FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: March 21, 2026
It’s a great time to be a baseball fan. We just finished watching an exhilarating World Baseball Classic, which ended in a thrilling 3-2 Venezuela win over the United States, and we’re less than a week away from Opening Day. Part of the fun in the days leading up the start of the season is playing catchup with all the transactions that went down over the previous months. Sure, we all know that Kyle Tucker is a Dodger and Alex Bregman is a Cub, that Cody Bellinger returned to the Yankees and Pete Alonso joined the Orioles. We also don’t need to be told that Marcus Semien, Bo Bichette, and Luis Robert Jr. now play for the Mets, or that both Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez slot in behind Garrett Crochet in the Red Sox rotation. But it can be hard to have a handle on how all these moves shape the outlook of teams across the league as we begin the season. The good news is that we at FanGraphs have been keeping tabs on everything throughout the offseason and spring training, so we’ve got you covered with everything you need to know about the coming year in baseball.
This week alone, we kicked off our annual Positional Power Rankings series, Dan Szymborski made his picks for the hitters who could boom and bust this season, and Ben Clemens looked into the importance of stars in the postseason. Michael Baumann analyzed the recent changes Walker Buehler has made as he looks to open the season in the Padres rotation, Ryan Blake examined the historically young White Sox catching tandem, and Brendan Gawlowski shared his latest notes from the Cactus League. Meanwhile, James Fegan ranked the top 30 prospects in the Astros system, and Eric Longenhagen reported on the experimental rule changes coming to the minor leagues this year. And if you haven’t read it yet, I encourage all of you to check out Davy Andrews’ excellent and revealing feature on the context of the recently installed Texas Ranger statue at Globe Life Field.
We won’t be talking about any of those topics in this week’s mailbag. Instead, we’ll answer your questions about whether Aaron Judge might finish with more career WAR than Mike Trout, where Juan Gonzalez’s 1996 season ranks among undeserving MVP wins, and which national soccer team would be the best at baseball. But first, I’d like to remind you that this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com.
Matt is the associate editor of FanGraphs. Previously, he was the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Men’s Health, Baseball Prospectus, and Lindy’s Sports Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @ByMattMartell and Blue Sky @mattmartell.bsky.social.
Personally I think I’d go with Trout. Just feels like he only needs to be average for a few seasons to put it away. While Judge has to continue to be historically great in the face of age to catch up. Probably will come down to health in the end. Only time will tell!
And to add to that, the lead is about 25. Since expansion only 8 players have had that much WAR after 33 (if I did that query right). Bonds, Mays, Aaron, Edgar Martinez, Fisk, Chipper, Schmidt, Ozzie Smith. Think about all the great players that aren’t on that list!
On the other hand, since expansion only two players have had as much WAR from 31-33 as Judge, Bonds and Joe Morgan. Judge has over four wins from 31-33 on Schmidt in fourth place. And from 30-33, Judge is well clear of everyone. He’s set up to continue to be historically great if anyone is.
But to your point, after 33, Bonds cheated, Morgan began his decline at exactly age 34 (1.5 WAR), and Schmidt as I mentioned earlier was among the 8 who reached 25+. It’s a risky age.
BTW, Mays wasn’t on the list because his age 31 season was 1961 so it wasn’t in my expansion era cutoff–if he counts, he easily has the lead age 31-33 with 30.8 WAR.
But my point is, even if you exclude Bonds, players who came close to Judge’s level of production from 31-33 are reasonably likely to get their 25 wins afterward. The only players who got within 5 wins of Judge are Mays, Bonds, Morgan, Schmidt, and Clemente; including Bonds three of them made 25, and Clemente was at 22.3 coming off a 4-win season when he died.
I still have my doubts but you absolutely make a good point.
Definitely not a sure thing! As we’ve seen with Trout, a huge part of it is whether he gets injured, which is unknowable.
Do you know who else was just a few years ago “set up to continue to be historically great if anyone is”?
Mike Trout.
Interesting! Having just watched the WBC semi and final, I admit to having a fairly strong anti-Judge bias. I think it’s highly unlikely that Judge catches Trout in career WAR, and I would wager as such. Trout started his MLB career like such a house on fire; he hasn’t struggled long enough to give us an Albert-Pujols-post-Cardinals (or Miggy) feeling, yet. We still believe!
