Trout, Davis, and the Largest Seasonal WAR Differentials
As I noted earlier today, Orioles slugger Chris Davis, who through the Orioles’ first 67 games has already dug himself a -1.9 WAR hole, is on pace for the worst season ever by that measure, -4.6 WAR. At the other end of the spectrum, Mike Trout is having not just the best season of his already amazing career, but one for the pantheon. His 5.7 WAR through the Angels’ first 69 games prorates to 13.4 over a full season, which would rank third all-time, behind the 1923 and 1921 seasons of Babe Ruth (15.0 and 13.9 WAR, respectively), making Trout’s season “only” the best in the past 95 years. What a slacker.
Even if that’s the case, Trout and Davis could combine for the largest WAR differential between two position players in one season, a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon. Below are the 20 largest single-season gaps, with some player-seasons, such as Ruth’s 1920, included more than once. I’ve also included two hypothetical end-of-season figures for Trout and Davis: their WAR differential based both on current pace and also our Depth Chart projections.
| Season | Player 1 | Team | WAR | Player 2 | Team | WAR | Dif |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Mike Trout PACE | Angels | 13.4 | Chris Davis PACE | Orioles | -4.6 | 18.0 |
| 1923 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 15.0 | Shano Collins | Red Sox | -2.5 | 17.5 |
| 1920 | Babe Ruth+ | Yankees | 13.3 | Ivy Griffin | Athletics | -2.8 | 16.1 |
| 1920 | Babe Ruth+ | Yankees | 13.3 | Chick Galloway | Athletics | -2.4 | 15.7 |
| 2002 | Barry Bonds | Giants | 12.7 | Neifi Perez+ | Royals | -2.9 | 15.6 |
| 1927 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 13.0 | Ski Melillo | Browns | -2.5 | 15.5 |
| 1924 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 12.5 | Milt Stock+ | Robins | -2.7 | 15.2 |
| 1924 | Rogers Hornsby | Cardinals | 12.5 | Milt Stock+ | Robins | -2.7 | 15.2 |
| 1927 | Lou Gehrig | Yankees | 12.5 | Ski Melillo+ | Browns | -2.5 | 15.0 |
| 2001 | Barry Bonds | Giants | 12.5 | Peter Bergeron | Expos | -2.4 | 14.9 |
| 1931 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 10.7 | Jim Levey | Browns | -3.3 | 14.0 |
| 1993 | Barry Bonds+ | Giants | 10.5 | David McCarty | Twins | -3.1 | 13.6 |
| 1929 | Rogers Hornsby | Cubs | 11.1 | Tommy Thevenow | Phillies | -2.4 | 13.5 |
| 1905 | Honus Wagner | Pirates | 10.8 | Fred Raymer | Beaneaters | -2.4 | 13.2 |
| 1912 | Tris Speaker | Red Sox | 10.6 | Frank O’Rourke | Braves | -2.6 | 13.2 |
| 1928 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 10.6 | Doc Farrell | Braves | -2.6 | 13.2 |
| 1930 | Babe Ruth | Yankees | 10.5 | Fresco Thompson | Phillies | -2.7 | 13.2 |
| 1993 | Barry Bonds+ | Giants | 10.5 | Ruben Sierra | Athletics | -2.6 | 13.1 |
| 1993 | Barry Bonds+ | Giants | 10.5 | Luis Polonia | Angels | -2.6 | 13.1 |
| 1927 | Rogers Hornsby | Giants | 10.4 | Ski Melillo+ | Browns | -2.5 | 12.9 |
| 2002 | Alex Rodriguez | Rangers | 10.0 | Neifi Perez+ | Royals | -2.9 | 12.9 |
| 2018 | Mike Trout PROJ | Angels | 10.8 | Chris Davis PROJ | Orioles | -1.7 | 12.5 |
Seven separate Ruth seasons are represented here, along with three apiece from Hornsby and Bonds. Aside from the projection of Trout, only one other post-World War II player besides Bonds is represented above on the good side of things, namely A-Rod in 2002. That’s just one small set of data points related to the fact that the spread of talent between the best and worst players is much less now than it was 75 or 100 years ago and that leagues today are stronger than the ones of decades past.
Ruth hit “only” 41 homers during his 15.0-WAR 1923 season, but via his .393/.545/.764 (231 wRC+) line, he set career highs in the first two categories even while somehow failing to win a batting title. (The Tigers’ Harry Heilmann hit .403.) His dance partner from the 1923 season was Collins, a light-hitting outfielder who batted .231/.265/.289 for a lousy 43 wRC+ that year and was six runs below average on defense. To the extent that Collins has any other claim to fame, it’s apparently that he was the only player in the White Sox’ starting lineup for Game One of the World Series who didn’t wind up either banned for life as part of the Black Sox scandal or elected to the Hall of Fame (as Eddie Collins and Ray Schalk were). Ruth’s 1931 season (.373/.495/.700, 46 HR) is paired with Levey, the Browns shortstop who actually had an even worse season (1933, -4.0 WAR) that represents the record Davis is trying to avoid.
