Mike Trout Without WAR
As Mike Trout celebrates his 28th birthday today, he’s arguably the greatest baseball player of all time at his age. The case is a fairly easy one to make. Here’s what our Leaderboards look like for all players through their age-27 season.
| Name | Team | G | PA | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mike Trout | Angels | 1173 | 5157 | 72.5 |
| Ty Cobb | Tigers | 1241 | 5258 | 68.8 |
| Mickey Mantle | Yankees | 1246 | 5409 | 67.9 |
| Rogers Hornsby | Cardinals | 1119 | 4768 | 64.6 |
| Jimmie Foxx | Athletics | 1256 | 5239 | 64.6 |
| Alex Rodriguez | – – – | 1275 | 5687 | 62.0 |
| Mel Ott | Giants | 1438 | 5988 | 61.5 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | Mariners | 1214 | 5262 | 57.0 |
| Tris Speaker | – – – | 1065 | 4551 | 54.4 |
| Eddie Collins | Athletics | 1013 | 4294 | 53.7 |
| Eddie Mathews | Braves | 1177 | 5139 | 53.5 |
| Albert Pujols | Cardinals | 1091 | 4741 | 53.5 |
| Arky Vaughan | Pirates | 1149 | 5055 | 52.9 |
| Joe DiMaggio | Yankees | 979 | 4417 | 52.5 |
| Hank Aaron | Braves | 1194 | 5201 | 52.4 |
| Babe Ruth | – – – | 795 | 3130 | 51.9 |
| Johnny Bench | Reds | 1236 | 5193 | 50.4 |
| Lou Gehrig | Yankees | 921 | 4024 | 49.7 |
| Stan Musial | Cardinals | 915 | 4026 | 49.7 |
| Willie Mays | Giants | 914 | 3981 | 49.3 |
Trout is at the very top, and by the end of the season, he’s projected to add another 2.7 WAR to bolster his lead. Right now, the gap between Trout and 10th-place Eddie Collins is the same as the gap between Collins and 54th-ranked Joe Torre. To calculate WAR, we know the run-values of many of the plays on the field. We know how many runs a single, a walk, and a homer are worth, and we can make those determinations based on the ballpark they are hitting in and the run-scoring environment at the time in order to compare players across eras. We do the same for stolen bases and extra bases taken and look at a player’s value on defense. We can put in all that information and determine that Trout is the best player this game has ever seen through a 27-year-old season. He’s already 52nd among position players all time, and a solid finish to this season and an average Trout season in 2020 might put him in the top 30.
WAR makes it really easy to appreciate the greatness of Trout, but what if we didn’t have WAR? What if we looked at Trout through a different lens? One without advanced statistics. Would we still be able to make the case for Trout as the greatest player of all time through age 27? Let’s find out.
First, here are a bunch of statistics, some more en vogue than others, that show Trout’s numbers and where he ranks among the 2,500-some qualified players with at least 1,000 plate appearances going back to 1871.
| Stat | Current Totals | Rank | Proj End of ’19 Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| BB | 780 | 5 | 3 |
| XBH | 573 | 8 | 4 |
| H+BB | 2081 | 6 | 4 |
| HR | 278 | 7 | 5 |
| R | 881 | 10 | 9 |
| 2B | 250 | 26 | 17 |
| H | 1301 | 34 | 22 |
| RBI | 737 | 26 | 22 |
| SB | 198 | 91 | 82 |
| BA | .306 | 186 | 186 |
Trout looks impressive with homer and extra-base hit totals that rank highly along with a huge walk number that shows he’s been on base more times that all but a few players in history at Trout’s age. He does really well in runs, is in the top 1% in hits and RBI, the top 5% for steals, and the top 10% for batting average. He is two stolen bases away from becoming the youngest player in history to reach 200 homers and 200 steals. These are all good numbers, but it is tough to compare them to other greats. To draw up a comparison group, I looked at all the players with at least a .300 batting average who were in the top 10 of either extra-base hits or hits plus walks. Then I looked at all of their ranks and came up with an average and geometric mean for those ranks.
