Albert Pujols made his second start of the season at third base on Tuesday, giving St. Louis Cardinals fans something exciting and nerve-wracking to watch on the left side of the infield and allowing fantasy baseball aficionados the increasingly plausible fantasy that he might someday be eligible at third base. It was his third appearance overall at the position, so I decided to check out Yahoo!'s bylaws to see how much farther Tony La Russa's newest brainchild will have to go before his positional eligibility is finally affected.
↵The answer: Five starts or 10 appearances, per the Official Fantasy Baseball Rules. ESPN fantasy baseball appears to just require 10 games played, meaning Pujols might be even closer to replacing David Freese on your fantasy team in their leagues, while CBSSports.com is the most lenient of all—Pujols is just two appearances at the position away from being eligible as a third baseman in 2011.
↵So the bad news is that your number-one draft pick has drastically underperformed your expectations in 2011 for two months now. The good news is that he'll soon be able to do it at two positions! A little regression to the mean would look mighty nice at third base.
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