Quick questions:  Is Pujols swinging at more pitches?  Is he reaching at pitches he normally wouldn't have swung at?  Are teams really pitching around him?  Quick answers: No, No, and Yes.

Fangraphs.com, courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions, has given us the opportunity to see what the real statistics are.  Here are the statistics explained.

Take a look at Pujols stat page (scroll to the bottom).  Not only is he swinging at less pitches, he's making more contact, especially at pitches out of the strike zone (exact opposite of what my eyes were telling me).  There's also been a sharp drop, so far this year, in the number of strikes he's seeing; he currently ranks 13th among qualifed hitters in the % of strikes thrown to him.

Just wanted to point out some great new stats to check out, and one of the first things I wanted to look at when I heard about them.  One final interesting ranking is the top contact % among ML hitters right now.  It's easy to see, based on the company he finds at the top of this list, that Pujols has a very rare combination of contact rate and power.  The legend continues.