Mike Trout Has Been as Good as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper Combined
FanGraphs loves Mike Trout. FanGraphs has always loved Mike Trout. FanGraphs isn’t unique in this regard — Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, and, generally speaking, people are aware of that. But FanGraphs is the home of WAR, and it’s by WAR that Trout dominates the competition. Trout is a frequent subject of articles. Trout is also a frequent subject of search queries. He’s commonly atop the list of the most-searched players.
Indeed, today, Trout is way up there, yet again. Although he’s not in first, and he’s not in second. Trout has been the third-most searched player of late, behind Manny Machado and Bryce Harper:
It makes sense. Machado and Harper have been two of the most desirable free agents in the history of free agents. Both players are 26 years old, and both players are among the best at their respective positions. Both players are among the best players, period. For that reason, the Padres just signed Machado for $300 million. Harper and Scott Boras are looking to top that number. Machado’s contract is already setting a free-agent record — or at least it will, once it’s official. There shouldn’t be any more significant obstacles.
Machado and Harper are great. We’ve written plenty about them, because they’re great. You’ve repeatedly been looking them up, because they’re great. But, remember how Trout is also great? Trout is so great he’s been as good as Machado and Harper combined. I am not making that up, and this is not some manufactured hot take. The numbers are just sitting right there.
I am not the first person to notice this. I am not even the first person *at FanGraphs* to notice this. Here’s a comment from several weeks ago by FanGraphs user NetflixnRichHill:
Here’s a fun fact about these young free agent phenoms, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado: together, 2012-2018, they’ve produced 60.9 WAR. Over that same time, Trout has produced 64.0 WAR. I didn’t know where else to put this.
Right. It’s the truth! And to illustrate the truth, I’ve prepared some graphs. Going back to 2012, here are the year-to-year WAR numbers posted by Trout, Machado, and Harper:
Between 2012 and 2018, each player has played seven seasons. Together, that’s 21 player-seasons in all. I sorted the 21 player-seasons by WAR, and Trout has the top four. He also has seven of the top eight. Trout’s worst season has been better than Machado’s best season. Here now is a very similar plot, only with Machado and Harper added together:
There’s the one big peak, of course. That’s from when Harper won the National League MVP. Hasn’t happened since. Nothing close to that has happened since. Harper’s WAR in 2015 was 9.3. His second-best WAR has been 4.8. You already knew all this, but, this spring, Trout has talked about his desire to be more consistent. Relative to certain other star players, he’s as consistent as one can possibly be.
It’s one thing to look at WAR, and it’s another, similar thing to look at WAR per 600 plate appearances. So here are adjusted versions of the two plots above:
Nothing too different there. Here’s Trout against Machado and Harper combined:
Again, as you can see, big peak in 2015. That stands out as the anomaly. On a per-PA basis, Trout was better than the two players combined in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018. In 2013, he fell short by less than one win.
The advantage of tables is that they can put numbers together. Up there, you see all the individual seasons. Here’s a comparison table stretching back seven years:
| Player | PA | wRC+ | BsR | Off | Def | WAR | WAR/600 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Harper | 3957 | 140 | 11.0 | 199.7 | -30.1 | 30.7 | 4.7 |
| Manny Machado | 4074 | 120 | -5.9 | 90.7 | 64.3 | 30.2 | 4.4 |
| Harper + Machado | — | 130 | 5.1 | 290.4 | 34.2 | 60.9 | 9.1 |
| Mike Trout | 4538 | 174 | 50.4 | 444.4 | 17.8 | 64.0 | 8.5 |
As correctly noted in the excerpted FanGraphs comment, Trout leads Harper + Machado in total WAR. He’s just a little behind in WAR/600. And, you know, as we think about the present and future, it’s no longer relevant what happened ages back. Most forecasting leans most heavily on the most recent three years. So this is a 2016 – 2018 player comparison:
| Player | PA | wRC+ | BsR | Off | Def | WAR | WAR/600 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bryce Harper | 1814 | 132 | 1.9 | 74.8 | -21.8 | 11.2 | 3.7 |
| Manny Machado | 2095 | 125 | -3.6 | 58.9 | 19.0 | 15.1 | 4.3 |
| Harper + Machado | — | 128 | -1.7 | 133.7 | -2.8 | 26.3 | 8.0 |
| Mike Trout | 1796 | 180 | 18.7 | 193.1 | 5.0 | 26.3 | 8.8 |
Trout is exactly tied with Harper + Machado in total WAR. Move over to WAR/600, and Trout pulls ahead by almost one full win. Look at some of the other columns. Trout has been the far superior hitter. He’s been the far superior baserunner. He’s played good enough defense at a premium position. In fact, let’s linger on that for a second.