| Player | H | BB | H+BB | 2B | HR | XBH | R | RBI | SB | BA | Avg Rank | Geo Mean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Rodriguez | 5 | 28 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 133 | 162 | 50 | 7.1 |
| Jimmie Foxx | 9 | 4 | 3 | 20 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 884 | 27 | 154 | 9.6 |
| Mel Ott | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 847 | 99 | 160 | 11.2 |
| Ty Cobb | 1 | 149 | 5 | 8 | 825 | 30 | 11 | 15 | 3 | 3 | 148 | 18.2 |
| Mike Trout | 22 | 3 | 4 | 17 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 22 | 82 | 186 | 51 | 19.8 |
| Mickey Mantle | 16 | 1 | 2 | 92 | 7 | 12 | 3 | 13 | 393 | 140 | 95 | 23.8 |
| Albert Pujols | 23 | 19 | 12 | 2 | 6 | 5 | 14 | 10 | 1075 | 50 | 193 | 24.7 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 17 | 23 | 10 | 14 | 4 | 7 | 20 | 8 | 274 | 234 | 91 | 25.7 |
| Hank Aaron | 8 | 150 | 17 | 11 | 12 | 6 | 16 | 9 | 731 | 92 | 144 | 29.8 |
| Frank Robinson | 27 | 31 | 22 | 30 | 10 | 10 | 15 | 16 | 261 | 226 | 90 | 33.5 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 15 | 33 | 13 | 3 | 14 | 9 | 37 | 5 | 1352 | 130 | 258 | 40.0 |
| Joe Medwick | 10 | 594 | 38 | 1 | 98 | 7 | 28 | 7 | 1321 | 33 | 249 | 42.5 |
| Al Kaline | 7 | 38 | 8 | 39 | 42 | 19 | 24 | 18 | 457 | 164 | 121 | 54.4 |
| Arky Vaughan | 14 | 15 | 7 | 56 | 490 | 72 | 33 | 64 | 626 | 56 | 224 | 117.4 |
If we averaged the ranks, Rodriguez and Trout are an incredibly tight 1-2 at the top with stolen bases weighing down most of the other candidates. Using a geometric mean to soften the blow a little bit for the outlier numbers, A-Rod still takes the top spot with Jimmie Foxx (1925 debut), Mel Ott (1926 debut), and Ty Cobb (1905 debut) the only other players ahead of Trout. While the statistics above are pretty easy to understand, it’s possible that people didn’t used to care as much about things like walks, doubles, and stolen bases.
If you only cared about the really traditional numbers like runs, RBI, home runs, hits, and average, and you believe they should all count equally and compared among the players without using rankings, I have another solution for you. I looked at the top 1,000 players by plate appearances in history through age-27 seasons, which requires around 2,300 plate appearances. I looked only at runs, RBI, home runs, hits, and batting average. I looked within the 1,000 players to find averages and standard deviations for these numbers and created IQ scores for each individual player stat where 100 is average and 15 points are given for each standard deviation away from the average. Then I took the average of the five IQ numbers for a final score.
