soon as he retires, he’s going to be a legend. And a future Hall of Famer, too.”

He has, at 44, reached the point many reach as much as a decade sooner. But, still, a .205 hitter in a

part-time gig back in Seattle. He leaves (temporarily, perhaps) as the next Japanese sensation – Shohei

Ohtani – arrives, which is the way things go sometimes. Ohtani was 6 when Ichiro registered his first big-

May 4, 2018 Page 38 of 56

league hit. The Angels and Ohtani, who, while longer and thicker than Ichiro, possesses many of the

same batter’s box mannerisms, are to arrive in Seattle on Friday.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for him,” Ohtani said in a statement. “What he has done for this

game, our country and the fans. I wish we could have played against him, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Wish nothing but the best for him moving forward.”

Somewhere along the way, before they’d both grayed some, Pujols and Ichiro stood together at a first

base somewhere. Pujols complimented Ichiro on another fine season. That swing really was working.

Pujols recalled Ichiro smiled and responded, in Spanish, “Really lucky.”

And that would make all of us.

FROM ESPN.COM

Radical Ideas Series: What if MLB teams could bid for more home games?

By Sam Miller

Welcome to the third and final installment of the Radical Ideas Series, in which we "fix" baseball not

merely by limiting mound visits or even instituting pitch clocks but by revolutionizing the game's

competitive structure with way-out-there -- yet at least vaguely plausible -- changes.

Our goal isn't (necessarily) for these ideas to land on MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's desk. Instead,

they're intended to stir conversation about the state of the sport -- and what would happen if ...

In late August, the A's flew 400 miles south to play three midweek games against the Angels. The set

drew some of the smallest home crowds in Anaheim last season, but still, it was a pretty good haul:

More than 100,000 paying customers saw the Angels sweep the A's.

A week later, the Angels flew to Oakland. That midweek set drew crowds of 14,571, 11,110 and 10,544 -

- four fewer fans combined than the Angels had drawn the previous Tuesday night. There are plenty of

reasons for the difference: The hosting A's were out of postseason contention, while the hosting Angels

were in a race for the wild card; the Angels draw from more than double the metropolitan area the A's

do; the Angels had a more famous roster, including the best player in baseball; the Angels were more

likely to win; the Angels have a more comfortable ballpark; and the Angels hadn't alienated their fans by

trading many of their stars away. Lots of good reasons why three late-season games would be worth

more to a huge group of Angels fans than to a smaller group of A's fans.

May 4, 2018 Page 39 of 56

We might not think of live baseball games as a scarce resource -- there seem, to be infinity of them --

but of course, they are. They're costly to produce, and there are limits on the weather, the labor, the

public's attention, and so on. Major League Baseball gets to put on 2,430 games per year. If they played

one of them in Kalispell, Montana, they'd sell some tickets and some happy fans would get to see it, but

at the cost of selling many more tickets to many more happy fans in some larger city. So they play them

in Anaheim instead.

Three baseball games between the Oakland A's and the Los Angeles Angels are worth millions of dollars.

At $30 per head -- the average ticket price* at Angel Stadium -- the world has demonstrated a

willingness to spend at least $3.1 million on these three games, of which about half will end up going

back to the labor force.

But these three games were "worth" only about $870,000 to the world when they were held in Oakland,

in September, in the middle of the week. It's not playing games in Kalispell, to be sure, but those are

three games from MLB's 2,430 limited stock, shipped to a market where not that many people wanted

them.

Professional sports might be the only privately owned industry in the world that ships exactly as much

product to every market, regardless of how much actual demand there is for the product, and regardless

of how much of the product goes unused. Baseball is, in my opinion, pretty close to a public utility, and

in a decent world every person who wants baseball games should be within reasonable distance of some

of them. But even public utilities are smart enough to know every metro area doesn't get exactly the

same amount of anything; the Northeast needs more natural gas than Miami, and Los Angeles needs

more trash pickup than Barstow. Baseball is weird like that, and I think we can fix it.

Our idea to fix it

Teams can bid for home-field advantage.

How it would work

The simplest concept is probably the best: Each team gets 81 scheduled home games a year, as they do

now. But they are permitted to sell hosting privileges, for whatever price they can squeeze out of their

opponents, up to -- let's say -- two weeks before the game is scheduled to be played. The Rays -- who

draw 15,000 fans per game, generating roughly $350,000 in ticket sales -- might find an eager buyer in

the Blue Jays, who draw 40,000 fans per game and generate a little more than $1 million in ticket sales.

Any number of variables would affect the price. The Yankees, for instance, are a very powerful draw on

the road, so they would likely have to pay more to buy out another team. But they also draw huge

crowds at home, at higher average ticket prices, so they'd probably be willing to pay more for home

field. They'd also probably put a higher value on the competitive advantage of having home field,

because they're competing for a playoff spot. If a scheduled series in Tampa Bay comes immediately

May 4, 2018 Page 40 of 56

after one in Toronto or Boston or at home, the Yankees might pay extra to avoid the travel; if it's in early

April, when the weather is junk in the Northeast, maybe they pay a lot less. If the Yankees are out of the

pennant race in August but the Rays are in the thick of it, maybe the price goes way, way up -- maybe

the Rays start buying games from the Yankees. And so on. And so forth. Intrigue aplenty.

