Bryce Harper’s Quest to Join Bonds, Mantle, Ruth
When discussing Bryce Harper’s year, the challenge is not to try and show that it’s been great. Rather, the challenge is to show how great his season has been. Harper leads the National League in home runs, and he leads all of major league baseball in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, as well. The last player to lead the majors in every triple-slash category was Barry Bonds in his 13-win 2002 season. Only a lack of RBI will prevent Harper from winning a traditional Triple Crown. Perhaps the most impressive number for Harper this season is 204 — that his, his current weighted batting line (wRC+) where 100 equals average. Harper is seeking to become only the 12th player in the last 100 years to hit the 200 makr, and only the 10th in a non-strike season, potentially joining Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds.
Before getting to wRC+, a discussion of Harper’s offensive runs above average should be helpful to frame the discussion. Harper’s offensive runs above average this season, shortened to “Off” on the FanGraphs leaderboards and player pages, is 74.2 — currently the 53rd-best mark over the past 100 seasons — and he will have shot to get in the top 40 by the end of the year. Off is a counting number and, due to its fairly direct relationship with wRC+ (Off adds BsR), we can get a general idea of how many runs different wRC+ is worth. From the FanGraphs Glossary:
Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects. League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so a 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average.
The chart below shows Off, wRC+ for a small collection of players this season.
| wRC+ | Off | |
| Bryce Harper | 204 | 74.2 |
| Joey Votto | 174 | 53.7 |
| Andrew McCutchen | 148 | 35.0 |
| Jason Kipnis | 125 | 19.5 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 100 | 1.4 |
| Jimmy Rollins | 77 | -17.1 |
| Omar Infante | 40 | -31.2 |
Infante has fewer plate appearances than the other players, but as we can see, about 25 points in wRC+ is generally worth somewhere between 15 and 20 runs over the course of this season. So why use wRC+? Again, from the FanGraphs Glossary:
wRC+ is park and league-adjusted, allowing one to to compare players who played in different years, parks, and leagues. Want to know how Ted Williams compares with Albert Pujols in terms of offensive abilities? This is your statistic. wRC+ is the most comprehensive rate statistic used to measure hitting performance because it takes into account the varying weights of each offensive action and then adjusts them for the park and league context in which they took place.
Sean Dolinar made an interesting visual representation back in July using wRC+ in a histogram to illustrate just how far ahead Harper has been this season compared to his peers. Another attempt to show the same is below. This version of the graph plots all qualified batters this season with their Off and wRC+ numbers as the x and y axes, respectively. The Bryce Harper dot in the upper right is not part of the legend. His dot is just really far away from everyone else’s.
Before examining Harper’s season historically, we can look at Harper’s offensive runs above average just a little bit more. Sometimes, the difference between first and second place compared to the difference between second place and some other spot down the ranking is used to show just how far ahead a leader is from the rest of the pack. In this case:
- The difference between Bryce Harper and Joey Votto in offensive runs above average is bigger than the difference between Votto and eighth-place Andrew McCutchen.
- The difference between Harper and seventh-place Anthony Rizzo is bigger than the difference between Rizzo and 102nd-place Martin Prado.
- The difference between Harper and 12th-place Chris Davis is bigger than the difference between Davis and 142nd-place (out of 150) Elvis Andrus.
- To get to last-place Starlin Castro (24 runs below average offensively), we need only find the difference between Harper and 21st-place Brandon Belt.
From 1915 to 2015, there have been over 11,000 qualified batters. The scatter plot below attempts to capture all of them.
Despite making the blue dots as small as possible, with more than 11,000 points, the marks tends to blur together. As a result, I’ve added the gray shaded box to denote all points lower than both 180 wRC+ and 60 Off. Inside that box are all but 172 of the qualified player seasons over the past 100 years. Bryce Harper’s year is the only one outside of the box this season. All seasons over 200 in non-strike years (there are only 28 — Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell both had wRC+ of 205 in 1994) are signified by bigger markers and the legend on the side indicates which players had those seasons.
The following graph limits the player seasons to those where the player had a wRC+ over 120. There are more than 3,000 of these seasons, but they should allow for a closer look at the truly elite offensive seasons in baseball.
All of the players listed in the legend above are all-time greats. Most of the seasons are in the distant past. After Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams went over 200 in 1957, there was a more than 40-year drought in non-strike years until Mark McGwire hit 70 homers in his historic 1998 season. Barry Bonds followed with multiple seasons of his own. Those two are the only players to reach the mark in the last 58 seasons.
| 200 wRC+ Seasons | Last Year Accomplished | |
| Barry Bonds | 4 | 2004 |
| Mark McGwire | 1 | 1998 |
| Jeff Bagwell | 1 | 1994 |
| Frank Thomas | 1 | 1994 |
| Mickey Mantle | 2 | 1957 |
| Ted Williams | 6 | 1957 |
| Stan Musial | 1 | 1948 |
| Babe Ruth | 10 | 1931 |
| Lou Gehrig | 1 | 1927 |
| Rogers Hornsby | 2 | 1925 |
| Ty Cobb | 1 | 1917 |
Harper would be the youngest player to accomplish the feat, besting Ted Williams’ 1941 season by a little over a month, although both occurred during their age-22 seasons. To provide some context on the rarity of such a season, the bar graph below shows the number of seasons in the past 100 years of several other somewhat arbitrary milestones.