| Name | H IQ | HR IQ | R IQ | RBI IQ | AVG IQ | AVERAGE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jimmie Foxx | 146 | 162 | 157 | 171 | 136 | 154.5 |
| Mel Ott | 155 | 155 | 163 | 173 | 124 | 153.9 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 149 | 173 | 161 | 162 | 118 | 152.7 |
| Mickey Mantle | 140 | 156 | 159 | 147 | 120 | 144.3 |
| Albert Pujols | 136 | 156 | 144 | 149 | 132 | 143.6 |
| Joe DiMaggio | 137 | 140 | 145 | 156 | 136 | 142.8 |
| Hank Aaron | 147 | 149 | 142 | 149 | 124 | 142.4 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 139 | 160 | 141 | 150 | 114 | 140.9 |
| Mike Trout | 137 | 159 | 151 | 140 | 117 | 140.6 |
| Ty Cobb | 162 | 95 | 147 | 144 | 154 | 140.3 |
| Miguel Cabrera | 140 | 147 | 133 | 151 | 121 | 138.4 |
| Joe Medwick | 146 | 120 | 136 | 150 | 136 | 137.7 |
| Frank Robinson | 135 | 151 | 142 | 143 | 115 | 137.2 |
| Al Kaline | 148 | 132 | 138 | 142 | 118 | 135.4 |
| Eddie Mathews | 128 | 161 | 141 | 141 | 102 | 134.5 |
| Lou Gehrig | 122 | 131 | 136 | 144 | 138 | 134.4 |
| Rogers Hornsby | 146 | 112 | 132 | 135 | 144 | 133.7 |
These numbers aren’t adjusted for era or ballpark. Hits are heavily weighted and essentially counted twice due to batting average’s inclusion. We know nothing about walks or other extra-base hits. Baserunning and defense aren’t included at all while we know runs and RBI are teammate-dependent. Despite removing a lot of the aspects of Trout’s game that make him a great player, and then more heavily weighting less-important factors like singles and numbers reliant on teammates, Trout still comes out as one of the greatest players in history. Traditional stats underrate Mike Trout and don’t do justice to his complete body of work, but they still put him alongside the all-time bests. We don’t need WAR to appreciate Mike Trout, but it certainly helps his case.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Kaline never hit 30 homers? CJ Cron > Kaline
I really dislike that you didn’t include Babe Ruth’s pitching WAR in that first chart. That would push him up to Jimmie Foxx territory.
More like he’d be tied with Trout. You can’t use fWAR for the old timers, the role of the K and HR in baseball was deminimus. By bWAR Ruth had 20.3, all by age 25.
And as great as Trout is, I doubt he matches Babe’s age 28 WAR.
*asks baseball gods for forgiveness*
This makes me curious. How did we determine DEF component of their WAR for players who played before the age of advanced defensive metrics? How accurate do we trust them to be?
They use Total Zone and Total Zone with with Location Data. https://library.fangraphs.com/defense/tz-tzl/
In that article they don’t talk about its accuracy. I feel like I remember Dave Cameron maybe saying to give a single season an error bar of +/- 1 win (about double the +/- 5 runs for UZR or DRS) but I could be wrong about that. We definitely have less confidence in it than the modern metrics, but it’s the best we’ve got, as far as I know.
And if you use FG RA9-WAR, to get rid of the TZ noise, he had 25 pitching WAR.
On a day in which some guy told Petriello that WAR is misleading because Trout’s team is never very good, this article serves as a reminder of how useful the comprehensiveness of WAR really is.
fish man good
If WAR didn’t exist, Mike Trout would have invented it.
when trout hits a baseball the ball not only goes forward but the earth rotates a bit less. He makes us a tad younger each time!
Makes you realize the trajectory that A-Rod was on pre roids. I tend to forget just how good he was.
According to guys he played with Arod juiced in H.S:
Yeah, there’s no easy “pre-roids” line for A-Rod, the way there is with Bonds’ 1998.
I don’t follow, since it’s not like A-Rod fell apart abnormally early or anything. He’s probably the 3rd/4th best position player of my 34-year lifetime, behind Bonds/Trout and in the same order of magnitude as Pujols.
bUt He’S nEvEr WoN a PlAyOfF gAmE
The point of baseball is to win the World Series, not accumulate the most WAR. I bet if you asked Trout if he would trade a few WAR for some actual team success he would do it in a heartbeat.
You win the world series through an accumulation of individual players being good. The best way for an individual to contribute to team success is to be a great player, which he is. What more can you expect him to do? It’s not like he can trade in 5 WAR each season to add another 20 wins to his team. A great player playing on a bad team doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge his greatness.
I agree. It is certainly not Trout’s fault the Angels have failed to put a decent team around him.