Needless to say, teams would no longer play "balanced" schedules of 81 home games and 81 road. This

seems unfair, at first glance. The Yankees and Dodgers spend four times as much a year on player

salaries as the Rays and A's. We passed "unfair" a long, long time ago. This might help fix it.

Two reasons it works

1. It's, well, a lot more money for the sport of baseball. A game at Wrigley Field is something like four

times more valuable, economically, than a game at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, and Fenway produces six

times more ticket revenue per game than Tropicana Field in St. Pete. Let's just say that the teams in the

bottom third of ticket revenue sell 20 percent of their home dates, and that the teams in the top third

buy 20 percent more home games. Nothing else changes, just 160 out of 2,430 games switching to fuller

ballparks. If those games draw what the average game in each park draws, that's about 2.5 million more

tickets sold per year, and about $165 million more ticket revenue -- just ticket revenue; concessions and

parking and so on all excluded -- in the industry.

Further, we could speculate the total gain is bigger, because the "selling" teams wouldn't actually lose

many fans at all. Do Padres fans go to a May 13 game against the Cardinals because it's on May 13

against the Cardinals, or do they go because they like to go to a few games each season and that was

one of the many options? If that option were gone, wouldn't they just go May 14 against the Rockies, or

May 8 against the Nationals, or July 27 against the Diamondbacks? These teams might not lose much

total revenue at all, while the buying teams would, truly, gain by increasing capacity.

I'm not trying to wrap this into a "baseball is dying" premise; baseball is healthy, and whether owners

get a little healthier or not isn't an existential concern for the sport or for me. But more revenue means

more money for players, which seems good, because they're being asked to do the work anyway and

because athletes have vanishingly short windows to make their fortunes. And more fans who want to go

to baseball games would be getting the chance to. A lot of those new tickets would, presumably, be sold

to fans who want to go to more Cubs games but Cubs games sell out, or more Cardinals games but the

good seats all sell out, or more Red Sox games but (because of scarcity) the tickets are just too

expensive. When lines are too long, when popular products are sold out, when pricing is driven up by

lack of supply, it's bad for customers. Like you!

2. It would give small-market teams a resource they could use to be more competitive.

Home teams in the majors win about 53.7 percent of their games. Turning a road game into a home

game, then, is worth about 7 percent of a win. Teams pay a lot on the free-agent market for an expected

May 4, 2018 Page 41 of 56

additional win -- around $10 million these days. So, in addition to wanting home games for the revenue,

richer teams would want home games for the competitive advantage.

Which is good for small-market teams, because one thing small-market teams have a lot of is home

games. Just by having 81 games scheduled at home, they control the WAR equivalent of a Manny

Machado. We're just freeing them up to use it however they want.

Is it shallow to treat home games as an asset to be swapped for something more valuable to the team?

Is it unfair to let rich teams buy competitive advantages like this? Is it disloyal to a team's city to pare

back its home schedule?

I ... am still pondering that. But we generally agree it's not shallow to treat Manny Machado as an asset

to be swapped for something more valuable to the team, or to let rich teams buy competitive

advantages like Manny Machado, and that (within reason) it's not disloyal to a team's city to trade away

its Manny Machado. Or, if it is, it's all a fair and acceptable part of the competitive struggle.

What seems moderately unfair is to tell a small-market team, struggling against a ludicrously

unbalanced financial landscape, that it isn't allowed to get the most possible value out of its few

significant assets. The Reds are 7-24 this season; they were barely trying when the season began, and

they'll tear down as the year goes on. They'll host the Giants on Aug. 17, 18 and 19. It'll be hot and

sticky, and they'll draw 12,000 per game, make a million bucks or so. Whether they win or lose those

games will be almost entirely irrelevant to their long-term strategy, their objectives for 2018, and their

fans. The system is already crass and uncompetitive.

It's not unreasonable to think the Giants, if they're in a pennant race, would pay $10 million to host that

three-game set and draw 120,000 fans. Could you really tell the Reds $10 million wouldn't help them get

competitive sooner than hosting those three games?

Two reasons it might not work

1. Aug. 19 is Kids Fathead Wall Decal Day in Cincinnati. What are they going to do with all those wall

decals?

Truly, though, making a 2,430-game schedule is already a logistical nightmare, and this would turn

everything into a logistical hellscape I'm mostly going to handwave away. But the one thing I won't

handwave away, and that guarantees this probably never gets through collective bargaining, is that the

travel demands -- unexpected travel, longer-than-usual travel -- would be brutal for players. We might

be two or three big advances in air travel away from this idea being humane.

2. Now, we do have some precedents for this concept. In college sports, for example, nonconference

games are generally scheduled by the schools themselves -- they decide who they play, where they play

and how revenue is split. It leads to somecrass outcomes, as I understand it, but it basically works (as I

May 4, 2018 Page 42 of 56

understand it). And in baseball, with lousy attendance in Montreal, the 2003 and 2004 Expos played a

quarter of their games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There were differences -- the other 29 teams owned the

Expos at the time, and the Expos weren't selling home-field advantage so much as sacrificing it -- but the

scheme at the very least rhymed with this one: A team whose fans weren't buying tickets found fans

who would, sacrificing home-field edge to do so.