The same graph above is repeated below, instead showing the number of players who have achieved the various milestones.
Bryce Harper has had an absolutely amazing season, and due to the unfortunate circumstances of the standings, his team has little to play for in the coming weeks. If the past two nights are any indication, Harper has not yet turned his sights to the offseason. Yesterday, I discussed the amazing run of Yoenis Cespedes and similar runs that we have seen this season. Bryce Harper has been on a season-long run that has matched — or arguably been better — than what Cespedes has done since his trade to the Mets. In the context of this season, Harper is chasing an MVP, but looking at his season from a historical perspective, Harper is having one of the very best offensive seasons of all-time.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Where’s my ring brah?
I’ll let myself out.
Clown question bro
Without Harper’s break out season the Nats would be really, really bad, so it should come back to haunt him.
Don’t be a hater
I know this is never the intention, but whenever Babe Ruth pops up on a graph – any graph – the result is always the same. Which is me clicking on Babe Ruth’s stat page and spending the next 20 minutes thinking, “Holy shit, Babe Ruth.”
Watching Trout and Harper enter their primes is awe-inspiring enough that Babe Ruth is more than my mind can take in. Even his stats seem mythological.
One-third of all 200 wRC+ seasons ever are Babe Ruth.
6 of the top 10 seasons ever (WAR) are Babe Ruth, including all of the top 4.
5 of the top 15 seasons by OBP.
6 of the top 15 seasons by SLG.
Bryce Harper’s wRC+ this year is 204.
Babe Ruth’s career average wRC+ is 197.
In 1921, not only did Babe hit 59 home runs; he also stole 17 bases. The only other players with 50+ homers and 15+ steals: Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr., A-Rod, Willie Mays, and…uh…Brady Anderson.
Usually it takes until about the 15-minute mark for me to remember that Babe Ruth was a pitcher. And then at that point my brain shuts down and I spend the rest of the day in a weird dazed cloud of disbelief.
One more fact. Babe Ruth racked up 15.0 WAR in 152 games in 1923. Prorate that for 162 games, and you have 16.0 WAR.
Wait, I’m not done. Babe Ruth facts are like M&Ms.
If you look at seasons where Babe Ruth played more than 100 games, the lowest WAR total is 5.2.
This year, some guys who are at or near Babe Ruth’s lowest WAR total are Kris Bryant, A.J. Pollock, Anthony Rizzo, Nelson Cruz, and Curtis Granderson.
In Babe Ruth’s WORST fullish season, he was the equivalent of 2015 Kris Bryant or Anthony Rizzo.
Babe Ruth’s numbers compared to the M&M Boys (Mantle + Maris) during Maris’s 2 MVP seasons:
1961 Mantle 78.6 batting runs above average +
1961 Maris 54.8 batting runs above average =
133.4 runs above average, which beats Ruth’s best season 133.4 to 120.6
1960 Mantle 46.2 batting runs above average +
1960 Maris 39.4 batting runs above average =
85.6 runs above average, which would have been Ruth’s 10th best season.
BUT babe ruth didn’t play against latinos or black players
Bryce Harper doesnt really play against black players either according to the stats. Last i read only like 8% of MLB players are black. Thats like 2 per team on avg.
Latin players is higher but I dont know how much you can penalize Ruth for playing in an all white league when nearly 100 years after he retired ~60% of MLB players are still white.
so you are still discounting the blacks and latinos simply because their presence isn’t overwhelming to you?
there’s a reason george mikan wouldn’t have even made an all-star team in today’s nba
also i was being mostly tongue-in-cheek
imagine if babe ruth had to face shifts and specialized bullpens
“imagine if babe ruth had to face shifts and specialized bullpens”
His traditional stats would presumably have been lower. But WAR, wRC+, wRAA, and the like are relative measures. They assess production relative to an average or replacement player. Ruth’s contemporaries also did not face shifts and relievers, yet he still soared above them.
I think the quality of competition is a better argument. It isn’t just that more ethnic groups are represented today. In Ruth’s time, the player pool was a U.S. population of very roughly 100 million, of which roughly 90% were white. Today, it’s more than 300 million, all ethnic groups included, plus players come from many other nations–particularly, of course, Latin America, and increasingly Japan and Korea.
Against that, one can argue that there are more sports competing for the best young talent, so it’s very difficult to estimate the change in pool size (and I have tried, elsewhere). But on balance, I think the evidence suggests that Ruth’s competition was somewhat weaker than what players today have. If it was, then his WAR and other relative stats would be somewhat enhanced compared to what they would be in today’s environment.
Nope, Babe Ruth did not play against black players. But he did extraordinarily well against Negro League All-Stars in barnstorming play (.471, home runs in nearly a quarter of his plate appearances.)
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth never had to play against Japanese or Latin American players. Then someone else says, yeah, but in this era, many of the finest American athletes never even play baseball, they go into basketball or football or soccer.
Then someone else says, yeah, but he didn’t have to criss cross the country like players today. Then someone else says, yeah, but Bryce Harper and A-Rod never had to ride all night on trains or buses.