I get the sense that the post that I originally commented on was intended to mock traditional baseball fans. My comment was really intended to make the point that winning is actually something worth valuing and that the players themselves certainly value it. I don’t really see the point in being smug about being able to sort a WAR column.
London Yank… I would say that Trout actually does what you described in a round about way. He signed a contract that is far under market value for the WAR he produces, thereby allowing his team to attempt to attract players who can provide additional WAR (wins, of course, being the metric of actual team success).
If Trout were to actually trade a few WAR, it wouldn’t serve to increase team success, it would decrease it. WAR isn’t a thing that you can pursue despite team success, WAR is the description of a player’s skills and results as it relates to actual team success. The fact that the Angels haven’t been a WS threat during Trout’s career shows just how bad the roster around him has been, and how poorly the Angels have allocated their resources.
The point of baseball is to entertain fans and generate revenue for the owners and players.
I am certain Trout has never thought “maybe if I play worse, then we will win the world series.”
My obnoxious invidious sarcasm aside, I do agree with your general sentiment that Trout would probably trade regular season MVPs for World Series.
Walks have been important for a long time. I have Street & Smith’s circa 1970 that comment on OBP. We always knew how many walks Harmon Killebrew had taken along with his HR.
Bless you for knowing and properly utilizing the geometric mean. It’s such a cool statistical tool.
It’s definionally between the mean and the median. Not appreciably cool, unless you factor in skew or kurtosis.
(Naturally, small sample sizes still apply.)
One failing of the author’s analysis is the fact that players who lost time to WWII or Korea were not compensated. The most blatant case is Ted Williams. Williams was a superstar at age 20, and had Baseball Reference WAR totals of
Age WAR Average
20 6.5 6.5
21 6.4 6.45
22 10.9 7.93
23 10.1 8.48
27 10.5 8.88 Total = 44.4
28 9.9 9.05
29 8.5 8.97
30 9.1 8.99
From the above, it is a reasonable deduction that Williams would have had at least 30 additional WAR without losing those peak war years, and that his age 27 total would have been roughly about 74+/- 1
Viewed through this lens, Trout was not equal to Williams at age 27.
But … darned close. And Trout ‘s record so far benefits from not depending on hypotheticals.
Not to mention the 1941 pitçhing that The Splendid One faced.
(I am a Red Sox fan.)
Plus Trout is projected to end the season at 75.2.
This was my very first comment on FanGraphs, and I was delighted to see the wide range of useful and intelligent comments made. Of course we are guessing about Williams’ missed years, and of course Mike Trout, besides his talent, has shown a work ethic and amazing ability to improve on the already outstanding that impress me tremendously. Having seen Ted Williams hit in the mid-1950’s, when the strike zone was vastly bigger and the mound was higher, I am definitely biased. Keep in mind, Williams was a contemporary of Mantle, Mays, and Aaron in their primes.
I *am* puzzled by the comment about “1941 Pitching.” Can someone point me to an article about 1941 pitching being notably inferior? The US did not enter the war until after the 1941 season ended.
There is a very good argument to be made that Ted William’s would be the all time WAR leader if he hadn’t lost time to military service.
He lost all of 1943-45 when he was averaging better than 11 WAR/year before and after.
He lost most of 1952-53 at a time he was averaging 7 or 8 WAR before or after. He definitely could have had 40 WAR those 4.75 years which gets him over 170.
Or he could have gotten hurt or saw his performance diminish or …
Williams is amazing. If I were a betting man, I would bet on him performing well between his 24-26 seasons. But there are a whole lot of “what if’s” that could have affected his trajectory. Not only those years, but in the years to come.
I would tend to agree with this. Ted Williams is, more or less, the second most accomplished hitter in the history of baseball (you can make a case for Barry Bonds if you have an expansive definition of “accomplished”, but even then Williams might get the nod). For me, that’s enough, with the issue of his military service being a “wow, I can’t believe that!” exclamation point rather than imputing his production from lost time.