Last spring, Trout’s goal for himself was to improve in the field. He was coming off a year where his numbers weren’t what he wanted them to be, so he worked to make himself a better center fielder. The result? According to Defensive Runs Saved, Trout improved by 14 runs. According to Ultimate Zone rating, he improved by eight runs. According to Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric, he improved by ten outs. Trout did exactly what he set his mind to, at an age where most players are defensively declining. And, oh, Trout the hitter was also better than ever.
In 2017, at the plate, Trout finished with a 181 wRC+. That was, at that point, a career high. He followed that up in 2018 with a wRC+ of 191. That’s the new career high. For two years in a row, Trout has walked as often as he’s struck out, while hitting for career-best power. So I’d urge you to scroll back up to look at Trout’s year-to-year WAR/600 marks. The projections all think Trout is due for a bit of a decline. You can’t blame them; what kind of human could continue to keep this up? The projections aren’t trained to deal with players so exceptional. By WAR/600, last season’s version of Trout was the best one yet. The best player in the world improved. At some point, he won’t be able to keep doing that, but I don’t know why that point would be soon. Trout is older than Harper by only 14 months. He’s older than Machado by only 11 months. He’s exactly one day older than Yandy Diaz, who’s joined the Rays as basically a prospect. By every indication, Mike Trout is very much in his prime.
The “prime” argument is a big reason why Machado could fetch $300 million. It’s a big reason why Harper might fetch $300 million. Players so good and so young are almost never free agents, and so, when they are free agents, they’re deserving of a fortune. Trout’s not a free agent, but he is two years away from the end of his existing contract. The Angels have had at least internal discussions about offering an extension. I don’t know if Trout will want to be extended, but I know it’s going to be hard to find the right terms. And it’ll be hard, because I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with a player like this. Machado is signing for a record-setting contract. Harper is looking to sign his own record-setting contract. And, combined, those two young stars have been about as valuable as one Mike Trout. I’m not sure if Mike Trout will always be underrated. But for at least the next while, he’s a virtual lock to be underpaid.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Trout is twice as good as Machado and Harper, therefore he should double their combined contracts. If he get’s anything less than 20 years, $1.2B, he got ripped off.
Math checks out.
He might get bored and go play professional football or basketball.
This is the kind of advanced analytics I use this site for
*shuffling papers around his nearly empty desk*
“Manny Machado can opt out in 2024!”
-Hal Steinbrenner-
Good stuff, Jeff. He’ll never reach the cultural saturation of past greats like Babe Ruth or Willie Mays, but he’s the best player in the history of the sport, and it’s a great privilege that we get to watch him in his prime. I’ve only gotten to see him play live in Boston and Seattle, but I’m planning a trip to SoCal this season so I can watch him at Angel Stadium.
I always try to get to the stadium when the Angels are in town to see Trout, always cool to see Trout live
It’s definitely too early to call him the best player ever. If he stays on his current trajectory, he probably will be, but that’s a very significant if.
He probably won’t be, because health will eventually end his career and erode his skills. But man, he’s got a real shot to be The Greatest* ™, and that’s something we haven’t had a chance to say in a while.
*no ‘roids or pre-integration players under this trademark
Just to follow up on this: A little before August Fagerstrom did his “getting Trout past Babe Ruth” article (which was awesome but would still favor Ruth because it didn’t take into account Ruth’s pitching), I tried to figure out what an aging curve for Trout would look like and whether he had a viable path to beat Willie Mays.
If you assume he gets a 10 year contract in his free agency year and that he plays it out, and if you assume he gets 9 wins this year and loses 0.5 wins per year after that (on average), then he easily tops Mickey Mantle at 112.3 wins–he beats him by about 10 wins. But he’s still shy of Hank Aaron at 136.6, and of Mays at 149.9. I think those are pretty reasonable assumptions, and if you asked me what I thought would happen, it would be that Trout would fall somewhere in between Mantle and Aaron.
Why do I say this? Here’s an other scenario, a more pessimistic outcome (assuming no devastating injuries that ruin him forever, which I don’t want to consider) would probably be something more like if you start with Dan’s ZiPs projection for next year (8.3 wins). This uses the computer’s playing time projections, and a projection which is more pessimistic than Steamer (if you use Steamer and the playing time projections, you get 9.3 wins, which would make it more optimistic than the scenario I put up above). That gets him to 115.2 wins, which is still in between Mantle and Aaron! So in order for him to decline, he would have to have some combination of putting up fewer wins next year and also have a steeper decline than the 0.5 assumption.
