Albert Pujols must retire to join Hank Aaron and Willie Mays in 3,000-600-.300 club Arizona Republic sports columnist Greg Moore implores Angels front office to shut down Pujols. It doesn't work.

Greg Moore | The Republic | azcentral.com

Corrections & clarifications: A previous version of this column incorrectly reported Miguel Cabrera's career batting average.

If you love baseball milestones the way I do, then you don’t want Albert Pujols to play another game in the majors.

And it might be up to Los Angeles Angels general manager Billy Eppler to stop him!

Pujols has 3,202 hits, 656 home runs and a .300 career batting average.

He’s one of three guys — three — in the 150-year history of the sport in the 3,000-600-.300 club. The other two are Henry Aaron and Willie Mays.

Babe Ruth doesn’t have enough hits. (And if that isn’t one of the greatest sentences I’ve had the distinction to type, I don’t know what is.) Barry Bonds finished his career hitting only .298. And Alex Rodriguez closed out at .295.

But Pujols isn’t going to finish with Aaron and Mays unless someone stops him.

He’s hit better than .250 just once in the past five years. He’ll dip below .300 if he keeps going, and he told Forbes.com baseball columnist Barry Bloom last season that he plans to play through 2021.

“Well, that’s what I signed, right?” Pujols said of a contract that’s due to pay him nearly $60 million over the next two seasons.

“That’s my main goal: to try to honor that. And I’m going to do the best I can to do just that.”

We'll never see this again

This is a massive problem.

No active player has a snowball’s chance in Tempe Diablo Stadium of getting anywhere close to 600 home runs in the next decade.

The 36-year-old Miguel Cabrera is second on the active list with 477 homers. He’d have to hit 31 homers a year for the next four years to get there. He’s hit more than 30 just once since 2014.

Even if that were to happen, he’s still 185 hits away from 3,000, although he does have a .315 career average.

You might think Pujols’ teammate Mike Trout — the three-time American League MVP — would have a shot. Everybody says he’s the best player in the game, and he’s got more than 1,300 hits, exactly 285 homers and a .305 batting average.

But that’s through nine seasons.

He’s not even halfway to 3,000 or 600. He’d have to average 175 hits and 35 home runs a year for nine more years just to hit those benchmarks. And he’d have to keep his average right around .300 the entire time.

Unless Eppler steps up, a generation of fans is going to miss out on the sort of career record that only baseball can provide.

But don’t look for it to happen. I caught up with Eppler last week at baseball’s general managers meetings at the Omni Scottsdale Resort and Spa, told him where Pujols stood in the pantheon of the greats and asked whether he planned to force the big fella to shut it down.

“No,” Eppler said. “No chance. … Albert is one of the better run producers in our lineup and helps us, no doubt.”

He’s got a point. Pujols has more than 90 RBIs in five of the last six years.

Billy Eppler gets it

Eppler must not understand our plight. He can’t know what these numbers mean to everyday fans.

“I think (milestones) are revered by a fan base,” he said. “I think a fan base recognizes how hard it is to amass a lot of milestones in the game, and what do you need to do to have that happen. … And I think it really means a lot for a fan base when it’s done by a player that’s still in their uniform that they broke in wearing. I grew up in San Diego, so I’m partial to (Tony) Gwynn.”

Crap.

He gets it.

Aaron and Mays are safe and won’t have to make room for anybody any time soon.

It’s just as well.

Pujols is one of the all-time greats regardless of his batting average. His experience and leadership provide boosts to the Angels clubhouse that are irreplaceable.

Younger players get better just from being around guys like that.

“That means a lot,” Eppler said, “to have a resource for guys to be able to talk to or to watch. To see the preparation or how he goes about the day-to-day aspects of the game. I think means a lot for the guys.”

We’ll just have to find other reasons to cheer.

He’s four away from catching Mays (660) on the all-time home run list.

And with a little luck, he could join another exclusive club.

Only Bonds, Aaron and Ruth have 700 home runs.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @WritingMoore.

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