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth didn’t routinely face 100 mph fastballs. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth played in an era of spitballs, scuffing, and rampant sign stealing.
Then someone else says, yeah, but athletes were smaller in Ruth’s era, and even 5’10” 180 lb. guys that would be considered small now were thought good-sized. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth played before they lowered the mound.
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth had the advantage of facing the same pitchers over and over because of smaller leagues. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth never got to review video or use automated batting machines.
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth didn’t have to play night games under the lights. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth never had the benefit of aqua therapy or cortisone shots or even batting helmets.
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth didn’t have to face relief specialists. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth was also one of the finest left-handed pitchers of his era, winning twenty games, setting a record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched in the World Series.
Then someone else says yeah, but Ruth never had to play against defensive shifts like today. Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth had to play in tons of double headers.
Then someone else says, yeah, but Ruth was fat, that would never wash today. Then someone else says, yeah, but only at the end and people only remember that more because sports photography improved so much in the 30s at the end of his career. Then someone else says yeah, but…
It’s tiresome. eras are different. The only thing we can be sure of is that Ruth played at the highest level available in his era and towered over his peers like no one before or since.
Jeff, most of the factors you mention, again, are not relevant to WAR and other relative stats. Sure, there were many differences between the environment in his era and today, but all the players were on a level field in that respect. Comparisons with traditional stats like BA, HR, etc. are affected across generations, but not saber stats like WAR, wRC+, wRAA, and the like.
To repeat, the one factor that affects the latter stats is quality of competition. If the competition is weaker, then a great player’s WAR is enhanced relative to what it would be if he played in s stronger competitive environment. And by weaker, we don’t mean that players were smaller, less nourished, had less access to modern training techniques, etc., because again, every player in a given environment faces the same factors. We mean pool size.
The larger the pool, the higher the quality of competition. This is simple statistics. The problem is estimating the effective pool size, which takes into account not only the size of the populations from which players are drawn, but the extent to which other sports compete for this talent. We may never be able to make an accurate estimate of this, but it’s definitely relevant to understanding where Ruth stands relative to modern players.
Here’s a really simple example. Suppose during Ruth’s era all the players in MLB were chosen randomly from the entire population. No competition for positions at all. That represents the minimum possible pool size, exactly equal to the total number of players, and the competition would be extremely weak, because most of the players would be of average ability, not average by usual MLB standards, but average for the entire population. A player in this league who happened to be the best in the pool would dominate such a league, putting up great numbers. He might not be nearly as good as the very best players in the population, but since by chance they were not represented, that would not matter.
Now consider the opposite situation. Every young man in the world was tested at an early age for baseball ability, in universal leagues, and the best of all these men were selected for MLB. This would be the maximum pool size, equal to the entire population of the earth. The best player in this league would genuinely be the best player on earth, and he would perform at a very high level. But because of the much higher level of competition, his WAR would probably not be any higher than the best player in the league drawn from the minimum pool size. Whether or not it was would be a matter of chance, but on average it would not differ much. In fact, for reasons I won’t get into here, to the extent it did differ, the best player in the minimum pool size league would probably have a higher WAR than the best player in the maximum pool size league.
Neither of these extremes was or ever would be the case, of course. But they illustrate the problem. By WAR, a big fish in a small pool may appear just as good as a much bigger fish in a much bigger pool. His performance, relative to the average or replacement performance in his small pool, is just as great as the other player’s performance relative to average or replacement in his large pool. But because of the differences in pool size, the WAR in the small pool represents a far inferior performance to the same WAR in the larger pool.
This is the case independently of differences in other factors involving the two leagues. We’re not concerned with the fact that the population from which one pool was drawn might be composed of individuals on average smaller than those of the other population, nor differences in factors impacting on the way the game is played. We are concerned solely with the performance of the best player in each league relative to the average performance of the entire population of which he was a member. And that relative performance is far greater—in terms of standard deviations above the mean—for the player in the large pool league.
so you are still discounting the blacks and latinos simply because their presence isn’t overwhelming to you?
A) I’m not discounting anything other then the notion that todays game has a massive amount of black players in it.
B) its not my personal opinion. Statistically speaking their presence is not overwhelming.
Everyone loves to throw out the “well he didnt play against black players” line whenever talking about pre-Robinsion players but nobody ever expands on what they actually means in comparison to todays game. Its just automaticly accepted that its some massive advantage.
I have absolutely no doubt that Ruth is at the very very top of the history of the game, but it’s equally fair to think, “well, Ruth never had to play against the product of the Dominican baseball factories, the best of Japan, etc. etc. That his stats are so much better than anyone else ever ought to give statistically inclined people pause for thought.
George, what I mean is, take the entire available pool of population and divide it by the number of MLB spots. Do it for population and spots in 2015, then for Ruth’s day. Understanding, it’s only white Americans that Ruth had to play against. That’s what people mean by comparison to today’s game, and I’m surprised you don’t understand that.
Andy,
Players were much smaller back then as well. Also in the 1890s (when the players of the 1920s were born), malnourishment in America was much more prevalent, leading to suboptimal physiques, hence shrinking the talent pool further.
BUT we also can’t count out the possibility that the greatest baseball talent ever got born in that era, despite the circumstances and odds.