I tend to agree. It’s fun to play the “What If” game, but, even without that, he’s amazing. & bjsguess is right, we just don’t know what would have happened. For all we know, he could have gotten “Conigliaro’ed”/”Thon’ed” in his 1st AB of 1943 & never been the same.
The amazing thing about his military experience isn’t WWII. A lot of guys fought in WWII, it’s Korea. Surely, he could have gotten out of flying combat planes in something the US never even deemed a war. Instead, he did his duty & went, even though he hadn’t flown an aircraft since WWII.
Bjsguess,
“Or he could have gotten hurt or saw his performance diminish or …”
To which I’m aight say, he went to f-ing war were he was shot at with real bullets and could have died. I think he’s allowed the what if. It’s the least we could do.
Walter, I liked this comment because … well … he did go to war and was certainly shot at and suffered from a terrible ear ailment in Korea and all of that … but …
…us “allowing” him a what if is not really how that works, statistically. I like sadtrombone’s take: Williams really does not need any “what ifs” to remain valued as the best or one of the two best hitters baseball has seen. Sure, more WAR, maybe, but would that really (really) change our opinion of the player? Of the man?
Travis,
I think that’s kind of my point. He was arguably the best hitter ever AND he went to war. It’s perfectly valid to bring up that last fact and how it impacted his career and his legacy. I agree we don’t need to create a “what if” leader board, but it’s part of the discussion. At the very least he deserves a comment explaining he voluntarily joined combat forces and nearly died on a few occasions. Plus it’s pretty cool he was John Glenn’s wingman!
A better way to do it is WAR through 5000 PA, which Trout reached earlier this season. Ruth is no. 1 in that, Williams is second, and Trout is third. They are the only players with > 70 fWAR through their first 5000 PA.
Except that ignores aging curves and such. Mel Ott got his 5000th career PA in the middle of his age 26 season. He would have had around 48 fWAR up to that point.
David Wright has his 5000th career PA about a third of the way into the 2012 season, as a 29 year old. he was only about 3 fWAR behind. Certainly the age difference through 5000 PA isn’t the only difference between an inner circle HoFer and merely being a member of the Hall of Very Good, but I think it is enough of a factor that I’d try not to bake it into my comps.
There’s no early indicator that will reliably identify all HOFers (specificity) and exclude all who won’t be (selectivity). WAR/5000PA misses some players, but so does WAR at age 27. E.g., Cesar Cedeno had a higher fWAR at age 27 than Mike Schmidt, Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Thomas. and Reggie Jackson, among other HOFers. Andrew Jones who will struggle to get in, is right there with Frank Robinson, arguably an inner-circle guy.
But at least WAR/5000PA gives arguably the two greatest hitters in history, Ruth and Williams, their due.
“Viewed through this lens, Trout was not equal to Williams at age 27.”
The difference is well within the margin of error baked into the calculations. When looking at entire careers across eras you can safely say that any players who are +/- a few WAR of each other are about equal.
Fangraphs can never have enough takes on the ‘Mike Trout is amazing’ premise. Keep em coming!
Some other possible takes for future consideration:
– Who is the Mike Trout of xxx? [xxx can be any other sport or field]
– Mike Trout on ‘roids — let’s see how big that WAR can get
– How many teams in history have fielded entire lineups with less WAR than a typical Mike Trout season, and how good or sucky were they?)
– If Mike Trout’s stat line was replacement level, what kinds of stats would the Mike Trout of that league put up?
– Just how bad would Mike Trout have to be (and over what time frame), to net out as an ‘average’ HoF’er?
You’re welcome FG
My bad, had to delete my comment for stupidity reasons.
I like these questions!
– I believe there are actually a lot of lineups that have less WAR than a typical Trout season, as a matter of fact I believe there are MLB seasons where a team’s roster netted negative WAR. I believe the Tigers of ’03 may have been one such team.
