About his age curve, I think he may improve slightly toward his age-30 season, and in his mid 30's, tail off a little in the power categories, and maybe play to 40 or so.

Basically, if this were a graph, a slight increase toward the age 30 season, and slowly tailing off after.

I remember watching him at the AFL and he was hitting monster home runs, yet the folks at baseballhq were not that high on him.  Jason Romano and Antonio Perez seemed to be getting more attention.  You have to admit that the analysts were completely caught flat footed on this one.  BaseballAmerica ranked him quite low, BaseballHQ ranked him quite low.  Everyone was excited over Corey Patterson, Josh Hamilton, Carlos Pena, Joe Crede, Joe Borchard, Antonio Perez, Alex Escobar, Jason Romano, Hee Seop Choi and Sean Burroughs.  Nobody came close to seeing him getting this good this fast and even after his great season, many analysts doubted that he was really all that good (see past Baseball Forecasters).  Even after St. Louis traded away their starting 3rd baseman (Fernando Tatis) nobody seemed to think that Albert would even take the starting role.  Sometimes the big league clubs know something that the analysts don't see.

I think what is amazing is that Pujols has incresaed his plate and strike zone discipline each year... he has walked more each year and has struck out less than 70 times a year...

And he's defenitely special with his ability to not only hit 40+ HR's a year but also 40+ doubles as well as hit above .330... probably one of the best pure all around hitters in a long long while

He's not on Pujols' comp list, but I think he is an interesting comparison.

The Age trend says players hit their peak from 27-30, but I can't imagine Pujols getting much better.

That's what brings me to Thomas.  He was a two time MVP early in his career as we all know.  His peak season was at age 26.  He was still MVP caliber from 27-29 (high 170s OPS+), but he wasn't able to build upwards from the 212 OPS+ he put up in 1994.

I think that is the more likely path for Pujols than following say Ted Williams who was;

1. on his own planet for a couple years through age 23
   
2. went to war
   
3. came back and picked up right where he left off
   
4. Around age 29 slipped to being merely awesome before going to war again
   
5. Came back in 1954 and was otherworldly again

I haven't really looked into #'s such as BABIP and LD% and other things this year but is there any reason in particular why this year Pujols #'s are down (though they are better than just about every player cept D. Lee).

Do the injuries to Rolen, Walker, and the down year by Edmonds hurt Pujols #'s that much or has he just been unlucky? His OBP has gone up but his SLG is his worst since 2002. And what would one rate his defense at 1B now?

His errors are fairly plentiful but he makes a ton of nice plays at first and gets to balls too. His defense continues to improve and he is probably behind Helton and Lee but not too many others in the NL at the position

thought the comparison to him was right on...

a couple months ago there was zero evidence that palmiero used steroids.

but what difference does it make? his stats are impressive and hes the best hitter in baseball right now regardless of when he was born.

actually, maybe he wasnt born, that could explain things, he was genetically created in a lab somewhere to be the ultimate right handed power hitter.

I am not totally convinced that Selig didn't set Palmeiro up to take a fall.  Selig needed to catch a big fish with this new testing, and Bonds has been hurt all year.  Who better to take down than a guy who is in the twilight of his career and right after he set a milestone.  Just something to think about.

a citizen of the US, or had some kind of residency they wouldn't have checked and that's why I asked. I was under the assumption that he was living here before 2001/2002 when all these age discrepancies came about. (See post above by BLUECHIPPER)

I don't know the complete facts and that's why I posed the question. But it seems to me if went to high school here then his birth certificate would have not been put under the scrutiny that some of the foreign players are put under today. There just wasn't the need 10 years back.
From my understanding, if a person/player had residency here in the US then the need to verify their work visa when the came back to the US was not there. Another example off the top of my head is Miguel Tejada. Again I dont know the exact stipulation, but I know its something along those lines.

Look, I love watching Pujols and think the things he has done are amazing. It has nothing to do with trying to tear the "KID" down, but I just don't believe the guy is 25 years old.
I guess nobody will probalby ever no for sure on Pujols or some of these other foregin players.
However, I do think Pujols will still be proucing at the level he is now in five years when he's 30 (Or 35, in "the guys trying to tear him down" mind) Hell, even Julio Franco is still a productive Major leaguer and look he's like 47 or 55 the "conspiracy theorists" say!

Bill James had a study in one of his old baseball abstracts about how players develop as they age. How they tend to improve more between age 18 and 19 than between 19 and 20. Likewise they tended to improve more between 19 and 20 than they did between 20 and 21, and so on until most of them stopped improving some time in their late 20's. These are just tendencies of course, there is nothing to say an individual player might not show his greatest improvement between 24 and 25.

Pujols made an incredible leap forward in 2001 going from hitting .324/.387/.565 in the midwest league to hitting .329/.403/.610 in the majors.

That is an amazing improvement to make in one year, actually having a better year in the majors than the one he had the year before in low A.

It seems to me that huge leap forward is at least circumstanial evidence that Pujols is the age he says, since it is much more likely for a player to make that leap between 20 and 21, than between 24 and 25, or whatever the real age that some think Pujols was at the time.

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