Interestingly, both King Albert and Miggy were probably older than they copped to; I wonder if that played into their end of career doldrums.
[citation needed]
Molitor makes that list by bWAR.
I just don’t think Judge is going to stay healthy enough to do this, but it’s crazy that it even makes sense to have a conversation about it.
As well you have to consider the flip side, which is whether Trout is healthy enough to put up more than 4 WAR the rest of his career. Is it just wishful thinking that Trout puts up a few 2-3 WAR seasons over the last 5 years of his contract and actually tacks on 6-10 WAR making him harder to catch?
I did consider the flip side. Say he doesn’t. Judge has to still put up 25 at a minimum.
Unless Trout puts up negative WAR for the rest of his career, which is certainly possible.
I think the range for Trout’s future fWAR is somewhere between 2.5 fWAR and 7.5 fWAR over those last five years.
Let’s just assume for simplicity’s sake that his 2025 is the new normal, and he’ll continue to be a relatively immobile TTO slugging DH now.
The best case scenario which I can see actually happening is he DHs is about 500 PAs a year. Some years he’s a bit above, some years he’s a bit below, but that leaves him averaging about 1.5 fWAR a year.
To get above that, you have to assume he’s going to play the field more while also staying healthy, which isn’t going to happen. Or that he can turn back the clock a bit and put up a 135-140 wRC+ for a few years without really falling much below that 120 line at the very end. That latter one is a bit more likely but not something I personally would bank on.
The low end can obviously be much worse than 2.5 fWAR, but in terms of what we can actually expect, I think a low-end expectation is him playing like he did in 2025 but only averaging 150 PAs a year is about right. That leaves him putting up 0.5 fWAR a year, for a total of 2.5.
To get lower than that, you have to assume one of two scenarios. The less likely one is that he is both healthy enough to play and bad enough that he puts up less than 1.5 wins over 500 PAs. I just don’t see that. The alternative–that he just can’t even play 750 PAs over 5 years–seems much more plausible to me.
Given the Angels, the biggest risk is Trout is healthy enough to play 120 games in CF while being awful out there and having less defensive value than at DH.
Relatively immobile? Go look who has run the fastest of any mlb player thus far peak speed in st. Now defense. Sure.
I guess that’s not really true relative to the league, only to where he was before. He’s closer to being a median runner than a 90th percentile runner now, but he’s still pretty mobile even with a bum knee.
I don’t believe anything in spring training. Let’s see how he runs after the all star break.
The lead is still significant for Trout even if he was done as of today Judge would need to stay healthy and continue to put up some monster seasons. He’s been healthy as of late but he did have stretches earlier in his career where he lost time and the risk of that only increases the deeper he’s into his 30s. Granted I hope he puts up a monster season or two in his 40s just because it would be something rare and special.
One thing I think everybody is skipping over in this conversation is the chance that Judge gets a noticeable bump in production from the strike challenge rule. Dude gets low balls out of the zone called a strikes all the time because of his height.
I think the “low strike” thing is a bit overblown, because I expect high ball calls to get flipped against him. The narrative stands out because 1) there have been some egregious strike calls, 2) it goes against the Yankees and their fans, who are notoriously noisy, and 3) Michael Kay, in particular, has been beating this drum for years.
I think given his overall performance, both teams will likely consider his PAs leveraged (even if it’s the 1st inning with no one on base) enough to justify using a challenge. If you can “steal” strike 3 against Judge, it might be worth the risk.
I’ll take the over on him reaching 100 WAR. Pretty good chance he posts 4 WAR *this* season.
The most undeserving winner is not the mirror image of the guys who definitely got robbed of an MVP, but there is some overlap because a player might be sort of deserving in the abstract but it’s indefensible in the context of the competition.
For example, Ivan Rodriguez won the 1999 MVP over three position players with more fWAR than him, but also Pedro Martinez’s crazy 11.6 fWAR season.