Yeah, how about that.
still though…
I can remember sitting in the library in the late 80s looking at Ruth’s stats, Gehrig’s stats, Williams’, et al and just being amazed. It was freaking slow pitch softball numbers.
It was probably freaking slow pitch softball compared to today’s game, to be fair.
People say this, but I think it’s somewhat countered by the fact that we have HR distances for these guys, and they’re similar to the best HRs today. Ted’s red seat HR went 502 feet. No one has hit a HR that far this year
Ehh, that red seat HR is heavily disputed. And to be honest, I doubt the authenticity of the length of homeruns 60+ years ago.
Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/07/13/why-aren-there-more-foot-home-runs/RYL4nuQcFltbTsf0lwABiK/story.html
Maybe so, but I have a hard time believing that grown men hadn’t figured out that throwing a baseball as hard as they could result in them being better pitchers.
They were throwing hard.
My personal theory is that velocity was substantially lower, but still on the same order of magnitude, I.e. High 80s. The lower velocity was something of a necessity in order to avoid injuries given the absence of pitch counts and guys throwing 340 innings per year. If Walter Johnson only threw 220 innings, maybe his velocity looks like Henderson Alverez or Eovaldi.
On June 26, 1920, a kid, just 7 days after his 17th birthday hit a monster grand-slam homerun in the 9th inning of an exhibition game in Wrigley Field. The blast “cleared the right wall screen by many feet, finally landing in Sheffield Avenue and bounding to a front porch across the street.” The kid’s name… Lou Gehrig.
When people discount baseball from a 75-100 years ago they also forget that there were;
-No batter’s eyes, often the bleachers were filled with men in white shirts
-Stadium lighting was bad at best (or didn’t even exist)
-Teams traveled by train, a 1,000 mile train ride couldn’t have been pleasant
-There is a lot of documentation that some pitchers threw over 90 mph under the above conditions (the radar gun is not as accurate as some measurement devices used 75 years ago)
-Medical care in those days was pathetic
-Nutrition and hydration were not good, it was actually thought to be better not to drink if you were exercising
Not to mention the equipment they used wasn’t as good as what they have today (batting gloves, gloves, sunglasses), training was completely different (players are all bigger and faster and stronger now so they can hit harder and run faster to field the ball), hitters couldn’t watch compiled videos of all a pitchers pitches and tendencies and vise versa for a hitter’s sweet spots, they oftentimes had offseason jobs because their salaries weren’t enough to live off of, they didn’t have decades of statistics to develop things like shifts or optimal lineups. The game was completely different in that era.
These should have affected the entire league’s offence, though so that doesn’t have a great deal of impact on his statistics.
And then take a look at his pitching stats and realize he was an above-average pitcher for about 5 years before he started massacring everything he saw as a batter…
And then take a look at his run prevention based stats, since we have a 1000 inning sample size of him outperforming his FIP, and see that he was the best pitcher in the AL, and the second best in all of baseball, from 1916-1917.
By RA9, Babe Ruth was worth 193.8 WAR on his career.
From an old article that staff at Louisville Slugger wrote as promotional material on behalf of Babe Ruth, which Ruth approved as a valid account:
“In my first three years as a fielder, following five or six years of pitching, I used bats 36 inches long and anywhere from 40 to 54 ounces in weight. I then began experimenting with the length, and found out what I should have known all along, that I could do better with a shorter bat. So I switched to 35 inches and sometimes slightly less in the twelve or thirteen years that followed.
Going to the shorter bat was one of my best moves, and I have wondered many times since why any player would bother with swinging a stick an inch or two longer than was absolutely necessary.
My idea on weight is that you should use a bat as heavy as you can handle. If you can swing a bat weighing, say, 38 ounces as fast as one weighing 35 ounces, you’re bound to get a longer hit. What’s more, you get real solid timber in the heavier bats, and that, too, adds to driving power.”
It’s all about the bats, kids. What is notable is that Ruth wanted to go not just shorter in bat length, but also swing as heavy a bat as possible, because in his experience it generated a farther hit ball. Today, I think you’d want it as light as possible to generate more bat speed, but simultaneously to be of a dense enough wood to impact the ball without much flex or splintering.
Anyway, I found this interesting. Not sure of how the weight of bats impacted 1920s performance or if everyone from that era had the same methodology as Ruth in terms of bat selection.
Holy shit, Babe Ruth is right.
The only person in the entire history of major league baseball who ever matched him statistically over a period of time needed chemical enhancement to achieve it.
Babe still did it a lot longer than he did.
And he still found time to also go 94-46 as a left-handed pitcher.
Can we plot the relationship between wRC+ and forearm size?
Go right ahead.
Is there any data on that at all?
It just makes it all the more ludicrous that, if even only for a day or two, some people were seriously putting Cespedes forth as a legitimate MVP winner.
“People” being Mets fans, which one might argue don’t count as the former.
Or Anthony Rizzo…
Bryce harper, this year, has equaled Anthony Rizzo’s career offensive runs above average output (~75). And he’s projected to surpass that by the end of the year.
Also. Yoenis career off is 68.3. Wow.
It also makes it all the more ludicrous that some people won’t consider Harper for the MVP award because “How valuable can he be if his team isn’t playing in the postseason?”