– Trout to be an average HoF’er. Well, let’s say that Trout’s leg is completely mangled in some sort of accident this offseason. And that somehow his vision deteriorates rapidly. He would become immobile, though he could still swing well but would have to cheat and chase constantly. In other words, he would become his teammate, current day Albert Pujols. If he stayed “old man Pujols” for the next 10 years, he’d be an average HoF’er.
– If Trout’s stat line were replacement, the line of someone putting up 10 WAR would be ridiculous, of course, like a .450/.600/.800 slash line, at least. But… on the converse… a pitcher putting up a 6.00 ERA over 200 innings would be 10 WAR pitcher easily!
Also, I kinda wish Trout would issue a challenge to the league, that he is going to sit on his duff until June 1 and see if anyone could be better than him by the end of the year. It would be like “The Freeze” running down guys with a huge head start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6QlKwXCxxA
” If Mike Trout’s stat line was replacement level, what kinds of stats would the Mike Trout of that league put up?”
Barry Bonds in his best season had a wRC+ of 244, about 70 points higher than Trout’s career value. So if Trout were an average player, Bonds in that year was Trout of that league. Bonds in a somewhat shorter stretch, like a month, would more than be Trout in a league in which Trout was replacement level.
“Just how bad would Mike Trout have to be (and over what time frame), to net out as an ‘average’ HoF’er?”
As an article here last year pointed out, Trout was already an average HOFer in early 2018. So if he played at a replacement level from then to the end of his career.
What about: -How good would a team filled with only Trouts (and pitching equivalent Trouts) be? Would they win ALL the games, even ones they didn’t play?
And this year, especially, Trout is particularly fantastic in the traditional counting stats. 1st in the AL in homers, 1st in RBI, 4th in runs scored, 1st in XBH, 1st in walks, 2nd in total bases. So even forgetting any saber stuff at all, he’s clearly the best guy.
yeS buT hE iS noT a WiNner!!!! The dumbest thing ever said about any atheists ever!
Plus he plays for the Angels, so that’s totally blah.
I love this piece because it just taught me who Arky Vaughan was and how he had a great career before it was cut short.
Ola Arky was great. when he played everything was done in pairs.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but there is a very good chance that Trout is significantly overrated by WAR. The reason is that Trout plays in a park that WAR gives extra credit for every positive batting outcome. Park factors are actually quite problematic for extreme outlier players like Trout. Park factors describe the average positive or negative effect that a park has on a batter. However, in reality every hitter is different and the actual impact a park has will be unique to each hitter.
Park factors are very unlikely to accurately describe extreme outlier hitters like Trout very well. In reality Trout is probably much less hurt by Anaheim Stadium than is the average hitter. This is probably exacerbated by the fact that Trout has played with teammates who are vastly inferior to himself. The park factor for Anaheim Stadium will be geared towards Trout’s teammates. If so, this means Trout is given undo credit for each of his positive batting outcomes (and he has a lot of positive outcomes!)
I don’t mean to take anything away from Trout. He’s obviously the best player in the sport. However, I do think it should be acknowledged that regression equations, by their very nature, perform less well at describing outliers than they do at describing data points in the center of the distribution. Also, there is a pretty good chance that the error on Trout’s measurement is in the direction of overestimating his value.
Half of the offensive numbers in Trout’s home park are put up by visitors, and the Angels have not have a very formidable pitching staff either.
I would think the type of player that would be “immune” to negative park effects would be more like G. Stanton or J. Gallo types, guys that miss the ball a lot but when it connects, there is no doubt. I don’t perceive Trout to be that type, but there are metrics that would confirm some of the suspicions you would have about Trout’s home hitting, I just don’t know enough to serve that up myself.
Bottom line though, if we hit Trout with an extreme penalty, say, subtract 1/2 WAR per year for these factors, he’d still be #1.
Trout hits the ball exceptionally hard and he has a career babip of .349. I doubt Anaheim Stadium is taking as many hits away from Trout as it is from the average player.