Trying to get him above Aaron requires assuming that he’s going to keep putting up 9-win seasons for a while. So let’s say next year he puts up 9.5 wins, and then 9 wins for the next two after that, and then he starts losing 0.5 wins per year. Under this assumption, he probably gets another contract, since he’ll still be a star at age 39, and would put him 131.2 wins. So he’d have to play until he was 41 to beat Aaron.
My conclusion is that he’s got a very good shot of beating Mantle, an outside shot of beating Aaron, and would have to basically not decline for the next few years or so to top Mays. But a kid can dream.
I don’t really think it’s worth playing with aging curves for Trout, because I don’t think the question with him is projectable. I see no reason to expect a healthy Trout to decline dramatically faster than any of the other great players. And given the WAR cushion he already has over many of the greats (he has 20 more WAR than Aaron did at this age!), he would need to age dramatically worse in order to end up behind them.
Unless, of course, he gets hurt, like Mantle did. But we can’t really predict that sort of thing; Mantle got hurt because his spike got caught on a sprinkler, for crying out loud.
Trout doesn’t need to stay perfectly healthy, of course, but he needs to play until he’s 40, and he needs to still be at least barely productive at the end. If he does that, he’s going to end up securing a position as one of the 3 best players ever.
For what it’s worth, though, my money’s on Trout scraping 10 WAR per year until he’s 30. And I don’t think he’s put up his career-best year yet.
I follow the logic that the game has generally always been improving through training, conditioning, etc. (not to mention expending the pool of potential players by allowing players of different races and more recently expanding internationally). So we can try to make vague arguments about what might have happened if Mays had access to the type of trainers and analytics used today or how good Babe Ruth would have really looked if he had to actually face black and Japanese pitchers, but I’d rather just appreciate that we’re seeing the game being played at it’s highest level ever right now, and that the best players now are mostly better than the best players of the past.
Really, Trout’s only competition for GOAT that I see is Barry Bonds, and Trout is a couple of years ahead of Bonds pace.
Personally, I think that if Trout makes it to 34 or 35 in relatively good health then Manfredbot 2.0 should institute a temporary “Lift all restrictions on PEDs and give them all to Trout just to see if it turns him into late-career Bonds” rule. Then we can finally have some fair comparisons and we might not even need the internet anymore.
It’s annoying that he has no personality. Kind of like Tim Duncan — off-the-charts numbers, but as interesting as a bowl of cheerios in lukewarm water.
Would you prefer that he have a* bad* personality? He could fight with and throw his teammates under the bus, bitch about being underpaid, publicly criticize management, act like an entitled punk, etc. Seems like he has a pleasant, neutral personality.
So he doesn’t say clever things on Twitter or joke around in an amusing way. He’s an amazing ballplayer whom I wish would move to a different division or, preferably, the NL (Mariners fan, here). Seriously, Mike…please stop beating up on my team.
Semi-interesting question: how do you discount for risk investing all that WAR in one (arguably) human body instead of two? The general argument is that it’s worth more to have stars because of roster management (and the basic truth that you only get so many guys on the field at once), but you could see (Harper + Machado) as a risk pool that’s probably better than (Trout alone) because it has better consequences for any given single injury.
Probably depends on the injury risk. It’s not like Harper and Machado have zero risk themselves.
I imagine teams might estimate playing time into buckets:
Trout has a 10% chance of 200 or fewer PA in any given year
25% of 200-400
40% of 400-600
25% of 600+
Maybe they even get more granular than that.
But if they do that for all 3 players, I am sure they can run a statistical analysis of the value of 1 guy vs 2.
I’m of the mind that it’s usually a better scenario to have as much WAR in one human body instead of two. As we’ve gone through the ZiPs projections, there’s been a surprising number of 1.5-2.5 win players stuck in reserve roles–guys like Tyler O’Neill and Jeff McNeil and even some guys whose last names don’t rhyme with “eel”. If you have a team full of average regulars, the “wins above replacement” is replaced by the “wins above average”, and since you’re subtracting two average players out of the lineup instead of just one, you’re essentially gaining an extra two wins by having it in one body.
The irony, of course, is that Mike Trout is on a team where he’s not getting a lot of help, and for quite a while he’s been surrounded by several glaring holes on his team. So in that case, it probably doesn’t make any difference whether it’s one player or two.
Regarding injuries, I am not entirely sure the math checks out on spreading the risk around (but I’m not entirely sure the math checks out the other way, either!). If all players, hypothetically, have a 10% chance of being on injured reserve, then you have the same risk but for two players–you have less of a chance of being out all 10 wins at one time, but a higher chance of being out 5 at any given time. If someone has time, they should calculate this out and see what the advantage actually is because it’s hard to conceptualize doing math in my head where the advantage comes in.