If you’re more of a fan of ERA-based WAR, Jason Giambi won the MVP in 2000 when he was fourth in fWAR among position players, despite A-Rod putting up about two wins more and Pedro Martinez having literally the best ERA- in the history for pitchers with at least 150 innings for the American League. Or since integration at all, I think the only starters with a lower ERA- played in the Negro Leagues.
I will try to add some that don’t involve pitchers in a sec, obviously some of the worst MVPs have gone to relievers. But there are some picks that are totally confusing.
Here are some of the more baffling picks:
1985: Don Mattingly over Rickey Henderson, Wade Boggs, and George Brett. Each one of these had a 2 fWAR advantage over Mattingly and it’s not like it was a secret how much better each of them were. George Brett won the Gold Glove that year and had a higher batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage than Mattingly. Wade Boggs had a .368 batting average. And Rickey Henderson not only was the guy who scored most of Mattingly’s RBIs, he also was the coolest player in baseball and had 80 steals.
1995: Mo Vaughn over Edgar Martinez, Albert Belle, Frank Thomas, and Tim Salmon. Vaughn got this because he had a lot of RBIs, but he was 11th that year in fWAR. About 5 of the candidates in front of him are ones voters wouldn’t have “gotten” without positional adjustments and defensive metrics. But each of Martinez, Belle, Thomas, and Salmon had obviously better offensive years than Vaughn, and some by a lot!
1974: Jeff Burroughs over in the AL looks bad by WAR but I get that. He was terrible on defense but had a monster year on offense. But Steve Garvey in the NL is inexplicable. There were four players in the NL who had *double* his fWAR and all of them were clearly superior hitters: Joe Morgan, Mike Schmidt, Jimmy Wynn, and Johnny Bench. There must have been some sort of a movement against giving it to Bench again since he was already a two time MVP, but none of the others had won one yet.
Do you think there’s a vote splitting effect when you get a few guys with good years? I haven’t looked into that but maybe you have?
Wow I just typed out a massive response to this…and responded to the wrong comment. See above for what I found.
This is in response to Yer Main Guy below, I responded to the wrong comment.
I just checked the three ones I mentioned here:
1985: Almost all first place voted went to Mattingly, and a few went to Brett.
1995: Belle almost beat out Vaughn for this. 12 first place votes for Vaughn,
11 for Belle, 4 for Martinez and…one for Jose Mesa?
1974: Bench, Wynn, Schmidt, and Morgan. Combined for zero first place votes. But Garvey almost lost it to Lou Brock who stole 118 bases that year.
Here are the other years where there was a big multi-way split for first place voting, 1974 to the present:
NL in 1979 where a broken down Willie Stargell tied with Keith Hernandez.
AL in 1989 where Robin Yount won with only 8 first place votes because 5 players got at least 3 first place votes.
NL in 1995, because voters had no way to understand what Dante Bichette was doing in Colorado so he stole 6 first place votes from Larkin and Maddux, plus Piazza picked up 3.
AL in 1996, where A-Rod almost beat Juan Gonzalez but Griffey and Belle also got some.
AL in 1999, where Pedro did get the most first place votes but four other player had at least 4 first place votes.
AL in 2001 which was a 3-way race between Ichiro, Jason Giambi, and Bret Boone
AL in 2003 where five different players picked up at least 3 first place votes.
NL in 2017 where Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto got the same number of first place votes while Charlie Blackmon and Nolan Arenado picked up some as well.
I think that is 9 in total, including the AL in 1995. Almost all of these resulted in someone other than the most “deserving” player winning. The one exception I am certain about was Stanton in 2017, although you could have made a strong case for Kris Bryant (1 first place vote) or Votto (10 first place votes). Potentially also A-Rod in 2003 since we didn’t know he was on steroids at the time, but “deserving” has to be viewed through a very specific lens there.
One reason why it’s not a mirror image is that it’s easy to say that Rogers Hornsby got robbed of the 1924 NL MVP, but it’s not like Pitching Triple Crown winner Dazzy Vance was *bad*.
