I wrote at the beginning of the year that Pujols would have difficulty maintaining his extraordinary career parallel to DiMaggio because he was competing against Joltin' Joe's 1941 MVP year - the year with the 56 game streak. I underestimated Pujols. Here is how their totals now look for their first six years in the majors.
There is now nothing which can keep Pujols from the Hall of Fame other than death or DQ. He will finish with a better career than DiMaggio. He will keep pulling farther and farther ahead every year.
After a brilliant 1941 season, Mr. Coffee slumped in season seven (1942), finishing with only 21 homers and a tepid .305 batting average. Seasons 8-10 never happened at all because it was 1943-1945, and other things were more important than baseball. Seasons 11-12 were two more off years. DiMaggio was slow to get his skills back after the war. He hit .290 and .315 and failed to reach either 30 dingers or 100 RBI, although so great was DiMaggio's mystique that he won the MVP award in 1947 by batting .315 with 20 homers and 97 RBI! At any rate, Pujols will accumulate some 200-300 homers in the next six years, during a part of DiMaggio's career when he hit only 66 homers and batted an all-too-mortal .306.
DiMaggio would never again be a .350 hitter as he was every year in the 1939-41 period, but he did come back nearly to his zenith with three solid seasons, or maybe it would be more accurate to say two and a half solid seasons, in 1948-50, before a disappointing 1951 campaign prompted his retirement.
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