Just to be quick and simple about it:
One 10-win player, 10% chance of being out:
90% chance of health, 10% chance of -10 wins
Expected value: 0.9*0+0.1*(-10) = -1 win
Two 5-win players, 10% chance each of being out, independent:
81% chance of both healthy, 18% chance of one out (-5 wins), 1% chance of both out (-10 wins)
Expected value: 0.81*0+0.18*(-5)+0.01*(-10) = -1 win
thank you – far too many people seem to lack the understanding of how WAR works. One 10-win player is the same as two 5-win players
It’s more about roster flexibility, no? Having a 10 win player in just one slot allows you to improve the second slot, in a way that you can’t with two 5 win players filling up both slots.
Thanks! This is what I was trying to do in my head, and it seemed intuitively like it would come out the same, but I can’t actually do that much math in my head (I start forgetting the beginning of what I was doing pretty quickly).
It’s shocking so many eels are in backup rolls?
This is so awesome I wish I could have upvoted early and often
You win the FG comments section today. Get yourself a 2-for-1 deal for lunch and enjoy.
Mmmm, eel rolls. I wish they weren’t environmental disaster.
I’ve made a couple efforts to start writing an answer to this question, which I was going to caveat by saying my cop out answer is that it’s a great question for Dan Szymborski that he could answer far more precisely than me. I’ve convinced myself that the answer is complicated enough that I don’t even want to hazard a guess with my limited statistics knowledge.
I’m pretty sure that a good explanation from Dan would be too long for a chat answer, but maybe he’d be game if someone could find a way to phrase the question in terms of different types of chili and his cat. Or, more realistically, maybe he’ll find the question interesting enough to write up as a post at some point after he’s done unveiling 2019 ZiPS.
One complication, I think, is that it’s not just that the projections for Trout, Machado, and Harper are all probability-weighted averages with individual variances: so is the replacement level projection for the player that a team pairs with Trout. Even if we assume for the sake of they hypothetical that a team won’t go out and acquire a 1 or 2 WAR player via trade or free agency, I suspect that our limiting assumptions may make a difference here. My replacement level player *could* perform worse than 0 WAR – but what if I get to have 3 of them? And then the playing time during the year is weighted toward whatever one I think is best at the time based on spring training, MLB performance, and AAA performance?
As a slight aside: this answer may well be different for teams at different points on the win curve. For example, a team constructed with a true talent level up in the 90 to 95 win range will normally want to have a relatively low variance roster overall. (Perhaps that can depend on divisional competition, but that’s at worst a wild card favorite.) At that point I’d say that a team is more like the classic model of a diversified investor: if your investment mix can hit the same expected return with less variance, then it’s by definition a superior portfolio. So we want the overall roster with less variance.
What about a 75 win true talent team, though? At that point I’d say that you should want performance variance because the upside is improving enough to be in the mix for the playoffs and the downside of losing 10 fewer games isn’t *that* much worse once we’re already out of the playoff mix.
That said, there may be enough inherent performance variance in *any* projected team – between how players perform at linear weights, then sequencing converting to runs, then runs converting to wins – that my distinction above doesn’t matter.
Sorry that I’m writing in circles around the topic and not answering. It is a very good question.
Depending on the flavor of WAR used, Trout would have ranked 9th or 12th on the HOF ballot this year. With a “typical” Trout year, he’ll make the top 5 on next year’s.
He won’t be a FA till he’s 29. And he plays a position (CF) that most guys in their 30’s don’t play. And he’s not built like most guys who play CF (6/2″, 240 lbs). So how do you pay him for his 30’s? How can you predict that he’s going to be able to play CF when he’s 35+? When does he slide to LF, and when to DH?
He doesn’t have to play CF to be an MVP caliber player. He’s a similar and maybe even slightly better hitter than Albert Pujols was in his prime, and there’s no reason to think Trout can’t be an above average defender in LF for years to come.
He’ll be a good defender in LF. He may even be the kind of athlete who doesn’t need to DH and just retire as an OF.
Or move to first rather than DH if need be.
I would only worry about Mike Trouts weight. If you read scouts talk about him from high school , that was always mentioned. Him eating 7 hamburgers a day, etc. I’d imagine now that he has a lot of money, he probably has better influences around him, but you can’t be too sure. Seems to me Mike Trout is different every year. One year he is fat, one year he steals bases, one year he can’t hit a high fastball, one year he can’t play defense. But the end result is always him being the best player in the game, so who cares.
I mean, one of the two greatest players ever had significant weight issues (for his time). Why do we assume weight is automatically bad?
He’s underrated, like the Beatles in their time, hard to appreciate what they/he did until you look back. Doesn’t help his case that he’s so darn normal outside of the grass, or likely it does because he gets quietly to do his normal thing outside of doing a thing noone else comes close to doing year in year out.
