Moore: We're focusing on the wrong numbers with Albert Pujols and Juan Soto

We’re talking about the wrong numbers again in baseball.

We should be discussing 42 and 23. Those are the bookend ages of the oldest Home Run Derby participant, Albert Pujols, and the second-youngest winner, Juan Soto.

Instead, too many of us are talking about $440 million, the size of a contract that Soto reportedly turned down from the Washington Nationals.

We’ve got to shift our focus or we’re going to miss the whole point.

Forget national pastime. Baseball is going to be some niche sport that only appeals to people who are elite enough to be involved.

Dented triple crown

I’m not particularly optimistic. I grew up in an era when ERA meant something. Today, experts give lectures on how that’s not the best statistic for measuring a pitcher’s value. Same thing with RBIs, as if clobbering the ball with a guy in scoring position would ever be something bad to count.

I remember when the triple crown was a surefire signal of baseball royalty, something to check the paper for every single day to see if this was finally the year somebody did what Carl Yastrzemski did way back in 1967. Did Gary Sheffield keep his homers up in ’92? Did Larry Walker match hits with Tony Gwynn in ’97? Would this finally be the year Pujols broke through?

He never did. And it’s just as well. When Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown in 2012, the baseball brain trust, the Cooperstown cognoscenti, the sports writing savants, made a case that Mike Trout should have been the MVP — as if the everyday fan knows what WAR is or how to calculate it.

For whatever reason, conversations about Pujols and numbers never seem to be any fun. It doesn't have to be that way.

Did you know that if Albert Pujols had retired after the 2019 season, he would have finished his career with 3,000 hits, 600 home runs and a .300 batting average? The only two other guys in the history of the sport to boast that stat line are Willie Mays and Henry Aaron.

Pujols is also the oldest guy to compete in a home run derby.

Of course, that’s no fun, either.

Tarnishing a golden age

A baseball executive, David Samson, who used to run the Marlins, said the quiet part out loud on a national radio show last year, suggesting that Pujols was lying about his age to seem younger. “There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Pujols is the age that he says he is. The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind.”

And, hey, if Samson is right, who could blame them? Pujols has earned about $350 million over his career. With money like that on the line, who wouldn’t show up for the first day of eighth grade with a deep voice and a full goatee? Amirite?

There’s a lot less than that on the line when teenagers compete in 12-and-under youth sports tournaments here in the states. And don’t get me started on the scandal where thousands of Chinese athletes were caught lying about their age to seem younger to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.

And what if it is true? What if Pujols is 45 or even 50?! Why not have some fun with that story, too?

Does anybody really know how old Satchel Paige was when he pitched for the Kansas City A’s in 1965? By most accounts, he was 59. But c’mon, this is Paige we’re talking about!

If it turned out that he was actually 69, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Paige used mystery to create a mystique that made him one of the all-time great players and characters of the game.

Why not treat Pujols the same way, instead of fixating on whether his experience was relevant as he signed a $100 million contract after only three years with St. Louis? Or obsessing over his age in relation to his $240 million deal to play for the Angels?

We focused on contract terms locally when the Diamondbacks traded Paul Goldschmidt, Pujols’ teammate this season in St. Louis.

Why? It’s not like the Diamondbacks were spending our money. And it’s not like they knew how to build a winner without him.

Dialing up wrong numbers

Are we going to do the same thing to Juan Soto?

Is it going to be too much about the contract and not enough about the kid?

Can we just marvel at the reality that he broke into the majors when he was 19!? He was the only guy in the sport young enough to call Bryce Harper “Sir”!

Can we just focus on home runs? Because Soto has 118 of them — at 23!

Can we focus on the home runs he crushed in LA on Monday in winning the derby? He’s a lousy one day older than Juan Gonzalez was when he won in 1993. One day!

Will we talk about how many he hit? Will we measure them in feet from home plate or how far your jaw dropped when you saw him hit one?

Or will we talk about “launch angles” and “exit velocities” and a whole bunch of other numbers that everyday fans don’t care anything about?

It seems like we’re always talking about the wrong numbers in baseball.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Home Run Derby proves we're focusing on wrong numbers with Pujols, Soto