People around here need to stop being so black and white with issues. The debate between the meaning of value has plenty of merit. In reality the award has nearly always meant value to his team and not best player. Just because you want to change the meaning of the award does not make you correct.
If only that guy’s teammates had been more helpful to him in winning that individual award!!
…..
I’m normally with you on it being a reasonable discussion, but Harper’s season even passes that sniff test, because he’s been the only thing keeping that Nats relevant all summer.
The best player adds the most value to his team, period – regardless how many wins it has.
If you’re not the best player in the league but your team is the winningest, it simply means you have valuable teammates, nothing more.
Wow, given this context, would be hard for me not to pick Harper for MVP if I had a vote.
Studes made a very nice analysis using runs produced, and especially in key situations, showing how close the top contenders are.
But how could someone who is having a once in a generation type of season, no matter what the run producing situations, not be the MVP? Is it his fault that someone might be having a better season with RISP, it is not like he was failing in this regard, it was more that the other player is hitting SO much better with RISP in key games.
Good article, thanks, very enlightening.
I was kind of shocked not to see Mays on the list, was he close?
Also, you quoted from the glossary that wRC+ is park and league adjusted and can be used to compare hitters across different eras, and that OFF is the counting metric for that. What are the equivalent metrics for a pitcher?
RAR in the value section of the leaderboards and player pages gives you runs above replacement if you want to compare runs relative to each other, it just uses replacement level as the baseline instead of average like Off does.
Thanks!
Mays’ career high was 186, though he had a bunch of 10-WAR seasons with defense.
Yup. Harper’s Mantle, Trout’s Mays.
This year.
Harper’s wRC+ has been 121, 137, 115 in the past. Let him prove he’s better than Trout for more than one year before we say this is like Mays/Mantle.
Trout’s wRC+ has been between 167-177 all 4 years. For full seasons, Harper’s 2nd best season WAR and wRC+ doesn’t beat any of Trout’s. Age isn’t an excuse, because we’re comparing Trout’s 20-23 season and Harper’s 19-22 – 3 of the years for each overlaps.
Harper is having a better year this year but I think when you’re talking about all time great seasons you have to assume that he won’t do this again until he proves that he can for more than one year.
@Mike It’s more prudent to assume he can’t repeat this season again, I won’t disagree with that. I think people are justifiably excited because he’s broken out in such an amazing manner and, for me anyway, his play is just at too high a level for me to think that this is a fluke. This isn’t an outlier season that good-to-great players who’ve been in the league for many years will luck into every once in a while (hello Jacoby Ellsbury), it’s an outlier among outliers. And it isn’t from some 30-something that has no prior history pointing to this level of production, it’s from a 22-year old who enter the league at 19 and had been touted by everyone who’s followed him as one of the most talented baseball prospects of all time. His career has not been as good as Trout’s so far, no doubt about that, but can one argue that, as of right this moment, Harper is the best player in baseball? I certainly think so.
His one big question mark regarding his future is his health. and even amidst this season he’s had a few close calls with leg-related injuries and has had to nurse various ailments. That’s the foremost thing I’m worried about because the talent and production are all there.
You do know that Mays was better than Mantle, right?
You’re talking about Harper being the best hitter while Trout will be the best player, but I don’t know that Harper will sustain this level of play (at the plate) and Trout already has shown he can (at the plate).
So I’m saying that Harper is outhitting Trout this year but maybe it will turn out that Trout is Mays AND Mantle and Harper was a rich man’s Grady Sizemore or something. (To be fair, he’s several years younger than Sizemore but the wRC+ are similar for his previous seasons compared to peak Sizemore.)
And I guess I take the most exception that you’re comparing a guy that’s had one really great season to Mickey Mantle. Thats why I say let him prove it for more than a year. Trout plays like Mays now, and he could develop into an even better hitter as he ages (he’s only 24 you know) which is why I say Mays and Mantle.
Nobody who has gotten to 200 wRC+ has sucked the rest of their career. That’s a good sign for Harper…but there are many who got there once and never did again. So like I said, lets not say Harper is Mantle after 3 decent seasons and one great one.
That Harper ends up being better than Trout?
He already is.
Harper is in his age 22 season and Trout is in his age 23 season (he just turned 24), but in reality, there is about 14 months between them. Call it a year.
At 22, Harper will have accrued about 20 WAR. Trout had almost 30 at the same age. So Harper needs to outproduce Trout by about 1 WAR per year for the next 10 years on average (or a little less since they will likely play longer than 10 more years).
I don’t think that’s impossible, but I do think that’s really unlikely.
You’d have to believe that this 10-WAR, .380 BABIP season is just about Harper’s true talent level and Trout’s 8 WAR season is basically Trout’s going forward. Even then, it would take 5 more years for Harper to catch up just for the same age. If the difference is 1 WAR per year, it takes 10 years. And that’s not accounting for Harper’s (so far) higher chance of injury.
Just looking at Offense, Trout is at 241 and Harper is at 122. The difference between the two is almost twice what Harper has done this season. So if Trout missed two full years and Harper was just as good as he is this season, he’ll catch up.
I think what’s most likely is that Trout is about a 7 WAR guy going forward (which is crazy both in that that’s a really high number but also way below what he’s ever done) and that Harper is about a 5-6 WAR guy going forward.