The Beatles were underrated? By whom?
I don’t know if Billsaints means underrated, or taken for granted. Trout appears to have joined the short list of sports superstars (LeBron, Gretzky, Jordan) who rose so quickly to the top of their sport that you end up yawning when they put up yet another MVP-caliber season. I wasn’t around for the Beatles career, but I can see where their dominance was taken for granted in their time.
By people not old enough to buy The Beatles records when they were still together. They didn’t tour after 1965. The crowds were just to crazy. Stadiums weren’t big enough.
Not wanting to spin off troutish topics. But what they did was so incredible in the amount of time they did it they were underrated. No band has come close to their musical output or influence in such a short amount of time.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672616-nothing-is-real
Contemporaries
Mike Trout has more WAR/600 PA than Jesus.
Or Felipe or Manny.
But does he have more WAR than all the Jesuses combined?
One day, Mike Trout is going to start to slow down. He’s still going to put up great numbers, but no-one wins the battle against time. And we are all going to step back in awe, and realize we’ve seen one of the all-time greats. His five most similar batters through age 26? Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr. Mantle, Aaron, and Cabrera. Not bad.
When you sort by WAR through age 26, Trout is first, as we all know. The first non-HOFer below him is ARod at 7, whose numbers obviously would put him in. Andruw Jones at 21 is next, and he should arguably already be in. Joe Jackson at 22, also had the numbers.
Sherry Magee is the first “real” one at 24, but even he probably could be/should be in.
John McGraw and Cesar Cedeno at 29 and 30 are the first who really have no argument for being in as a player (McGraw is in as a manager, I think).
That means the 27 guys below Trout at his age were all among the greatest 250 or so players in history.
McGraw was definitely in as a manager, but would have made the Hall of Very Good as a player. Sort of like Joe Torre, but less of a player and more successful as a manager.
McGraw had an insane peak and has a legit case as a player. Cedeno right below the borderline for me.
Cant even imagine what his free agent deal will be if he puts up two more 10 WAR seasons
I think he could probably get 8/$400 even at age 29.
That would be a massive underpay, but I agree – it’s going to be hard for Trout to get paid commensurate with his value because there is no precedent for his free agency. Teams aren’t going to be convinced by “well Machado got $300M and Trout is twice as good so he deserves $600M.”
Free agent signings, extensions, and arbitration salaries all rely heavily on comparable past players and Trout will get penalized substantially for not having any comparable past players.
Plus he will be 29, not 26
Baseball got ROBBED when he signed his extension.
Even if/when he swaps out of CF, he’s looking more than good enough defensively he’d be a positive there still, and continue to just rack up comically impressive WAR. Dude is insane. And he really does still seem underrated somehow.
I don’t think WAR/600 works the way you think it works.
yes, this. You could say Mike Trout and a replacement level player are equivalent to Harper and Machado. Put another way, double the WAR doesn’t make you “twice as good” it makes you contribute “twice as much WAR”.
Ramon Laureano, again, coming out of nowhere.
I just hope that if he becomes a free agent he doesnt have to wait til spring training to sign.
If MLB can’t find a way to market this guy, they should find a new marketing department.
You have to cooperate in order to make a marketing campaign work. Do the TV commercials, establish and then act according to some marketable persona. Trout, to his credit IMO, has done none of that. I mean, doesn’t he want to be a meteorologist when he gets out of baseball? Not a TV one either, just a plain ol’ meterologist?
I thought, this can’t be true, so I googled it. The first article that came up said “Mike Trout won’t stop bothering his wife about weather alerts.”
In another article, he admitted he got up once an hour to measure the snowfall near his house.
In case you are wondering what the academic preparation is for being a meteorologist, I looked up the requirements at Penn State for the undergraduate degree. There are few different tracks, but they involve courses like “Atmospheric Thermodynamics” and “Synoptic Meteorology Laboratory.” Some tracks also require GIS mapping, others require a very deep dive into the physics of it. This is not underwater basket-weaving.
Wow.
That inspired me to Google Mike Trout’s views on analytics, and the first hit was a Verducci SI article about Trout from last July. It stated that Trout cares little about analytics in the course of recounting the same story about him improving his CF play.
A bit surprising, as I thought that an interest in meteorology might correlate with an interest in predictive statistics.
I imagine it’s kind of like being a jazz improviser. You can choose to understand the theory but focus on deep listening while improvising so that you’re not too in your head and are more reacting to the moment, or you can take the approach of many in the jazz academic field and improvise using worked-out theory (I’m going to play this line/lick/scale/whatever over this chord progression, etc.). Neither are right or wrong, just depends on what works for you.