But that said: Until you see something in action, it can be hard to gauge the Yuck factor. This plan could

definitely end up making us all say Yuck. I'd like to think a rebuilding team might sell a few home games,

use the money to sign good players and feed their minor leaguers better lunches. But there's the very

real chance instead that some, say, South Florida-based ownership group would sell all their games and

spend all the money on shoes. It feels almost paternalistic to say this, but in the tanking era, it might be

a bad idea to give teams more ideas about what they can sell off.

However, if we believe teams are rational actors and just want to run good businesses and make good

baseball teams, this would give them another tool to use. Or to not use at all. They'd get to decide.

But why?

I have only one economic principle: If one person values something much more than another person

does, there should be a way to get that thing in the hands that value it most. Any system that can't

manage this is a broken system, a failed process, a waste of the store of human happiness.

I think the Rays value the Yankees' loose change more than the Yankees do. I think the Yankees want to

host baseball games more than the Rays do. This idea might be a disaster in implementation, but there's

a business and a league running at about 80 percent efficiency right now, costing players money, costing

fans access, and costing small-market teams a valuable resource. Letting teams negotiate might be the

solution.

FROM KYODO NEWS

Baseball: Shohei Ohtani gets 2 hits as Angels sweep Orioles

Shohei Ohtani singled twice in his fifth multi-hit game of the season in the Los Angeles Angels' 12-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday.

Ohtani, who was named American League Rookie of the Month on Wednesday, batted fifth and went 2-for-3 at Angel Stadium. He also scored a run as the Angels completed a three-game sweep.

In a five-run first, he hammered a long RBI single off right-hander Chris Tillman (1-5) for the Angels' third run.

May 4, 2018 Page 43 of 56

After walking in his second plate appearance and scoring on Luis Valbuena's hit to make the game 12-0 in the fourth, the speedy Ohtani singled on a ground ball to shortstop in the sixth.

"I drew a walk and my hits were good ones, so overall I think everything went well today," Ohtani said.

The Orioles had a two-run sixth with RBI singles by Manny Machado and Chris Davis off right-hander Jaime Barria (2-1) in the sixth, before adding another run in the eighth. It was not enough to stop Los Angeles from improving to 19-12 for the season.

Ohtani is likely to take the mound on Sunday in a three-game series against the Seattle Mariners but will miss his chance to pitch to fellow Japanese star and Mariners' veteran outfielder Ichiro Suzuki for the first time.

Seattle announced that the 44-year-old is transitioning to the role of special assistant to the chairman of the ball club and will not be playing again in the 2018 season.

"I respect him for his contribution to baseball, his fans and to our country," Ohtani said. "It would be best to be able to play against him, but I hope he does his best (in his new role)."

At Minute Maid Park, right-hander Masahiro Tanaka gave up three runs on five hits but did not figure in the decision as the New York Yankees rallied late to beat the Houston Astros 6-5.

In his seventh start of the season, Tanaka struck out five and did not issue a walk over six-plus innings. He went into the seventh leading 3-0 but gave up back-to-back soft singles off good pitches to open the inning and grazed the next batter with his first pitch. Tanaka was pulled after throwing 83 pitches, 60 for strikes, and all three runners he left on scored.

"Coming out of the game in that way was the worst," Tanaka said. "Some of what happened in the seventh was good hitting on their part. Still, allowing those guys on base was my downfall. There are still areas where I'm still not good enough."

The Yankees entered the ninth trailing 5-3, but came back with a three-run inning. Gleyber Torres hit a game-tying, two-run single, before Aaron Judge scored on a fielder's choice to give the visitors their 21st win of the season.

FROM LARRY BROWN SPORTS

Shohei Ohtani disappointed he will not play against Ichiro

By Gordon Dixon

Ichiro Suzuki announcing on Thursday that he will no longer play for the Seattle Mariners comes as a disappointment to Shohei Ohtani.

May 4, 2018 Page 44 of 56

Ohtani’s Los Angeles Angels finished up their series with the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday and head to Seattle for three games against the Mariners. Initially, the series was shaping up to feature two of the most popular players to leave Japan for the United States. That, however, will no longer be the case.

The Mariners announced Ichiro will transition to a new role within the organization and not return to the playing roster. In the wake of the development, Ohtani spoke about his respect for Ichiro.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for him,” Ohtani said in a statement. “What he has done for this game, our country and the fans. I wish we could have played against him, but it wasn’t meant to be. Wish nothing but the best for him moving forward.”

Ichiro will go down as one of greatest hitters in major league history. He compiled over 3,000 hits despite making his MLB debut at 27 years old. Ohtani was originally scheduled to start this past Tuesday’s game against Baltimore, but an ankle injury forced him to miss that game. There’s optimism Ohtani would be able to take the mound on Sunday for the series finale.

What could have been a fun and festive scene in Seattle will unfortunately not materialize. Ohtani has captured the attention of baseball fans across the country during his first season, just as Ichiro did in 2001. Ichiro won the American League Rookie of the Year and MVP Awards that season. Ohtani may not reach those heights, but he has more than lived up to the hype so far.