As for Trout, to date, the largest WAR gap of his career is 13.9 WAR, from 2013, when he set a career best with 10.1 WAR and Yuniesky Betancourt turned in a -1.8 WAR clunker. Even if Davis didn’t play another game this year, Trout would only need to add another 4.5 WAR over the Angels’ 93 remaining games to surpass that previous high. While he and Davis don’t have much margin for error in surpassing Ruth and Collins, it still boggles the mind that we could be seeing such extremes in the same season.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
If both Betts and Trout maintained their WAR rates and remained healthy the rest of the season, would Betts be the highest endpoint?
No, Betts is currently on a pace for a little less than 12 fWAR, because of all the games he’s missed.
If he had a 13.9 gap in 2013, why isn’t that in the table?
Seems like a lot of gaps are missing. Like the gaps between Ruth in 1923 and all the players with <2 WAR. I get leaving those out though. The whole table would just be that one season. Which is crazy to think about – the gap between Ruth and an average player was greater than the projected gap between the best and worst players this year.
Looks like the author used -2 WAR as a cutoff point. For example, 16.1 is the “second greatest” differential here, but there were five players with WAR between -1.2 and -1.8 in 1923 that would have had a differential between 16.2 and 16.8.
Was a math error, 10.1 – (-1.8) = 11.9, not 13.9.
What the heck happened to Ruben Sierra after 1992?
So “largest WAR differentials” is essentially just a list of the best position player seasons of all time. The “floor” for lowest WAR doesn’t shift enough to make things interesting.
It doesn’t shift much because if a player is below replacement for very long, he’s not going to continue playing. You certainly can’t compare negative WAR values over periods of time and say that the player with the lowest one was the worst, because a worse player might not have played as long. Nor can you use on pace very effectively either, because in the relatively short period of time that a very poor player will stay in the lineup, variation due to chance will be enormous.
10.1 + 1.8 does not equal 13.9
I was impressed by three things here: how many 10+ WAR seasons there have actually been, how many <-2 war seasons there have been, and how many occurred in the same years!
History in the making?
Bring back troutgraphs!
i think if he keeps it up, davis will be ‘injured’ for a month or so just to get him out of the lineup… hard to see them letting him suck this hard all season, no matter how little they want to win…
“Trout would only need to add another 4.5 WAR over the Angels’ 93 remaining games to surpass that previous high”
For any other player, that’s a bold expectation. For Trout, that would be considered underperforming. I am grateful to be alive to witness a true all-time great player.
Can we all just take a moment to reflect on the fact that we are not even halfway through the season and Trout was projected to end with 10.8 WAR (now it’s 11)?
If Trout gets to exactly 11 fWAR this season, that would give him 65.9 for his career, just ahead of Craig Biggio for 83rd all-time (but with about a third of Biggio’s plate appearances.)
So hypothetically lets say all current paces hold true(Trout, Davis and the Orioles) and lets say in this hypothetical world that the wins in WAR literally translated to wins on the field, that would mean that you could substitute the player with the worst season in major league history with the player with the best season in major league history and the Orioles would still lose 100 games. That is incredible.
The incredibirds are incredibad.
It’s amazing how all the highest WARS are the who’s who of baseball. Usually when you put stuff like this together there is this strange outlier that you wouldn’t expect but not here. BTW I never knew Hornsby played for the Giants, that’s crazy that I”m just now finding that out.
There have been 52 seasons of 10 or more fWAR, and 58 seasons of 10 or more rWAR (BBRef). There have been 29 players who have produced at least one 10 WAR season at at least one of those sites, and 19 players who have produced a 10 WAR season at both sites (often, but not always, in the same year). Of those 19, there are only three who are not in the HOF–Bonds, because of PED issues; and ARod and Trout, who are not eligible yet.
So having at least one 10 WAR season, at both FG and BBRef, has always–PEDs cases aside– been an indication of a future HOFer.
what gm kept letting neifi perez get at bats
Same for Yunieski Betancourt
There is Mike Trout, and there is Chris Davis. Then there is Didi Gregorius, who was Mike Trout in April and Chris Davis (worse, even!) in May.
How did Frank O’Rourke pull off a 14 year career while having a life time -4.2 WAR?