He’s a perfect baseball player that likes his hometown sports, the outdoors, and (I guess the scientists thought it would be funny) meteorology. He has no opinions, seemingly takes no offense (Yordano Ventura yelled at him once and he didn’t smile), and talks slowly enough that he doesn’t say anything appreciably stupid. I love and envy Mike but he can’t pass the Turing Test.
We need a Contract Crowdsourcing for hypothetical 2018-2019 free agent Trout
Like I said above, it’s going to be hard for Trout to get paid commensurate with his value because there is no precedent for his free agency. Teams aren’t going to be convinced by “well Machado got $300M and Trout is twice as good so he deserves $600M.”
Free agent signings, extensions, and arbitration salaries all rely heavily on comparable past players and Trout will get penalized substantially for not having any comparable past players.
That said, I still think he would get 10 years, $425 million with two opt outs if he were a free agent this offseason.
The inflation article from December comes to mind showing ARods 10/250 was worth 592 in today’s baseball dollars.
Here’s a fun fact about those two bums that can’t measure up to even a semi-Trout: the top career comp on Baseball Reference for both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado is Josh Donaldson. This means that Harper’s and Machado’s early 20’s have most closely resembled Donaldson’s peak years (since he blossomed so much later).
So how do Donaldson’s peak years measure up? Here’s the list of all the third basemen in the history of baseball with more WAR in their age 27-31 seasons than Josh Donaldson:
– Wade Boggs
– Mike Schmidt
– Alex Rodriguez
– Eddie Matthews.
…and that’s it.
Impressive, but what about any five-season stretch, as opposed to only age 27-31 seasons?
Over any five-season stretch, the only third basemen to have more WAR than Donaldson’s 2013-2017 total are the four guys above, plus fellow Hall of Famers Ron Santo, George Brett, and Frank “Home Run” Baker.
Wow, I was expecting Brooks Robinson to show up in that list!
Almost. Robinson had 32.7 WAR from 1964-1968, vs. Donaldson’s 34.3 peak.
Just great to watch Trout continue to set his bar higher every year, and then surpass it. Who will he leapfrog in WAR this year who is already in the HOF?
Who is this fish man you speak of? Living on the east coast with a young daughter who likes to wake up at 5:45 am, I’m going to miss the career of the greatest player of his generation (except day ganes, or if they ever got in the playoffs) unless he moves to the central, or hopefully east coast.
If you wanted to you could buy MLB.tv and watch replays of Angels game whenever you want.
OK, I’ll bite. Assuming he meets his ZiPS projection of 8.3 WAR for 2019 (the lowest of the 4 listed on Fangraphs), the first Hall of Famer that Trout will pass this year is Tony Gwynn. He will then pass Edgar Martinez, followed by Craig Biggio, Harmon Killebrew, Tim Raines, Robin Yount, Joe Cronin, Jesse Burkett, Barry Larkin, Willie McCovey, Ozzie Smith, Paul Molitor, Carlton Fisk, Johnny Mize, Jim Thome, Ivan Rodriguez, Harry Heilmann, Al Simmons, Gary Carter, 19th Century Billy Hamilton, Eddie Murray, Frank Thomas, Rod Carew, Arky Vaughan, Reggie Jackson, Luke Appling, and Fred Clarke*.
* Note: upon his election to the HOF in January 2020, Derek Jeter will have also been passed by Trout.
He will also pass DiMaggio on the CF JAWS list, and has a good chance of passing Griffey, too.
Will also pass probably all these guys on the all-time Off RAA list: Dick Allen, Willie Stargell, Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Harmon Killebrew, Willie McCovey, Reggie Jackson, Edgar Martinez.
If he passes Griffey, he’d be in the top 5 in the all-time CF JAWS list. Damn.
Heck, if Trout was 2018 Chris Davis for each of the next two years and then retired, he’d not only meet the 10-year eligibility requirement for the HOF, he’d still be #7 on the CF JAWS list, 3.5 JAWS above the average HOF centerfielder.
This was written almost a year ago:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mike-trout-is-now-an-average-hall-of-famer/
And by the way, all he has to do is show up for the first (or any) game in 2020, and he’s HOF-eligible.
I’m sure that if something catastrophic happened (let’s assume injury rather than something worse), he would still get voted in as an exception.
No wait… THIS is ridiculous…
That’s just ridiculous…
This ignores the giant reason why Trout is so much better than having both MM and Harper on your team; he only takes up one roster spot. For peanuts you could add ANOTHER war or two to the other roster spot available. This is the whole point of the nonlinearity of WAR value, which would be a fantastic topic to dive deeply into if you ever needed something to write about.
The counterpoint to this is: the Angels roster.
Maybe they ran out of peanuts?
