He added: “My mind isn’t even there. My mind is on staying focused, healthy and, hopefully, trying to help this club win this year, and that’s it. If I feel at the end of the year that this is it, I will announce it. “
Whenever Pujols and Cabrera – who will turn 38 in April – decide to retire, the drop in active leaders in some categories can be huge. Not only are they far ahead of their contemporaries in many statistics, but some of the players closest to them are approaching their own ends as well.
Pujols will enter the next season with 3,236 hitting. Cabrera, with 2,866 strokes, has a decent shot for his 3,000 goal. The only other hitters with 2,000 or more are Robinson Cano (2,624), who is suspended for the entire 2021 season; Nick Markakis (2,388), who is 36 and has already thought about giving up 2020; and Yadier Molina (2,001), a 36-year-old catcher who apparently doesn’t have much time for the game. This leaves the possibility that the active attack leader entering 2022 is an unlikely player like Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers (1,963) or Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds (1,908).
Among players aged 30 and under, Starlin Castro of Washington Nationals (1,633) and Jose Altuve of Houston Astros (1,610) are the active leaders, but anyone running a 3,000 race seems remote. Mike Trout has long overtaken Pujols and Cabrera as the best hitter in the game, but thanks to a large number of walks and a general change in the way the game is played, 29-year-old Trout has not even had 150 hits in one season since 2016. With 1,380 career successes, Trout is making a run of 3,000 looks, for now, a remote chance.
The losses of active leaders in other categories are just as extreme.
In home runs, Pujols (662) and Cabrera (487) are comfortably ahead of Edwin Encarnacion (424), Nelson Cruz (417) and Braun (352). The best player who could reasonably be described as still in his prime is Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton, whose 312 career homers take him less than halfway to Pujols at age 31.