Was Albert Pujols Lying About His Age When He Inked A $240 Million Contract With Los Angeles?

A former executive with Major League Baseball is speaking out, stating that Los Angeles Angels slugger and future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols lied about his age when he signed with the Angels in 2012.

Pujols signed a massive 10-year, $240 million dollar contract on the last day of the MLB Winter Meetings in 2012, and is listed at 41 years old, which the executive says isn't true.

Former Miami Marlins' president David Samson said on The Dan Le Batard Show that no one believes that Pujols is 41, and that no one in baseball believed anything about his age when he inked the 10-year contract nine years ago.

"There is not one person in baseball, not one executive, who believes Albert Pujols is the age that he says he is," Samson said on Le Batard's show.

"The amount of fraud that was going on in the Dominican back in the day, the changing of names, the changing of birthdays, it would blow your mind."

The slugger has had a decline in his numbers at the plate over the last few seasons, going from 47 homers in 2009 to hitting 23 in 2019 playing in 131 games for the Angels.

In 20 seasons in the Majors, Pujols has hit 662 homers with 2,100 runs batted in with an average of .299.

Samson stated that when he was with the Marlins that the team went after Pujols, and that despite knowing that he was lying about his age, the team didn't care at the time.

"We knew when we did the calculations for that deal that we didn't care about 2019, '20, or '21. It was so far in the future that it didn't matter," Samson said about trying to work out a deal with Pujols back in 2011.

"We knew he'd be unproductive. We knew that he was not the age that he said he was. We had all the information."

Pujols was drafted by the Cardinals in the 13th round of the 1999 MLB June Amateur Draft from Maple Woods Community College, making his MLB debut at a reported age of 21 in April of 2001 with the Cardinals, where he played his first 11 years of his Major League career.



















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Matt has been a part of the Cleveland Sports landscape working in the media since 1994 when he graduated from broadcasting school. His coverage beats include the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Cavaliers. He's written three books, and won the "2020 AP Sports Stringer Lifetime Service Award."