His splits are nearly identical career-wise between home and road. The current multi-year PF for Angels Stadium that Bref uses (I couldn’t find what FG uses) is 99. Not exactly a huge adjustment.
So is the argument that Angels Stadium is actually a hitters’ park, but the Angels lineup sucks so bad it hides the effect moreso then (Trout + road team)?
No, the argument is that whether a stadium is a hitters park or not is in reality unique to each hitter. Park factors apply the same correction to each hitter. The correction is the mean of the effects of all of the hitters. That mean, however, has a distribution around it, and some hitters will be better represented by the mean than other hitters. The correction will be correct for some hitters, while for others it will either over- or under correct. Because Trout is a much better hitter than almost everyone else the park factors are very likely to overestimate the actual penalty he experiences by playing half his games in Anaheim.
If this is the case then Trout is given a bit extra credit for each positive batting outcome relative to the other players on his team and relative to other players in the league for him the park factors more accurately reflect their actual effects on outcomes.
We should really get an update on the “where will Mike Trout end up” in terms of WAR article. Maybe this offseason? This has been done a couple of times already, and I tried to do it once using the bank-of-the-envelope calculations.
For now: If he ends the year at 75, and ZiPs projects 35.5 wins through 2024, and he loses half a win every year from 2025-2030, that would be another 22.5 wins, leaving him at…123 wins, putting him just below Stan Musial.
One way to get him to the Ted Williams/Hank Aaron tier would probably require him starting the projected ZiPs decline about 1-2 years later. If you think he’s going to put up another 9.5 win season in 2020 and that the decline starts one year later, right away that’s adding about 7 more wins to the pile. That gets him just shy of Ted Williams. If you push the decline back two years that’s another 6.5 wins, putting him 0.2 wins above Hank Aaron and 6 wins above Williams.
So it looks like he’s very likely going to beat Mickey Mantle; he’s probably going to wind up around Stan Musial; he’s got a shot to beat out Hank Aaron and Ted Williams; and he’s probably not going to beat Willie Mays unless something really wild happens.
One of the great joys of baseball statistics is looking at the raw data and analyzing a player in comparison to another player. That is the opposite of; give me one number to tell me who is better.
Did any of them play on a team as frustrating and inept as the Angels?
The Rangers were horribly inept during the A-Rod years. Part of that was A-Rod’s contract, a lot of it was them trying to win every game 10-9.
Few things are more frustrating than watching the Angels continue to waste the best player in Baseball year after year. But, at the same time, Trout has shown a willingness to stay with the team despite their clearly demonstrated inability to field an even passingly competent team around him.
Describing the Angels teams as bad or incompetent during the Trout years is not accurate. The Orioles are bad this year; shortly before the trade deadline the Angels were 4 games over .500 and several games out of a wild card spot. They’ve been in the playoff hunt late in September multiple times, but just haven’t finished. They are in the same division as the juggernaut Astros. Their starting pitchers have endured more than their fair share of injuries. Not making excuses, but the lack of a playoff win doesn’t mean that the team has been ‘bad’.
Not being able to make the playoffs in the second wild card era, while having a huge advantage over just about every other team in baseball, is pretty bad. There’s not really any other way to spin it. If mike trout wasn’t on the angels and was replaced with an average player or worse, the past 5 seasons they WOULD have been one of the worst teams in baseball like those Orioles
The Astros have only been juggernauts since 2017. Before that they were middling and before that they were so bad fangraphs ran articles about how they were impacting competitive balance in the league. Trout has been averaging 9+ fWAR a year since 2012. When you have possessed the consensus best player in professional baseball for 8 years and in that time have only fielded a playoff team once in that period, that meets the definition of incompetent to me.
I am here for A-Rod, because I miss him. I understand he is divisive, but he was a pleasure to watch.
Hey now – Ruth also had 25 RA9-WAR from pitching, through age-27!
Great idea, great to view. Thank you.
Mike Trout actually wrote this article, and then donated it to Craig Edwards.