FROM SPORTING NEWS

3,000-hit club: Albert Pujols’ Cardinals career remembered, detailed by Tony La

Russa

By Ryan Fagan

By the time Albert Pujols left St. Louis to sign a free-agent contract with the Angels in January 2012, the

slugger’s Hall of Fame credentials were already locked in.

In his 11 years with the Cardinals, Pujols hit .328 with a 1.037 OPS and 445 home runs in 1,705 games.

He averaged 40 homers, 41 doubles, 121 RBIs and 117 runs scored in a St. Louis uniform. He won three

NL MVP awards — and had seven other top-five finishes, including second four times — and helped lead

his team to two World Series titles. He was the best hitter in baseball.

He hasn’t been the same hitter in Anaheim. Age is relentless. Injuries have hurt. He’s averaged 27 home

runs the past two years, but he’s not the same consistently excellent hitter in the box as he’s

approached and passed some of baseball’s milestone numbers. He hit home runs No. 500 and 600 in an

Angels uniform, and he's on the doorstep of collecting hit No. 3,000.

May 4, 2018 Page 45 of 56

Tony La Russa knows the greatness of Albert Pujols better than anyone else in baseball. He was Pujols’

manager in St. Louis all 11 seasons, and La Russa — who is with Boston’s front office now as a vice

president/special assistant to president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski — took a few minutes

last week to talk with Sporting News about the future Hall of Famer.

SPORTING NEWS: Knowing the player he is, seeing him from the very start of his career, and knowing

the place, for better or worse, that numbers have in baseball history, is it cool for you to watch him

close in on 3,000 hits after already getting to 600 home runs?

LA RUSSA: Oh yes. I wish he never would get hurt, and I’m sure Arte Moreno and Mike Scioscia do, too,

but here he is, going in his 18th year, and the numbers he’s putting up will live on. There’s a couple

magic ones. To me, the most magical of all is the 3,000 hits. The RBI total, the home runs, all that’s going

to be very important. But you’ve got to be a great hitter to get 3,000 hits if you’re a singles hitter. And

you think about the power production he also had with it, that’s why I say he’s in the conversation with

the greatest of all time.

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: There are 31 members of the 3,000-hit club in MLB history; aside from Pujols, Hank

Aaron is the only other player with at least 600 home runs and 600 doubles. Pujols has 620 homers, 625

doubles (Barry Bonds tops 600 in both categories but he finished 65 hits shy of 3,000).

SPORTING NEWS: Let’s go back to the beginning. As the story goes, when he was a rookie, Pujols made

the club out of spring training in 2001 because Bobby Bonilla got hurt late that spring, and that opened a

spot at third base for Albert. But I imagine you guys all knew a player like Pujols was going to be a star

no matter when he arrived, right?

LA RUSSA: Just the other day, I talked with somebody about that and cleared that up. Bobby Bonilla’s

injury made it easier, but Albert’s spring was so impressive that he was going to make the team anyway.

You just couldn’t keep him off of it. The only criteria that Walt Jocketty said at that point was, "Look, we

all know he’s got a great future. You can take him on the club if there’s enough at-bats for him to get

work. But if he’s going to be a bench player, he’s going to be better off developing in Triple-A." I thought

there would be a way, because he was so versatile and played so many positions, so the way we left it

was that we’d start the season like that and at some point, after a couple weeks, Walt could say, "Look,

he’s not getting enough work. We’ve got to send him out." But he wanted to give us a chance to keep

him busy. And Bobby’s injury helped a little bit, but Bobby was going to be a pinch-hitter deluxe, just

give him enough work to keep his pinch-hitting skills sharp, maybe start him a game a week or

something. The truth is, Albert did make the team with that qualification.

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: Pujols hit .370 with a 1.171 OPS, eight home runs, eight doubles and 27 RBIs in that

first month in the bigs, April 2001. He played all 24 of the Cardinals’ games that April, and he started

games at third base, first base, left field and right field.

May 4, 2018 Page 46 of 56

SPORTING NEWS: He played for you for such a long time. Did it ever stop surprising you how good he

was, how hard he hit the ball and how often he squared up good pitches?

LA RUSSA: One thing I was taught, and I was fortunate enough to have many opportunities to practice it,

was this: Never forget how hard it is to do anything in the major leagues at a really high level, whether

it’s a starting pitcher or a closer or a great defender or a great hitter. Never, ever take it for granted.

Never, ever not respect every day a player does it. In Albert’s case, the fact that every season for 11

seasons in St. Louis, and he’s still doing it now in his seventh season with Anaheim, he would come to

spring training to make the club. He wasn’t going to do anything less than he had done before, and he

was going to do more, because he was smarter. Experience taught him. That was one point.

The second one was, in our game, the way it is now, there are so many distractions for a player,

especially if you want to get personal and build your brand and play for statistics so you can make more

money. Albert never, ever changed from his first at-bat he took that spring training to, I think, the last

at-bat he’ll take his whole career. He played the game, as an offensive player, by the scoreboard. He

looked, every at-bat, and see what the score was. If he was leading off the inning, he’d try to get on

base. If there was a guy on base ahead of him, he’d try to move him around. And if there was a chance

for an RBI, he’d try to drive in the run. If he thought we needed the long ball, he might take a swing or

two, but as you can see from his amazing string of years without striking out 100 times, he knows how

to put the ball in play. I think, to me, that marks him in the conversation with the greatest of all time.