Excellent point, and so long as we’re talking about non-straight-up-WAR reasons why Trout is better than Machado and Harper combined, he has never had a hint of any sort of problem with attitude, dirty plays, lack of hustle, or cockiness that so many fans dislike Machado and Harper for.
and he had also never made a media splash either. two sides of the same coin.
If you can add 1-2 WAR for peanuts, then WAR is broken. The very basis for WAR is that you can add a 0 WAR player for nothing.
Unless by “peanuts” you mean 4 or 7 or 8 Million, in which case that’s just a market inefficiency that teams are taking advantage of (either intentionally or by having these players fall in their laps).
Also I’d argue that taking up 2 roster spots that total 9 WAR is not much worse than taking up 1. Taking up 10-15 roster spots that total 9 WAR is.
Every farm system has a minor league callup ready to add a war or two for peanuts, as in, league minimum for many more years. Also see all the deals so far this year in the 4 million dollar AAV range.
There’s another factor to consider, though. If you have a Harper and Machado in the same lineup, each will produce slightly more than they would if each was surrounded by lesser players. E.g., if Machado bats ahead of Harper, he will score more runs than he would with a lesser player following him, and Harper will drive in more. Other things being equal, each will also get more PA than they would otherwise, which will further increase their production. Trout alone in a lineup–again, other things being equal–doesn’t get this benefit.
WAR doesn’t take this into account, because it’s context-independent, but this can be a significant factor.
He is baseball’s equivalent to Secretariat.
Hay, I love Secretariat as much as anyone, but he only won by 31 lengths. Trout has already lapped the field.
Just neighing.
I just want to say that you are my favorite joke account on this site.
You could ask the question how good Harper is anyway. He had a monster year but the last 3 years (16-18) he is 34th in war with a little over 11 behind guys like lo Cain, Simmons, dozier and other “non stars”. Maybe Bill James is right that Harper isn’t a true superstar caliber player (not agreeing with a lot Bill says nowadays but he might have a point here).
Now Harper is still a good player nd he missed some time with injuries but those have been present his whole career. May be Harper really is “only” a true talent 4 win guy who occasionally has a year above that which still is very good but of course not top10 in the majors kind of good especially if his defense decline is real.
Fun Trout stat I noticed while playing with the Leaderboards this offseason – through his age 26 season Trout has 240 HR (8th all-time thru age 26) and 189 SB (65th all-time). There are a couple ways you can go with that one:
– nobody has more of both through age 26
– the most SB for anyone with more than 200 HR is ARod with 160
– the most SB for anyone with more than 145 HR is Strawberry with 165 (forgot how much that guy ran when he was young)
– Conversely, the most HR for anyone with more than 189 SB is Barry Bonds with 142 (Cesar Cedeno is not far behind at 135)
– you have to go to the age 28 season before anyone has more of both than Trout has at age 26 (ARod and Strawberry)
Lord have mercy.
Yes, he will be the youngest member of the 200/200 club. But will he make the 300/300 club eventually?
A few other random acts of praise:
1) Trout has the most fWAR in baseball since 2006. That’s thirteen years, almost half of which he didn’t even play.
2) Since 1992, the first full season after Trout was born, only 14 players have more WAR
3) His career WAR/PA is second only to Ruth
And yet the Angels can’t make the playoffs? once for his entire career and most years not even in the running. Criminal.
The Pujols contract is a big reason why, but they also have been a bit cheap
Mike Trout is the God-Emperor of Anaheim.
Why is no one talking about this:
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/getting-mike-trout-to-168-4-war/
Fangraphs/Trout = on pace!
I can’t get over how August called A-Rod the all-time leader in HRs in that article.
This kind of prognostication skill is why August got hired away.
It’s pointless to compare Trout to his contemporary peers except for the lols. But he still has a long way to go to catch Ruth/Bonds/Mays etc.
Here’s what is crazy to me: if any player in baseball other than Trout or Betts has a 7-WAR season this year, even Lindor, Ramirez, Bryant, Judge, etc., they would be out-performing their projections. Even for Betts, that would be an extremely successful season. If the Padres could take a guaranteed 7-WAR season from Machado, they would sign up for that in a heartbeat. Several no-doubt Hall of Famers never once had a 7-WAR season (Paul Molitor, Ozzie Smith, etc.). But if Trout plays the whole season and puts up 7 WAR (which is a great season!), people will legitimately be disappointed and concerned that he is a shadow of his former self.
I like to put this up every year about now – Trout is projected for roughly a 9 WAR season. THat’s average for him, that’s run of the mill. The list of HOFers (& I’m talking good HOFers) who either have zero or maybe 1 or 2 seasons above 9 WAR is truly mind-boggling.