Trout has shown a great ability to stay healthy. Staying healthy is a skill, a very important skill.
Harper’s had a few injuries but isn’t necessarily injury prone; still something to watch for, though.
I don’t think you can dismiss the fact that Harper this year is hitting better, quite a bit better, than Trout ever has. Most players get better up to their late 20s, but Trout’s hitting production has been about level so far, so it’s hard to judge whether he will get any better. Whereas having hit or flirted with the 200 mark at age 22, it’s hard to think Harper won’t do that again, and probably several times.
I’d say Harper is the better hitter, now and going forward. Trout’s baserunning and defense used to make a big difference, but it seems now he’s an average defender and actually has been a poor baserunner this season. If that doesn’t change, the only edge Trout has on Harper is positional runs, and they’re not enough I think to overcome the Harper edge in batting.
No question Harper’s having great season, but consider 44 of those games were against the Braves, Marlins and Phillies.
And that much of his success was in low to medium leverage situations, that his performance tailed off quite a bit with RISP and late and close.
I witnessed that a lot against the Mets this season, he didn’t do much damage in 16 games, and hasn’t yet a had a hit in his career against Matt Harvey.
His homers and SLG doesn’t surprise me but his league leading BA does in light of his mechanics. He’s an intimidating hitter but I think can be pitched to.
I’m not so sure he ever again sports the kind of high BA he’s had this season when the talent of the opposition improves as it will in the NL East. The Mets neutralized him, as did some others including the Dodgers, Orioles and others, so it can be done.
What was great about Ruth, Pujols and some of the all time greats was the ability to sustain dominance year after year, rake in the clutch with very uncomplicated swings and capacity to put the ball in play, keep K’s low.
Harper has exploitable weaknesses including High K’s, and unconventional mechanics (toned down as it is this season, it’s still disjointed), so even though he’s had a monumental 2015, he has a long, long way to go to be in same company of perennial giants.
For what it’s worth, Harper has a lower career K rate than Trout. You can’t hold Harper’s K rate against him in an argument between him and Trout.
Ok, Harper can’t hit Matt Harvey, but he crushes deGrom. His OPS of .807 against the Mets isn’t great, but it’s not too shabby either (apparently having him hit like an All Star is “neutralizing” him). I think you’d expect anyone to not hit as well against excellent pitching. In fact, if you take a look at just his numbers against teams with >.500 winning percentage (.288/.414/.571), you’d still be looking at an MVP candidate. He also hits .308/.480/.561 with RISP, so it says quite a lot when that is “tailing off quite a bit.” He also was excellent in the playoffs last year, so any implication that he underperforms in pressure situation doesn’t seem to hold water.
I also don’t know how you say he should “keep Ks low” like Ruth when he led the AL in strikeouts five times, including once when he was still a pitcher (though he did play in the outfield on a lot of his off days by then).
I think you should watch Harper more if you’re so surprised he can keep a high BA. He’s gotten very good at pushing outside pitches the opposite way instead of rolling over on them like he used to. Those pitches used to be an enormous weakness, but he doesn’t chase them anymore. He has a long way to go to be an all-time great, but it is no longer a stretch to think he’ll get there.
Not to mention that his unconventional mechanics look almost exactly like Mickey’s.
And yeah, his RE24 is identical to his wRAA, so his impact is in no way being overstated by context-neutral metrics.
Harper will not get better up through his late 20s. He essentially can’t. This is almost surely the best he can do. If he can reliably do 80-90% of this through his 20s, and then ages normally, he’ll be an inner circle hall of famer.
And i would bet that he doesn’t hit 200 wRC+ again. For what it’s worth, Zips and Steamer seem to peg his true talent wRC+ at about 160.
It should also be noted that injuries and the threat of them do favors to Trout but not Harper.
ZiPS, Steamer and other projection sites base their numbers on the player’s extensive history, not just on the past season, but past several seasons. So of course they aren’t going to predict Harper at 200 in the future. But historically, batters almost always get better in their 20s, peaking around 27, give or take a year or two. Trout seems to be an exception, and some recent work suggests that contemporary players may hit their peaks earlier. But no work suggests they start declining at a young age, and Trout has been consistent, not getting worse hitting-wise.
There’s a lot of randomness in baseball, even from one whole season to the next, and it’s possible Harper just hit the jackpot in terms of what he can do this year. But if he gets better with age, he won’t need to have as much of an outlier season to repeat what he’s doing now.
Why? He’s a 22 year old who was one of the best prospects of all time and has had a historical 22 year old season. There is literally no reason to think that this is a fluke that will never be repeated.
Even if Harper had been a 6-7 WAR player his first 2 full years, I’d still bet this as his best year. It’s just playing the odds, normal regression analysis.
And historically batters who are the best, and by a lot, don’t get better, no matter their age. You really think a guy having perhaps the best offensive season in decades (non-BB division) will get better?
