You can call Albert Pujols all sorts of things: a world-class slugger, an RBI guy, a feared player. Or, you can use the usual spread of compliments that are automatically associated with one of the game’s best power-hitters. But what happens to all of that, should he get the dreaded “Barry Bonds treatment?”

In Sunday night’s ESPN broadcast of the Cubs-Cardinals rubber match, broadcaster Joe Morgan bemoaned this latest development, citing 33 walks — including nine intentional walks — as a new horror visited upon the game. Even setting aside the statistician’s mantra that early-season action produces results that won’t last, that walk rate is pretty incredible. Pujols set career highs in both his total walks (99) and his walk rate last season, heading to first on a base on balls in 14.6% of all of his plate appearances. At this year’s pace, he’d surpass those marks by far — by more than 8%, or 50-plus walks. During Pujols’s career, he’s been given intentional walks in a little more than 5% of all of his plate appearances with runners on; in the early going this season, that’s spiked to nearly 12% of the time.

If fans pay to see action, you might understand how this could be considered a disappointment. The problem with despairing over what this might mean for the Cardinals is that it overlooks two critical considerations. First, the players aren’t automatons, robotically generating the same levels of performance year after year. Second, it would be hard to suggest that this has hurt St. Louis in the standings in the early going.

First things first: Analysts are often hit with accusations of losing sight of the things you can’t find in the numbers. It’s not an unwarranted charge, but let’s face it — there’s not a lot of substance you can attach to adjectives, and performance tells us a lot. Take a term such as “RBI guy.” What does it actually mean? How well the player drives runners in, year after year? Opportunities to drive runners are the products of the abilities of the teammates of a player to get on base, and his position in the lineup. Over the last five years, all major-league hitters have driven in 14.25% of the men on base when batting. Consider the fluctuations in Pujols’s performance over that time, ranked among major-league regulars with 300 or more PA (and 50 in this season):

You can’t really say that, as Pujols goes, so go the Cardinals, even considering last year’s drop in the standings from their 2006 pennant and Pujols’s similar drop in performance with runners on. Pujols was also insanely great at plating baserunners in 2003, and the Birds finished in third place. And if you look at today’s standings, the Cardinals are atop the NL Central.

Even so, Pujols has this reputation as an RBI guy, and it’s been earned, however flexible the label itself might have to be on a year-to-year basis — whether he’s been among the best or not, he’s always been above average. Indeed, Pujols’s reputation is so important to the Cardinals that manager Tony La Russa has gone out of his way to maximize the value of Pujols’s at-bats with men on base by increasing the number of opportunities that Pujols might get hitting in the third slot of the lineup, doing so by batting his pitcher eighth and having a position player — usually shortstop Cesar Izturis — bat ninth. The math gets a bit involved, but it’s a solid proposition that having an essentially powerless position player, such as Izturis, swap places with the pitcher should theoretically help you score a few extra runs. Since this is what La Russa’s doing, who’s geeking who?

If you look at Pujols’s non-teammate-dependent stats, he’s been remarkably consistent in terms of average and power, in both his counting stats and his rate stats. The far more important news for fans in St. Louis is that their franchise slugger has been surrounded with an extended group of power sources that have helped the team move past the decline and subsequent disposal of former critical components such as Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen. There’s enough in the track records of Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan, and Ryan Ludwick as power sources to make the gambit of walking Pujols intentionally a bad bet, and that’s without getting into whether or not former All-Star Troy Glaus can warm up to his new league. The Cardinals’ offense ranks second in the NL in on-base percentage, and second in Major League Baseball in BP’s total offensive metric, Equivalent Average. With Pujols on base and nevertheless still contributing the power for which he’s known, it’s not implausible to suggest they’ll be a better offensive ballclub than they were last year.

It would also be hard to suggest that getting intentionally walked is hurting the Cardinals any in the standings: In the eight games he’s been put on base on an opposing skipper’s orders, the Cardinals have gone 6-2. And how much did the two walks hurt them tactically, in the two losses? In the first of them, Pujols was put aboard by the Giants when he came in as a pinch hitter only after Merkin Valdez opened up first base with a wild pitch while his team was leading 7-4, a score which ended up as the final. Nothing short of a Pujols three-run blast would alter that outcome. The second loss, against the Astros, was a product of Jason Isringhausen’s blowing a save in the top of the ninth, after which Jose Valverde put Pujols aboard with the tying run at second and two outs. That sort of thing’s going to happen — both Izzy blowing it and a manager choosing discretion over valor at a time like that.

Even so, what should be more compelling by far isn’t the sense that fans have been robbed, but instead that a great player is simply drawing the respect that he’s due. As long as Pujols is playing in a lineup with the balance and overall strength to punish those free passes, it won’t simply come out in the wash: It’ll help advance the Cardinals to a season much better than expected.

Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseballprospectus.com.