That’s the way they played, and he adopted that same attitude.

Once he started making money, he could have gotten distracted, been egotistical, thought, ‘I’ve got to

make more money’ but he takes that same approach every day, every inning of every game. That is so

amazingly outstanding in today’s baseball. We all admired him so much in St. Louis, and we benefitted

from it, too, by the way.

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: La Russa’s Cardinals definitely benefitted. In Pujols’ 11 seasons in St. Louis, the

Cardinals made the playoffs seven times and won two World Series titles. Pujols finished his time with

the Cardinals with a .328/.420/.617 slash line and 86.6 rWAR in the regular season. During the

postseason, he produced a .330/.439/.607 slash line for the Cardinals, with 18 homers and 52 RBIs in 74

games.

To La Russa’s mention about the strikeouts: Pujols struck out 93 times as a rookie, and then never more

than 76 times his next 10 seasons in St. Louis. He hasn’t topped 100 strikeouts with the Angels, either.

SPORTING NEWS: You mention him in the conversation about the greatest players of all time. With his

statistics, his similarity numbers, his consistently amazing seasons, he’s there with guys like Joe

DiMaggio and Ted Williams. Where do you put him among the players that you’ve watched?

LA RUSSA: One of the things I learned, and I’m religious about it, I learned never to disrespect other

hitters, other pitchers, other generations. The impossibility of seriously ranking who is first, second,

May 4, 2018 Page 47 of 56

third, it’s impossible and disrespectful. To me, you put Albert in the conversation with the greatest

baseball players — and I mean overall, because of what he was as a defensive player, a base runner and

a teammate, cheerleading and as a leader — I put him in the conversation about the greatest ballplayers

of all time, without having to say “He’s better than this guy or not better than this other guy.”

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: This was the quick conversation La Russa finished his answer …

Me: “Nice. I like that approach.”

Him: “That was actually Reggie who taught me that. Reggie Jackson taught me.”

Me: “Really?”

Him: “Yeah. I thought, that’s great.”

Me: “That is awesome. And now I’ll people that you told me that.”

Him: “Well, give Reggie the credit.”

Me: “I will, for sure.”

SPORTING NEWS: Do you think maybe some of the younger generation of fans who are watching him

now with the Angels maybe don’t appreciate what he was for those first 11 years with St. Louis?

LA RUSSA: Generally, there’s such a lack of history among players coming into baseball, I don’t really

think they have much of a clue about his greatness. I think the Latin American players definitely

understand it. The problem is, and actually one of the things about his greatness, is that Albert could

play hurt. He could have a bad elbow, like he did in 2008, and still hit but be careful throwing. He could

play with a bad ankle. He would get hit and they’d say he’d be out two weeks and he’d be back in eight

days.

The point it, for too many games since he’s been an Angel, he’s been less than himself, from his waist to

the ground, whether it’s his ankles and his feet. His stats have been respectable, because he can hit one-

legged, but when he’s really had both his legs beneath him, he’s still a great hitter. He did that every day

for those 11 years. He’s just really gotten beat up the last seven years.

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: Pujols has only missed more than 13 games in a season once in his career — he

played 99 for the Angels before tearing a ligament in his foot in 2013 — but what's felt like a thousand

smaller, nagging injuries especially with his feet have made him, essentially, a designated hitter the past

few seasons. He only started more than 100 games twice in his first six seasons in Anaheim.

SPORTING NEWS: I’m sure you’ve talked about Albert so much in your life, and you spent so much time

with him. Do you have a favorite Albert Pujols story or two?

LA RUSSA: There’s one off the field you’ve got to mention. I don’t know anybody — and there may be

other guys, I just don’t know any — but I don’t know many other guys who have dedicated so much

time, even during the season but especially the offseason, to giving back to causes. He and DeeDee are

remarkable that way.

May 4, 2018 Page 48 of 56

But as far as the playing of the game, he did so many things, but a couple I think show you where his

mind was. We talked about his leadership during the game, his cheerleading. He was rarely 0 for 4 going

into the eighth or ninth inning, so it didn’t happen often, but he could be having a tough day and if the

game was close, he was on the top step cheerleading. He wasn’t in the corner moping or concerned or

in there watching himself on video. He was on the top step cheerleading, and if somebody did

something good, the elation on his face was sincere. That’s why he was beloved by his teammates.

The other thing was his willingness to do whatever the scoreboard demanded. A number of times, I did

hit and run with him, because he could handle the bat so well. Sometimes, just putting the ball in play

and having the runner in motion, there’s a play for it. When you do that, by definition, you’re making

the guy swing. If a guy’s being very selfish about his at-bat, he might give you that look that says why?

But he would come up to me often and say, "Jefe" — he called me Jefe — "you want me to hit-and-run

this at-bat?" And I’d look at him and think, "This guy’s so beautiful. How lucky can I be as a manger and

us as an organization to have stumbled on him — well, not really stumbled but gotten him late in the

draft — for this guy to join us and be what he is? For him to come in there and be willing to do that?" If

the guy was on second base, he may get him over with a base hit, but he wasn’t worried about his stats.