Trout’s 2015 age-23 season (.294/.398/.584, 38 HR, 13.6% BB, 171 wRC+, 3 DRS/0 UZR – average to slightly plus defense per metrics) is remarkably similar to Griffey’s 1993 age-23 season (.309/.408/.617, 45 HR, 13.9% BB, 164 wRC+, 8 DRS – plus defense, take numbers with a grain of salt, the eye test showed Griffey to be a highlight reel plus defender at this point)
From that point on, Griffey’s power potential had been realized and was transformed into elite performance all the way through the rest of his twenties. Trout sold out for a bit more power at the cost of a lower BB-rate and increased K-rate in 2014, but has since adjusted to post a career high ISO, while reversing his BB and K trends a bit this season. It’s hard to say whether Trout will realize Griffey’s power from age 24-29, which would have received even more attention if not for the cavalcade of home run barrages happening in the NL in the late 90s. Trout has already shown a great deal more power in his age 20-22 seasons than Griffey ever did, so the potential is obviously there for him to continue to climb as he move into his mid-20s. The key is his strikeout rate. Even Griffey’s K-rate went up when he was hitting 50+ HR but he never struck out 184 times like Trout did last year. If Trout creeps back into the 25-30% K-rate in a trade for more power, he miiiiight get that push, or he might succumb to the wrath of potentially unkind HR/FB and BABIP rates over the course of a season, crating his hitting value as a result. It’s going to be intriguing to see what happens over the next five years.
Harper is having a better season, hands down. Even factoring a possible regression in 2016 walk rate and HR/FB rate, he should still be a freak. He has also closed the gap between himself and Trout as best in the game. Trout is still my choice due to the fact that he has consistently put up these numbers four years running without injury. Harper needs to stay on the field and keep doing his thing, and if he can do that with regularly, we’ll be having this debate for years to come. Everybody, especially baseball, wins in that situation.
Yeah, it’s hard to crack 50 HRs when you strike out that much, unless you have that unreal, Chris Davis power, just because you aren’t hitting FBs if you’re striking out, meaning your HR/FB% has to be insane.
I think that, barring injury, Harper will be the best hitter in baseball over the next 10 years, while Trout will be the best player.
Mantle and Mays!
Mantle and Mays! Where Mays played 150 games a year and Mantle kept getting dinged up his whole career.
“Where Mays played 150 games a year and Mantle kept getting dinged up his whole career”
So…exactly like Mantle and Mays?
I’m saying that’s where the similarity ends.
Trout doesn’t steal anymore or play good defense. Why would he be the better player?
0% in my humble opinion.
Trout has been hurt to close this year; that’s been the only thing holding the guy back.
You’re using injuries as an excuse for Trout?
I think he’s saying that Trout has been playing hurt to close out the season so his stats are dipping. If he weren’t hurt he’d be better than Harper in the opinion of the “Rational Fan”.
Or he’s being sarcastic.
Yes, it’s very possible. Everyone who makes the comparisons seems to forget that Trout is a year older than Harper, so if you want to compare them, you have to compare this year’s Harper to the previous year’s Trout.
Even then, it’s a dumb exercise, because: 1) they’re different players; and 2) Harper was either on the DL or playing hurt for most of his age 21 season.
Is it possible,
Correction (for now): Harper is having a better season than Trout.
One more Babe Ruth fact:
In his 21 year long career, he was nominated for the MVP award only 3 times. He won once…
What year did they start giving MVPs?
I am a doofus, think I was thinking of the Cy Young and even that doesn’t make sense because Ruth was dead by then.
There was a policy of not allowing someone to win more than once in place at the time.
From 1922-1929, once you won the MVP you couldn’t win again in the AL. So that hurt him.
All this has taught me is that I didn’t appreciate Barry Bonds enough when I was younger…
Just looked at his page again, and wow…ISO in 2001? .536 BB% in 2004? 37.6% ‘Nuff said.
Incorrect. You didn’t appreciate ME enough, kiddo.
Bonds the best of all-time; given the era, and his dominance.
Steroids, yo?
Barry Bonds had killer seasons in 1992:
.311/.456/.624, 34 HR and 39 SB in 612 PA. 198 wRC+
and 1993:
.336/.458/.677, 46 HR and 29 SB in 674 PA. 193 wRC+
Not quite hitting the 200 wRC+ threshold, but obviously came close. Have to think he would have hit the 200 mark had he not been intentionally walked 32 and 43 times in those two seasons.
And according to the BALCO guys, if we’d appreciated him more he wouldn’t have turned to steroids after all the attention went to McGwire and Sosa.
Bonds had been juicing before 1998.
We have court testimony that he started juicing in 1999. The injury that year came because he blew out a tendon from his muscles growing too fast, since he didn’t know how to use steroids yet.
Obviously, he figured it out.
Intentional walks don’t affect wRC+. Except in that there is a selection bias, since worse pitchers are probably more likely to be asked to issue them in a given situation (especially e.g. if the count starts 2-0).
Harper needs to get above 80 offensive runs above average to join the next truly elite cluster…
i see nats fans are back in cocky asshole mode after a whole “miserable” ten days or so of “crap on all the good things they have because they have no concept of actual baseball despair” mode
but they are heroes and that even more self-consciously over the top schtick is just sooooooooo funny and clever
I think I’m going to start upvoting your posts, just to see what happens.
LET THE WORLD BURN
Oh yeah, the Nats fans are a different species than the rest of us.
That was sacrasm btw
OK, but I want to learn more about that dot in the bottom left. -60 off is pretty darn impressive.
