In 2010, Albert Pujols led the National League in home runs, RBI and runs scored. He finished third in on-base percentage, second in slugging and second in OPS and OPS+, and placed second in the National League MVP Award voting. It was something of a down year for him.

I will keep this short because there’s little I can say about Pujols that can’t be told more eloquently by his baseball-reference page. He created some sort of stir this season by showing up at a political/religious rally, but I’m not here to quibble with or judge Albert Pujols for his beliefs. I figure if I were as good at anything as Albert Pujols is at hitting, I’d have a wildly different outlook on just about everything.

Just how good? He is tied with Mickey Mantle for sixth all time in park- and league-adjusted OPS+. The men above him? Ruth, Williams, Bonds, Gehrig, Hornsby.

Pujols will be 31 when 2011 opens, so it’s safe to argue his career rates will ultimately drop off a little bit. Frank Thomas, after all, had a 174 career OPS+ at age 30 and finished his career (some 5000 very good plate appearances later) with a still totally awesome 156 mark.

And Albert Pujols didn’t earn his way onto the TedQuarters Top 10 Things of 2010 by showing signs of his decline. Instead, he maintained his excellent and remarkably consistent level of performance. I could list stats to show the clock-like regularity with which he dominates Major League hitters — he has finished in the top 3 of MVP voting eight times, he has never hit fewer than 30 home runs or driven in fewer than 100 runs, he has only once finished a season with an on-base percentage below .400 (and it was .394) — but again, it’s easier and more effective to defer to the back of his baseball card.

Pujols is in the inner circle of greatest hitters of all time, and we are lucky to be able to enjoy his prime in thrilling HD. Historically great hitters don’t come around all that often, so though it’s safe to say we might see a couple more hitters as good as Pujols in our lifetimes, we probably won’t see a few.