Albert Pujols is perhaps entering the final season of his career, but a former team executive says he’s lying about his age.
Entering the final year of the massive contract he signed with the Los Angeles Angels, Albert Pujols may retire after the season. Or, maybe he won’t. In any case, at 41 years old, he’s not going to play much longer.
Before he signed with the Angels after the 2011 season, the Marlins were one of the teams known to be interested in Pujols. David Samson was the Marlins’ team president then, and he reflected on the pursuit during a recent appearance on “The Dan Le Batard Show.”
“We knew when we did the calculations for that deal that we didn’t care about 2019, ’20 or ’21. It was so far in the future that it didn’t matter,” Samson said. “We knew he’d be unproductive, we knew that he was not the age that he said he was. We had all the information.”
Le Batard responded, “Did you just report flatly that Pujols is older than he’s always claimed to be?”
Samson went on:
“There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Albert 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.”
So how old is Albert Pujols?
Samson cited how it’s no secret regarding shenanigans with birth certificates with Dominican-born players. In an interview with Yahoo! in 2018, Pujols let the cat out of the bag himself.
“I actually hit it off Octavio Dotel, I think I told you that. I was about about 12, 13, almost 13 years old,” Pujols said, describing his first-ever home run. “And we go back, you know, 28 years later, and here I am.”
By that math, Pujols would have been 41 at the time of the interview–nearly three years ago, since his birthday (assuming it’s accurate) is Jan. 16.
Ultimately, Pujols’ Hall of Fame resume won’t be impacted by questions about his age. The end of his contract was never going to look good from a production standpoint. But it’s interesting that his OPS+ went from 113 (above average, with 100 as the barometer) in 2016 to 80 in 2017. If he’s actually three years older than records say he is, 2017 would have been his age-40 season.