He was worried about playing the game correctly. That’s the greatness of Albert.

FOLLOW-UP NOTE: The interview was done. I told La Russa that I really appreciated his insight and

thanked him for reminiscing with me about Pujols.

“My pleasure,” La Russa said, “I enjoy talking about him.”

That, I thought to myself, was pretty obvious.

FROM FANGRAPHS

Albert Pujols and the Crawl to 3,000 Hits

By Jay Jaffe

Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Alex Rodriguez: at some point soon, Albert Pujols will join this exclusive

company, the list of players who have attained both the 3,000-hit and 600-home-run milestones. With a

home run and a double off Dylan Bundy on Wednesday night, the 38-year-old slugger is at 2,998 hits

after collecting just four in his previous seven games. His mid-April hot streak, such as it was, is a

memory.

Baseball’s major milestones and records are supposed to be opportunities to celebrate careers, the

totality of a player’s accomplishments, the road he took along the way, and the connection to history.

But as they tip their caps, too often they remind us that the man we’re cheering is far from the player he

May 4, 2018 Page 49 of 56

once was. In Pujols’ case, the difference is particularly striking, as it’s almost impossible to fathom the

gap between “the best player of this young millennium” and “the worst regular in the majors,” or how a

single player might hold both titles at the same time. Any honest reckoning with his career, however,

will take us to this uncomfortable place.

The Pujols who earned the first of those titles is the one we’ll be celebrating when hit number 3,000

drops. That guy — a powerful but bad-bodied 13th-round 1999 pick out of Maple Woods Community

College who rocketed three levels in his lone minor league season and was in the majors by 2001 — is

the stuff of legend. Pujols’ All-Star and unanimous NL Rookie of the Year-winning debut (.329/.403/.610,

37 HR, 130 RBI) began an amazing 11-year run during which he hit a combined .328/.420/.617 while

averaging 40 homers, 121 RBIs and 7.4 WAR, made nine All-Star teams, won three MVP awards and a

batting title, with 19 top-three slash-stat finishes. In 2006, -08 and, -09, he led the league in slugging

percentage, wRC+,and WAR. His 81.4 WAR for that span was 27.1 more than the next-highest total,

Bonds’ 54.3, and his 167 wRC+ trailed only Bonds’ 208, over more than double the plate appearances.

On a rate-stat or prorated basis, Bonds did have more value during the period the two players

overlapped, but beyond the video-game stats he put up from 2001 to -04, he didn’t have much value

outside the batter’s box, producing just 7.1 WAR from 2005 to -07, his age-40 to -42 seasons.

Pujols’ remarkable consistency with the bat during that 11-year run was bolstered by defense that

probably should have earned him more than the two Gold Gloves he won. His +61 UZR at first base from

2003 (when the metric was introduced) through 2011 was 36 runs better than the second-ranked first

baseman, Todd Helton. And there’s the postseason. After helping the Cardinals to eight playoff berths,

three pennants, and two championships, he hit a combined .330/.439/.607 with 18 homers in 74

postseason games for St. Louis.

The champagne from the Cardinals’ 2011 championship had barely dried when the going-on-32-year-old

Pujols signed a 10-year, $254-million deal with the Angels, the second largest in baseball history. In

retrospect, the Cardinals dodged a bullet, for the Anaheim-based version of Pujols — who had set a

career low with 4.0 WAR in his final year in St. Louis — has never approached the brilliance of what

came before. After a more-solid-than-spectacular debut (.285/.343/.516, 30 HR, 133 wRC+, 3.3 WAR),

it’s been downhill. Aside from a 40-homer 2015 (with just 1.6 WAR), he’s never matched any of those

numbers in five full seasons, in part due to a long series of leg and foot injuries. After surgery to debride

his right knee in October 2012, he missed over two months with plantar fasciitis in his left foot in 2013,

managed just 0.5 WAR, and after rebounding to 2.7 WAR in 2014, his value declined in each subsequent

season. In 2017, he hit just .241/.286/.386 for a 78 wRC+, career worsts across the board. His -1.9 WAR

was the lowest mark among any position player and remains tied for the lowest in the majors by a

batting title qualifier since 2010.

As an Angel, Pujols has hit .261/.317/.458 for a 111 wRC+ and a net of 6.8 WAR in six seasons and

change, a performance dragged down by two signature flaws: a .255 BABIP and the erosion of his plate

discipline. The former is the third-lowest mark in the majors among players with at least 2,000 PA, 56

points lower than during his Cardinals tenure. In the latter case, his out-of-zone swing rate has jumped

May 4, 2018 Page 50 of 56

from 21.2% in St. Louis to 33.4% in Anaheim, including a cringeworthy 42.2% this year. While he was

said to have lost 13-15 pounds this past offseason in preparation for increased first-base duty, he’s

hitting .248/.266/.446, having raised his wRC+ 12 points (from 80 to 92) with his big night. Basically, he’s

been almost as bad as he was last year.