Found him through Baseball Ref’s play index
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1007567&position=SS
HOLY FLIRKING SHNIT!
Rename the Mendoza line the Levey line!
Height: 0’0″
Explains his lack of power but not his low walk rate.
And a weight of 154 = a BMI of infinity. That has to be a record.
Number #2 all-time.
Pro’s pro. Didn’t let his offensive struggles affect his defense, like the 2015 Mariner’s catchers. I’d like to hear the story about why he was given enough playing time to rack up -4 WAR. His numbers are worse than they look – that was an offensive era in MLB. Was he related to the owner?
And what is the all-time record for negative WAR in a season?
Great question. Among qualified guys, Levey’s 1933 is the worst. He also owns the third worst in 1931 at -3.3. Tommy Thevenow’s 1930 is sandwiched in between at -3.6. What a glorious time for horrible players!
Jose Guillen in 1997 and Neifi Perez in 2002 are the lowest recent guys and are 5th and 6th with-3.1 and -2.9, respectively.
They made their awfulness in opposite ways. Guillen was only -13 on offense but was -35 (!) on defense. Perez was only -5 on defense but was -44 (!) on offense.
I checked again for non qualified guys and Jerry Royster managed a -3.8 in 1977 in only 490 plate appearances. If he’d gotten 150 more, he’d probably have caught Levey! He was -31 offense and -22 defense, so I guess he did let his offensive struggles affect his defense?
Heh. In 1932, when he was posting *only* -0.4 WAR, he received several MVP votes. http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1932.shtml#ALmvp
I just threw up a little in my mouth
How did Babe Ruth do it?
One simple trick can make you the greatest hitter EVER!
Spitball pitchers HATE him!
I know. Pics make him look chubby, but I wonder if that was an illusion. If we took his uniform off, would we see a popping 6-pack? Another thing I wonder about is his foot speed. Any records of his clock time?
I imagine he was a more David Ortiz/Manny type build. For reference, Jimmie Foxx:
?w=640.
Ruth ran really strangely though. Almost like someone in heels.
Bryce misses out on the Triple Crown because of a misleading stat.
In sabermetrics, which 3 stats would you select for the Triple Crown?
Maybe OBP, SLG, wRC+ ?
It would be pretty hard to lead the league in OBP, SLG but not wRC+.
You could just make the third one wRC to have a counting component.
% Fastballs Thrown, Pounds, and YouTube Hits.
Offensive Value/Defensive Value/Baserunning Value
That would be mine. I bet it’s never happened.
Barry Bonds – 1990 – first in offense, first in defense, second in base running.
Eddie Collins – 1910 – first in defense, first in base running, third in offense.
The money lies with the RBIs
WAR. WPA. wRC+.
You have to be the best hitter in baseball (wRC+), have contributed more situationally than anyother player, and if you are so bad at defense and other WAR components that you’re not obviously the best non-pitcher in baseball that season, you don’t count. You can be bad at defense, a first baseman, or a DH, but you have to make up for that with the stick.
Harper won’t do that either this season, by the way.
Pretty damn close though. 1st in WAR and wRC+, and 5th in WPA (at the moment), although he is 1st by a lot in WPA/LI.
(Weirdly he’s last in “Clutch,” although since Omar Infante is 6th I’m not sure we want to put too much stock in that)
wOBA, wRAA, RE24
His K rate is higher than anybody else’s with 200+ wRC+ except Mark McGwire and his BABIP (somewhat related to the K rate) is .382 which is 6th highest all time and highest since the 1920s when BABIP numbers were more fluky than they are now. (I’m thinking defenders were slow as hell with thin, tiny gloves and more balls dropped in for a hit back then too.)
Relative to his competition, Babe Ruth was basically head and shoulders better for his entire career. The odds are stacked against Harper to do that because the talent is so much better now than it was then. He is having a really great year (one of the best 10-15 of my lifetime) but one year doesn’t make him a legend.
6th highest all time *among those with wRC+ of 200 or more*.
I know this is anecdotal, but having watched a lot of his games, I think the K rate was affected by two things in part: Umpires putting him in the “rookie” strike zone group and having no one else who could hit in the lineup, which at times I think caused him to try to do too much. I would expect the K% to decrease, not only as he gets better, but also due to reputation and maturity.
The league average k rate is at a near all time high at 20.3% (All time high was last year at 20.4%). Harper is currently sporting an average k rate while Ruth has a career average k rate of 12.5% when k rates were in the single digits:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2015&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0,ss&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=9,d&page=1_30
The Bryce Harper dot IS part of the legend.
George Brett’s 1980 wRC of 198 ought to get some honorable mention, he dang near broke the long drought of no 200+ seasons.
Bryce Harper’s wRC+ versus left-handed pitchers so far this year is 173. Joey Votto’s overall wRC+ is 174.
In Bryce Harper’s worst month this year (August), he had a 156 wRC+. Josh Donaldson’s wRC+ on the year is 156.
When pitchers get Bryce Harper into an 0-2 count, his wRC+ over the rest of the plate appearance is 149. Andrew McCutchen’s wRC+ on all plate appearances is 147.
So there was an entire steroid “era”, and in this era, only Bonds and McGuire had insanely exceptional seasons, and Bonds had 4 of the 5.