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]
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.