If Pujols were to walk away today instead of playing out the final three-plus seasons of his contract, his

legacy would be secure. Via my JAWS system, he ranks second among first basemen, trailing only Lou

Gehrig, whom he won’t catch. Via Baseball-Reference’s version, Gehrig had 112.4 career WAR and 67.7

for his seven-year peak en route to a JAWS of 90.1. Pujols has 99.5 career WAR, and 61.7 for his peak,

for a JAWS of 80.6. He’s 2.8 points ahead of third-place Jimmie Foxx, which means it would take another

-5.6 WAR (since JAWS is the average of career and peak totals) to slip into a tie. That can’t happen, can

it? That mess aside, Pujols’ only contemporaries with higher JAWS are Alex Rodriguez (117.8/64.3/91.0

in a big league career that began in 1994) and Bonds (162.8/72.7/117.8 in a career that began in 1986).

And unlike those two players, whose connections to performance-enhancing drugs have placed

significant roadblocks to entry to the Hall of Fame, Pujols has no such baggage.

That’s the good news, and if you simply want to enjoy the moment and celebrate Pujols’ milestone

when it arrives, you’re excused from reading further. You have until the end of this paragraph to make

up your mind.

Still here? The bad news is that, while we’ve seen players limp to the finish line in attaining milestones,

Pujols is arriving at 3,000 hits in worse shape than anyone who preceded him. Via FanGraphs WAR, he’s

at risk of becoming the only one of the 3,000 hit club’s 32 players to finish below replacement level both

in the season before he reached the milestone — normally, a signal to an aging veteran that it might be

time to hang up the ol’ spikes — and the one in which he attained it. Here are Pujols and those 31,

ranked by total WAR in those two seasons, in the second column from the right:

The Climb (or Crawl) to 3,000 Hits

Player Reached

3,000

WAR in

3,000

Season

WAR in

Previous Total After

Hank Aaron 1970 5.2 7.6 12.8 19.0

Tris Speaker 1925 6.4 4.4 10.8 8.7

Roberto Clemente 1972 4.0 6.5 10.5 x

Stan Musial 1958 4.0 6.1 10.1 9.6

Ty Cobb 1921 6.6 3.2 9.8 29.4

Eddie Collins 1925 4.7 4.9 9.6 6.1

Adrian Beltre 2017 3.1 5.6 8.7 0.5

May 4, 2018 Page 51 of 56

Willie Mays 1970 4.8 2.9 7.7 8.1

Pete Rose 1978 3.5 3.6 7.1 4.6

Honus Wagner 1914 3.5 3.0 6.5 8.7

Cap Anson* 1894 2.9 2.2 5.1 4.1

Carl Yastrzemski 1979 2.2 2.4 4.6 3.3

Nap Lajoie 1914 -0.2 4.7 4.5 0.7

Derek Jeter 2011 2.2 2.3 4.5 2.9

Cal Ripken Jr. 2000 1.3 2.9 4.2 -0.5

Dave Winfield 1993 0.3 3.8 4.1 -1.2

Paul Molitor 1996 2.5 1.0 3.5 -0.1

Alex Rodriguez 2015 2.7 0.6 3.3 -1.1

Tony Gwynn 1999 2.1 1.2 3.3 0.7

Paul Waner 1942 1.1 0.8 1.9 2.2

Eddie Murray 1995 2.6 -0.7 1.9 -1.2

Robin Yount 1992 0.9 0.6 1.5 1.7

Al Kaline 1974 0.8 0.6 1.4 x

Rod Carew 1985 0.1 1.0 1.1 x

Wade Boggs 1999 -0.4 1.4 1.0 x

Rickey Henderson 2001 0.4 0.5 0.9 0.7

George Brett 1992 0.3 0.3 0.6 -0.2

Ichiro Suzuki 2016 1.3 -0.8 0.5 -0.6

Craig Biggio 2007 -0.8 0.9 0.1 x

Rafael Palmeiro 2005 -0.2 0.2 0.0 x

Lou Brock 1979 0.8 -1.8 -1.0 x

Albert Pujols 2018 -0.1 -1.9 -2.0

*Anson’s arrival at 3,000 is based on including his 1871-75 seasons in the National Association, which

Baseball-Reference recognizes but MLB does not, and on statistics first corrected for Total Baseball. See

https://bit.ly/2ricUOg

That’s not a pretty picture at all. While Pujols certainly has ample time this year to climb back above

replacement level, he needs to reach 1.0 WAR by season’s end, something he hasn’t done since 2015,

May 4, 2018 Page 52 of 56

just to overtake Brock. Alternately, he could continue struggling and overtake Biggio for the lowest WAR

of any player in the season in which he collected his 3,000th hit.

The column to the far right shows the total WAR of each player in the seasons after collecting the

milestone. As you can see, seven of the above players, six of them among the lowest ranked, didn’t

return for a follow-up. Five retired, while Palmeiro, who was suspended for failing a PED test just a

couple weeks after reaching the milestone, was essentially chased away by an angry mob, and Clemente

tragically died in a plane crash that winter while delivering aid to earthquake-stricken Nicaragua. Eleven

others continued playing after 3,000 but delivered less than 1.0 WAR over the remainder of their

careers, though both Beltre and Suzuki are still active; the former will likely play his way out of that

group, but not the latter. Of the remaining players, some still had a good deal of value left, with Cobb

and Aaron, the former all-time hits and home-run leaders, respectively, running away from the pack.