I disagree with one of the assertions in the Gonzalez MVP question and that makes him the most egregious selection — “no voter was looking at any variety of WAR in 1996, “
So BP and FanGraphs weren’t publishing what’s known as WAR in 1996. But in the mid 90s we certainly all knew that OBP and SLG were more important/valuable than the triple crown stats and stats like OPS and RC were available as well as Total Average, even if all are flawed to some degree. And we knew defensive positions mattered. So while maybe we didn’t know Griffey Jr’s season was ~9 WAR to Gonzalez ~3.5, we knew that given three players with similar offensive lines, the ones playing CF and SS were a lot more valuable than the one playing a corner OF. So we had a very rudimentary WAR even then.
As I recall, both Seattle writers listed Griffey Jr 1st, only 2 of 4 who did so, and Rodriguez further down which “cost” A-Rod the MVP. While fWAR seems to justify that decision today, it was contrary to the general line of thinking in 1996, at least among MVP voters. Of course the real problem was A LOT of writers had Gonzalez in their top 3 when in retrospect, if not at the time, his season wasn’t that impactful.
I think A-Rod got discounted some because he was a rookie. That & Seattle had a down year, so writers made the “They added him & won less games, how can we vote him MVP” idiocy.
Belle got screwed 1-2x, probably because he was an unlikeable jerk. I think a # of voters would look for any reason NOT to vote for him. Going by traditional stats (BA, HR, RBI, etc) he was probably the most deserving guy.
Albert Belle was easily the most universally disliked player in baseball — certainly in my memories of baseball (starting mid-to-late 80s). The only one who comes close was either post-“cream and the clear” Bonds or A-Rod, but the tenor of how people viewed A-Rod was more of a joke or the “greedy player” stereotype. People had severe hostility toward Belle, which, in all fairness, he appeared to have towards everybody.
I have no doubts in my mind that Belle had HOF-level talent and likely did get screwed in award voting.
My comments about Gonzalez aside, though this might apply there too, the most undeserving MVPs are the players who were the 3rd or 4th most valuable player on their own team. Certainly true of Stargell in 1979; heck he might not be top 4 if you include pitchers.
Not on Stargell level but Morneau in 2006 deserves an honorable mention here, as Joe Mauer was way better on the same team (as was Johan Santa). He had a higher wRC+ than Morneau while catching, and 26 points of batting average on him, but Morneau had the homers (a lot more homers) and RBIs.
Little surprised that traditionalists didn’t show love for Mauer’s .347 BA, it was at the time the second highest BA for a catcher (min. 500 PAs) in the expansion era behind Piazza’s .362 in 1997. Mauer surpassed Piazza in 2009 and did win the MVP for that.
Two clearly deserving candidates in Mauer and Jeter…and they go with Morneau
I still think Trout has some juice left.
If we combine his 2023-2024 seasons, he still managed 4.0 WAR in only 111 games.
Last year, injuries aside, he went through the biggest slump of his career, says he fixed things, then went scorching hot right at the very end.
So far this spring he has 5 doubles in just 35 AB’s, including hitting .444 over the last week. K’s are down. Sprint speed is up.
The talent and the physical tools are still there.
The obvious issue is, of course, can he stay healthy? *IF* he can, I think he can still put up some solid WAR seasons.
Biggest MVP snub off all time was last season. A catcher with zero pass balls hits 60 bombs is the MVP end of discussion. If you disagree you are just wrong and have likely never even stood on a ball field
Not the smartest meatsack I’ve ever met
There’s a reasonable argument that the WAR-era has led to some level of groupthink in voting, and doesn’t give enough room for narratives to take root. I personally would have voted for Raleigh, but if you don’t think that a player being clear of the entire league by almost 40 points of wRC+ doesn’t keep them in the MVP conversation, I don’t think you’re being reasonable.
My question is, who’s active today who will beat both Trout and Judge for career WAR? Off the top of my head, Ohtani and Witt are contenders. Witt’s much younger, but Ohtani can rack up big numbers, quickly.
I could see Judge putting up 30 more WAR if this were the late nineties when I was blissfully ignorant of steroid use.
Sometimes I wonder if the steroid era, whose data Zips trained on, makes projections too optimistic for late career arcs of today’s all-stars.
I’d like to see how well zips projects ages 34 and onward for players since, say, 2010.
what a stupendously thorough answer, Jay- always learn something from you writing. However, it’s worse than you said-Mays won only two MVP awards.