Has the location of his homers changed this year? I've only seen a few pulled to left, so I can't really make a judgement.

His doubles seem to be down. Maybe he's just getting a little lucky and having more doubles turn into HR. If you look at his doubles vs HR they are normally pretty close (e.g. 38 vs 41 last year). This year he has 18 HR and only 6 doubles. To me that says he should have about 12 of each. That's probably well within the 95% c.i. using his career HR rate.

Here's a couple of examples of prior feats by Albert that are similar to this year so far (counting all XBH the same).

May 2003: 12 doubles and 10 HR in 116 AB

Aug 2004: 10 doubles, 1 tripple, 12 HR in 114 AB

My guess is this is not another level.

There are some interesting stats at THT for Pujols. I don't know what they mean at this point in the season, but:

LD%, and GB% are down substantially, which means that he's hitting lots more fly balls. On top of that his HR/F is up. Maybe he IS taking a different approach at the plate this year.

BA / RISP is way high (.519). Looks like in the past it's been close to his BA. This looks flukey to me and it's a likely to be large part of why his RBI are so high.

maybe his "hurt back" is the ticket

Albert's walk rate is up this year, and likely will stay up as his superhumanness continues, so his at bat figure may tumble a bit from his incredibly consistent 590 figure and give him fewer chances at hitting home runs. Also goes to show how ridiculous Hack's 191 RBI were . . .

Didn't he have a problem with plantar fasciitis last year? Has that gone away or is he still dealing with that?

How do we know Pujols isn't juicing?

I've watched nearly every at-bat this year and the last half of last year, and it is obvious he is swinging for the fences more this year. In general it seems that when the cardinals are losing big, or when they are winning big, and there is no one on base, he is going to either pop up or hit a home run. When it is close or with men on base ahead of him he hits a scorching line drive at somebody or hits a line drive home run. His swing seems totally different on these. He used to be a great all-around hitter who hits home runs too, and now I think he is taking the "home run hitter who is a great all-around hitter" approach.

He's also being much more selective at the plate, and he is having a lot more pitches called his way. He seems to have developed an ability to foul off pitches that are undrivable strikes, even or especially on 2 strikes, instead of hitting ground balls base hits like he did in the past. And of course he is capitalizing on mistake pitches.

Obviously the steroids comment is every cardinals fan's worst nightmare, but I think it is unfounded. Unless he was juicing when he was 19, he is clean.

AFAIK, he still has his plantar fasciitis. He just plays with it.

Anyway, I would agree with what Sleepy has said. As a Cardinals fan, his approach does seem different than years past. I think largely because the rest of the team has gotten worse offensively, and Albert is pretty much the entire offense.

1) No way Albert is juicing. His body type hasn't changed. In fact, he's slimmer than he was at 19. Less baby fat, at least.

2) His HR pace puts him over the "Non-Steroid Single Season Home Run" record, which remains at 61.

As a cards fan, I agree 100% with sleepy. Albert never tried to hit home runs before. they just came from hitting the ball as hard as he does, if that makes sense. This year, he's aiming over the fences.

The fact that Albert's current level of performance is outside the confidence interval might mean it is unlikely to simply be random variation or luck. But that does not mean it is a permenant new level of performance, either.

Sometimes hot streaks come not because of unexplained variance, but because something really is different -- it's just that that something just doesn't always STAY different.