The accounting, alas, is likely to get worse for Pujols, who appears destined to remind us that Father

Time remains undefeated. The slugger deserves all of the accolades he’ll receive upon reaching 3,000

hits, and all of the ones that will someday be cast in bronze on his Hall of Fame plaque. That said, his

performance and his contract have set the Angels back in recent years, and given the way his play could

threaten the team’s viability in a race for a postseason spot — something the Angels have attained just

once since he arrived — I think that manager Mike Scioscia, general manager Billy Eppler, and owner

Arte Moreno could be in for some difficult conversations in the coming months.

I’m not sure how to solve that problem, but Pujols and the Angels won’t be the last to face it. As a

devotee of baseball history, I understand the importance of milestones, even when they’re counting

things — hits, pitcher wins, even home runs — that we no longer value quite as highly as we once did,

and even when they’re reached by players whose value within the framework of our analytically minded

age has been diminished as well. Given the choice between celebrating and sitting on our hands, it’s

always better to go the former route (except in the press box, ahem), particularly when names like

Aaron and Mays are attached, and hey, those guys got old, too. So, congratulations in advance to Pujols.

Now please keep hitting.

FROM ADWEEK

Unmetric: Houston Astros, Los Angles Angels Rode Social Growth Surges in April

The New York Yankees remained atop Facebook, Twitter, Instagram in audience size

By David Cohen

May 4, 2018 Page 53 of 56

Success on the field translated into success on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in social marketing

firm Unmetric’s analysis of Major League Baseball teams across those three social networks in April.

The Houston Astros posted the most growth on Facebook, while the Los Angeles Angels did so on

Twitter and Instagram.

The Chicago Cubs had the most engagement on Facebook during the season’s inaugural month, while

the Cleveland Indians topped Twitter and Instagram was led by the New York Yankees.

Unmetric examined its cross-channel reports for all 30 MLB clubs from April 1 through 30, and it also

found that:

The Yankees maintained their hold on largest audience size across all three social networks.

The Los Angeles Dodgers were the most prolific Facebook posters, while the Boston Red Sox

hammered away at Twitter and the Oakland Athletics were behind the most Instagram posts for

the month.

The Cubs tallied the most Facebook likes and comments for April, while the Yankees were tops

on Twitter in both categories and Instagram was paced by the Dodgers, also in both categories.

May 4, 2018 Page 54 of 56

FROM ORANGE COUNTY BREEZE

At-risk youth treated to VIP Angels baseball experience for staying in school and

refusing to join a gang

May 4, 2018 Page 55 of 56

Approximately 2,000 at-risk youth will be treated like VIPs at the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (Angels)

game in reward for refusing to join a gang while improving school attendance and behavior. This special

event marks the 10th year in which students who rose to the challenge issued by Orange County Gang

Reduction and Intervention Partnership (OC GRIP). The OC GRIP kids attended a game, were greeted by

the players, watched the team warm up during batting practice, and received dinner. The name of each

school in attendance will be displayed on the Angel Vision JumboTron during the event. Angels players

Noé Ramirez and Justin Upton, as well as 3rd base coach Dino Ebel, mental conditioning coach Will

Lenzner, manager Mike Scioscia, and Angels broadcaster Jose Mota motivated the students with their

experiences.

Thanks to the generosity of the Angels, approximately 2,000 students in 4th through 8th grade

accompanied by roughly 100 teacher chaperones all attended the game for free. Due to the partnership

with law enforcement organizations, personnel from various departments were also in attendance to

congratulate the students on their accomplishments, including Orange County District Attorney Tony

Rackauckas.

“The GRIP kids who earned their attendance at this game showed their teachers and community every

day that they will work hard for the rewards they want in life,” said Rackauckas. “Many Angels players

had similar upbringings, and hearing their first-hand accounts has inspired GRIP students for 10 years

now. I especially want to thank Angels Vice President of Communications, Tim Mead, and the entire

Angels organization for helping to create such a memorable day for these kids.”

“The short and long-term results of this most impressive program should serve as a model for other

communities not only in our state, but across the country,” said Mead. “GRIP is a proactive concept that

makes a difference in the lives of youngsters at such a formative time in their lives. We are proud and

privileged to assist District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, Senior Assistant District Attorney Tracy Miller and

all those involved in this impactful effort.”

Students arrived at 3:00 p.m. and have early access to Angel Stadium, where they sat behind the dugout

and be greeted by Angels players and staff before the team stretch and warm up. The game began at

7:07 p.m. when the Angels faced the Baltimore Orioles.

Representatives from Saddleback Church entertained the students with games and prizes between

batting practice and the game. Participating law enforcement agencies included police departments in

the cities of Anaheim, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Orange, Placentia, and Santa

Ana, as well as the Santa Ana Unified School District Police, California State University Fullerton Police,

the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, Orange County Probation Department, and OCDA’s Bureau of

Investigation.

“We are pleased to see so many students meet the OC GRIP/Angels challenge by making good decisions

and demonstrating excellent behavior,” said Santa Ana Police Department Chief David Valentin. “The OC

GRIP/Angels baseball game incentive and this extraordinary partnership continues to demonstrate the

May 4, 2018 Page 56 of 56

power of the community and positive influence coming together to keep at-risk students out of gangs

and in school.”