Albert Pujols Says He Pursued MLB Ownership

Albert Pujols has stayed in close contact with Major League Baseball since his 2022 retirement, commentating for Netflix and NBC, serving as a special assistant to commissioner Rob Manfred, and even being linked to the Angels and Mets manager jobs. But, in an interview with Front Office Sports, Pujols revealed a new facet of the game he has recently pursued: team ownership.

“I was part of a group, but it didn’t work out,” Pujols told FOS’s Baker Machado. “We went after a couple of ball clubs that got sold over the last eight months, but they bid a little bit higher than us.”

The Angels and Padres have been sold in the last eight months. Stan Kroenke—the owner of a sprawling sports portfolio that includes the Rams, Nuggets, Avalanche, and Arsenal—agreed to buy the Angels this month for a reported MLB-record $4 billion, and José E. Feliciano, the cofounder of private investment firm Clearlake Capital, had his purchase of the Padres for $3.9 billion approved this August.

Pujols also expressed strong interest in taking on a managerial role if an opportunity arose, but he acknowledged those two paths would eventually conflict. “I won’t be able to do both, being the manager and the owner, so whatever comes first,” Pujols said.

Over 22 MLB seasons for the Cardinals, Angels, and Dodgers, Pujols racked up three National League MVP Awards, 11 All-Star appearances, and two World Series titles, both of which came in St. Louis. He also has the second-most RBIs in MLB history and is one of just four players with more than 700 home runs. 

Yet, Pujols speculated his hitting prowess might have been even further improved had he played under MLB’s current shift rules, which require teams to have four infielders in the dirt and two on either side of second base. “The slow guys, as you know, Miguel Cabrera, myself, we were the guys that got affected a lot by [the shift],” Pujols said.

“I think the toughest thing was you’re trying to face a guy, and you have a guy right behind sometimes, and he can be right in the center of your vision,” he added. “Sometimes it was tough to read the ball coming from the pitcher’s hands … so I love that they were able to make a little bit of adjustment to that.”

The shift ban, first implemented in 2023, was one of many changes pushed through by Manfred in an effort to modernize the game, including the pitch clock, a limit on pick-off attempts, and the addition of a runner on second base during extra innings. 

In his role as special assistant to the commissioner, Pujols has had a front-row seat to Manfred’s thinking on novel initiatives, most notably the introduction of the automated ball-strike (ABS) challenge system this season.

“[The game] is in a better place than where we were five years ago, where we were ten years ago,” Pujols said. “And I think that’s the legacy that he wants to leave behind.” 

Pujols stopped short of calling for human umpires to be eliminated altogether, however, arguing he appreciated the imperative for players to use their ABS challenges wisely. “I think you can’t take that … away from the umpires,” Pujols said. “They’ve been put in a tough situation, but I love what the ABS is doing.”

While managerial and ownership roles may beckon in the future, for now, Pujols said he has enjoyed the new perspective he has gained from his experience in the broadcast booth for NBC and as a lead studio desk analyst for Netflix.

“Having an opportunity to see the game from a different angle and giving also an opportunity to the audience to think about and to look at the game differently is great,” Pujols said.