Two months into the first season of his 10-year, $240 million deal with the Angels, Albert Pujols is batting .227. He had four RBI for the entire month of April, did not hit his first home run until May 6 and as the Angels head into their 50th game of the season tonight against the Yankees, he has yet to get his slugging percentage up to .400. (His .387 mark land his 113th out of 172 major-league hitter with enough at-bats to qualify.

Plus, he has left destruction in his wake; it is hardly a coincidence that Mickey Hatcher, the Angel's pitching coach for 13 seasons, took the fall last week for Phat Albert's slow start.

And yet, just as the Yankees arrive in town to begin a three-game series tonight at Angel Stadium, Pujols -- like the Yankees own recently dormant slugger, Mark Teixeira -- is showing signs of life. Before his 0-fer in the Angels 4-2 win over the Mariner on Sunday, Pujols had homered in four of his previous five games, and knocked in eight runs, nearly one-third of his entire output for the season so far.

No wonder Joe Girardi, when talking about Pujols' recent mild resurgence, said somewhat ruefully, "I wish he would have waited four more days.''

Pujols' feebleness at the plate has concided with the Angels poor start this season. Despite having Jered Weaver, arguably one of the top three starting pitchers in the American League, and having landed C.J. Wilson, the supposed prize of this winter's free agent pitching crop, the Halos sit a game under .500 (24-25), 6-1/2 games behind the Texas Rangers in the AL West.

Still, the Yankees view this series as a difficult test, if only because they know that Pujols, like Teixeira, is a far better hitter than he has shown his new teammates so far. Pujols has little or no track record against the three Yankees starters he will face this week -- he is 2-for-2 against Phil Hughes, 5-for-23 (.217) against Andy Pettitte and is hitless in three career at-bats against Ivan Nova -- but the Yankees are assuming that by the end of his first season as an Angel, the proverbial back of Pujols' bubblegum card will look pretty much the same as it always has.

As Teixeira, a big proponent of the back of the baseball card theory in regards to his own production, said on Sunday, "Anyone who thought Albert was going to keep hitting the way he started out is crazy.''

Girardi, neither crazy nor anyone's fool, is preparing as if he expects to see the Pujols who won three NL MVPS, not the one who has worn the goat horns under his halo for the first six weeks of his Angels career.

"I think you have to be careful with where he’s at, and know when you attack him and when you don’t,'' Girardi said. "In the last 15 games he’s hit over .300, he’s hit a bunch of home runs. He’s hitting the way he’s capable of hitting.''

When Pujols came to Yankee Stadium with the Angels at the beginning of the season, he was pretty much a non-factor, managing just four hits in 14 at-bats as the Yankees took two of three games. In fact, he looked so lost at the plate back then that even Girardi felt moved to mention it.

"He wasn’t swinging the bat real great when we saw him,'' the manager said. "He was swinging through more pitches than I’ve ever seen him swing through. He's not doing that anymore, and it's not just fastballs he's hitting, he's hitting everything now. So you have to be very careful with him.''

The Question of the day: Which Pujols do you expect to see over the next three days, Albert the Great, or Albert the not-so-Great? The answer to that question could be the key to this entire series.

Up now: My column off yesterday's 2-0 win over the Athletics, and how the fun part of this nine-game, three-city road trip may be over.

Coming soon: The wonderful Katie Sharp with a blog post on the Yankeemetrics of the Oakland sweep at 10:30, and a What2Watch4 for the Angels series at 12:30. I'll be in the clubhouse when it opens at 5:30 NY time and have the lineup shortly thereafter. Remember, tonight's Memorial Day game, Hughes vs. Weaver, starts an hour earlier than normal, at 9:05 Eastern time.

Question No. 2: Brett Gardner will try to swing a bat today, and if all goes well, could be returning to the Yankees lineup not long afterward. When he returns, to you expect his presence to make a big difference? A small differece? Or hardly any difference at all? Let us know, and as always, thanks for reading.