Albert Pujols passes Carew and ties Griffey Jr. helping Angels win series

Albert Pujols continues to climb up the ladder on baseball’s all-time lists. Pujols hit two homers in Thursday’s 11-2 win over Seattle to tie Ken Griffey Jr. for 6th place on the career HR list.

If you ask Albert Pujols about tying Ken Griffey Jr.youmay get an answer.  In true Pujols form Albert wanted to talk about helping the Angels take two out of three games from Seattle who is the Angels are chasing for the second wild-card spot.  Pujols smacked his 15th and16th home run of the season giving him 630 homers for his career.. Pujols went 3 for 4 with three RBIs. The three hits helped Pujols pass Angel great Rod Carew and tie Rickey Henderson for 25th place all-time.

After Seattle had taken a 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning the Angels stormed back with three runs in the bottom of the first.  David Fletcher led off with his first career big league home run to tie the score. After Mike Trout singled to left, Pujols came up drove a James Paxton pitch to right-center landing in the stands above the out-of-town scoreboard giving the Angels a 3-1 lead.

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The Angels scored single runs in the second and fifth inning to extend their lead to 5-1.  In the bottom of the sixth the Angels would break the game open as Justin Upton and Pujols would hit back-to-back home runs.  Upton’ blast was a three-run jack to left and then Pujols would follow with a blast that cleared both bullpens and gave the Angels a commanding 9-1 lead.

Tyler Skaggs did his part on the mound for the Angels scattering five hits over six innings and allowing just one run to notch his seventh victory of the season and lower his ERA to a sparkling 2.57.  The Angels have now won back-to-back series at home for only the third time all season as they moved within 10 games of the Mariners for the second wild-card spot.

With Mike Trout scuffling a little bit over the last three weeks (.255 with 2 HRs & 2 RBIs) it is good to see Pujols and Upton picking up the slack.  Pujols has hit four home runs and driven in six runs in the past four games three of which have been Angel victories.

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Once Pujols hits his next home run to pass Ken Griffey Jr. It will be awhile before he catches up to the fifth player on the career home run list, Willie Mays who has 660 HRs.  Pujols is only six hits away from passing Craig Biggio (3,060 hits) and moving into 24th place on the career hit list. However, if you ask Albert he is hoping this is the start of run that will get the Angels back in the playoff race.