Betts’ 2018 season was almost certainly a career year for him, seeing that it was simply one of the best seasons of all time.
Trout had an almost identical season as a 20-year old rookie.
There are 230 major-league players in the Hall of Fame and 175 total seasons of 9.1 WAR or higher.
Mike Trout has five 9-WAR seasons. That is five more than the following players who combined had ZERO 9-fWAR seasons: Hank Aaron, Wade Boggs, Reggie Jackson, Mel Ott, Frank Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Roberto Clemente, Chipper Jones, Rod Carew, Frank Thomas, Ozzie Smith, Jim Thome, Paul Molitor, and Brooks Robinson.
This.
Came here for gratuitous TroutPorn. Wasn’t disappointed.
Super cool!
That’s cause Trout’s a freaking android god….and he should be paid twice as much as Machado and Harper. If I wasn’t homebound, I’d pay to see Trout play, not those two(no offense)….oh wait, I do, I pay for the package just to see Trout.
Would somebody in Anaheim please go get a megaphone, turn it on, and yell at Angels Stadium everyday that they have the greatest all round player to play baseball and they can’t even play a wildcard game so the rest of us can watch him play in a meaningful game. PLEASE GET SOME PITCHING so the rest of the country can watch him play after the regular season is over!
This appears to be the problem with baseball, as a microcosm of society: the revenue sharing with players, as a percentage of the aforementioned, is too low. However, 25-40, $20-30MM players is not sustainable.
The owners are akin to the founder, the best players are the CEOs, the rest of the MLB roster makes up all of the various employees that run the organization, and the rookies are the unpaid interns. While the founder gets the lion’s share, and the CEO makes a disproportionate amount of money, everyone else is undervalued. A payroll floor would go a long way to force redistribution, increase competitiveness, and improve labor relations. It almost seems as if the arbitration process gives us a model that would be best to ensure that everyone is fairly compensated.
Wow, a lot of siding with the owners in the votes here.
If you’re going to do that, you are implicitly endorsing tanking: keep that in mind.
I will trade you Mike Trout for Manny Machado and Bryce Harper straight up, no question,
I think it is appropriate that Jeff’s last piece for FanGraphs was about Mike Trout.
What are the rules on having parts of the franchise offered in player contracts? The Angels tried something similar originally with Pujols didn’t they? Trout damn near is worth just giving him the franchise when he retires, just incredible
I have wondered if some teams are just waiting/saving/praying for a shot at signing Trout in 2021 (ahem Dodgers Yankees) so not playing with Machado and Harper.
Let’s put the graphs back in fangraphs, eh? This article begs for a bar chart. Line graphs are for time-series, but the way we treat player-seasons suggests bar graphs would be better suited. Specifically, this data would be better visualized by a bar graph, with Trout as one series, and a stacked bar graph of Harper & Machado’s combined WAR for comparison.
On another note, I’ve always enjoyed your work Jeff, and wish you the best with the Rays!
Using fWAR rate and PA, ages 24-26, debut 1900 onward, comps:
Mickey Mantle
Rogers Hornsby
Ty Cobb
Jimmie Foxx
Tris Speaker
Joe DiMaggio
Willie Mays
Eddie Collins
Mike Schmidt
Barry Bonds
Here is what these guys did going forward (counted any 100% missed seasons, military aside as -1 win):
27: 7.7 fWAR
28: 8.6 (excludes DiMaggio)
29: 7.7 (excludes DiMaggio)
30: 7.4 (excludes DiMaggio)
31: 6.8
32: 7.1
33: 6.9
34: 4.8
35: 5.3
36: 4.3
37: 4.2
38: 2.8
39: 2.2
40: 0.9
41: 0.2
Trout, 24-26 was worth 26.3 fWAR; the comps averaged 24.4, so tack on 7.8% to those and figures and smooth them out into an aging curve and at $8M/win plus 5% per year, then I get extension values (including the 2019-2020 already on the books):
8/$350M
10/$400M
12/$430M
Even without the 7.8% correction, there is 57 fWAR in the first eight years. Even without the 5% per year, that is > $450 million for eight years. Unless I’m missing something.
In retrospect this is almost as fitting a last post for Jeff as it could have been. The only better one would be:
“Willians Astudillo threw the worst called strike of the season to Mike Trout”
Jeff – Your table has Machado+Harper at 9.1 WAR/600. You’re adding their individual WAR/600 together, which of course is wrong for a rate stat. Their combined WAR/600 is 60.9 x 600 / (3957 + 4074) = 4.55. WAY less than Trout’s 8.5.
I am new here, so I have a very basic question. Does this mean that Trout was twice the player that Machado (or Harper) was over the same span of time?