Greater career - Mike Trout or Bryce Harper?

They didn't even give us the day off work.

http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/131492/april-28th-is-mike-trout-and-bryce-harper-day

I bet the two of them have homered on the same day four or five times already this year (including yesterday and today). I have shrewdly concluded that they're secretly competing with each other.

they used to dislike each other but i'm not sure if they care anymore

When you get these unspoken rivalries at the top (and I realize that career-wise, it's a mismatch for Trout; I mean more of an in-the-moment thing, when Harper's at his best), they can be friendly (Magic-Bird) or not (Tiger-Phil). Bonds vs. Griffey/McGwire/Sosa/the world was evidently fueled by (justifiable) anger on Bonds' part.

No idea where these two guys stand, but I do think they're watching each other.

I can't imagine anyway disliking Trout.

Anyone*

good URL

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2017/5/15/15631942/bryce-harper-mike-trout-barry-bonds-ted-williams-babe-ruth

Bryce's OBP is .500 right now wtf

He's going to totally mess up the saying about even the best baseball players failing more often than they succeed

Now what will I tell my dog when she messes up

they're 1-2 in wRC+ right now

trout's at .352/.450/.752, good for 225 wRC+
harper is .384/.500/.752, which after adjusting for league and park is a 215 wRC+

Home runs for Trout-Harper.

I just checked--fifth time this season. I don't have anything to compare that with, so I don't know if that's more often than you'd expect or not.

back of the envelope, but if you imagine a 40 HR hitter, they hit a home run 24.7% of the time (simplifying things by assuming they only hit a single home run in 40 different games, but whatever).
so the chances of two 40 HR hitters hitting a home run on the same day is roughly .247 * .247 = .06 = 6% of the time, or about 10 games.

ugh, i hate myself and my typos and my inability to wait for 5 seconds and reread things before posting them. i'm sorry.

"about every 10 games", i meant"

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Thanks--so basically exactly what you'd expect. 10% of the 45 games they've each played would be 4.5, and they're both hitting closer to 50-HR rate, accounting for the extra half-game.

it would happen 10 games per season, i mean. jesus christ i am the worst, sorry.

looking at trout and harper's numbers so far, they're both on pace for 49 home runs (taking into account their homers per game and also the % of games they've played his season vs the total number of games their teams have played).

so on days when they play, they hit a home run 30% of the time (again with the simplifying assumption that they don't have multi-homer days). if they both play the same day, the chances they both hit a home run are .3 * .3 or 9%, or about 15 times over the course of a season.

anyway long story short, if it's happened 5 times this season and you'd expect 15 total times, and we're not yet a 1/3 of the way through the season, they're ahead of the normal pace for that happening. but probably not by too much. :)

jeez karl malone's poorly thought out math has just about ruined my day

not just the bad math, the typos

i'm a part of the problem

<3

in order to make up for it i pledge to drink every night until trout and harper both hit a HR on the same day

I might try something similar one day for McGwire/Sosa in '98, the clearest example I can think of where two guys, from June or July forward, were surely cognizant of what the other was doing (which, seeing as they're just barely ahead of random distribution, you've probably disproved with Trout/Harper).

Counting-stat update: 1,000th hit for the old guy, 150th HR for the kid.

Assuming Trout gets his 1,000th hit today, on his 26th birthday, he'll be on pace to get 2,000 hits by age 52. Truly incredible.

— Greg (@grogg) August 7, 2017

haha

lol

Old guy just homered, which he reportedly does regularly on his birthday.

athletes are weird

Birthday Gift from the boys !! #Angels pic.twitter.com/fRUlEsn07I

— Mike Trout (@MikeTrout) August 7, 2017

update

https://i.imgur.com/y2wJXFr.png

fWAR rank, Trout vs Harper

2012 1 - 32
2013 1 - 37
2014 1 - 159 (harper injured)
2015 1 - 1 (tied for first with 9.3)
2016 1 - 68
2017 4- 24
2018 (so far): 1 - 45

this isn't really a question anymore, is it

hall of famer vs top 5 player ever

not so sure about the first part

he's exactly 1/3 of the way to 500 HRs and has about 900 hits, gonna finish his age 25 season with about 31 WAR, I think he's a great bet

he's very good and started very young, so yeah he's a good bet. but idk -- he's had one incredible season, a couple all-star seasons, and then some regular major league corner outfielder seasons

he's 5 WAR behind andruw through age 24, and while i don't expect harper to fall off a cliff at 31, it doesn't seem like his defense will help him much either.

there's plenty of time left, and maybe he'll be rejuvenated when he gets to play wherever he wants, but after that 2015 season i think we all expected something more

Harper seems like a guy who could fall into a Tulo injury hole any minute. I think any team signing him for $400 million might wind up with a disaster.

Go Yankees

I guess the thing Harper is he’s maybe the one guy who could bust out 3 trout-like seasons in a row and it wouldn’t be THAT surprising.

I don't know last season he was in the running for MVP up until the injury, he hit a pretty solid 156 wrc+ which is what Stanton got a MVP for. This season he is walking at a career high rate, striking out at a career low rate and his babip is absolutely unsustainable. It's a weird position he is in, he is leading the league in home runs, on pace for another 40 HR season, but only has 6 doubles, all of which in a contract year. The big development is that his defense is cratering at a stunning rate, not that he was ever famous for it but this year it's just really bad right now.

In short, he is obviously not Mike Trout but then who is. He might just be Stanton and that's pretty pretty good, especially considering the numerous setbacks he got injuries wise. To me he is in the running for the HOF (through age 25 he compares well to Beltre, Cabrera and Stanton for example).

Also yeah he is not worth 400 millions even in this crazy inflated salaries context.

2015 aside, Harper feels more and more like the new Mr. May. (Or Mr. April--his career slash line for April is .309/.436/.619. No other month is close.)

He does have the foundation for a HOF career, though. Long way to go.

(Just looked up the career splits for the original Mr. May, Dave Winfield. May was only his fourth best month--April, June, and July were better. In a broader sense, though, Steinbrenner may have been on to something--his two worst were August and September. And then, the real issue, there was his poor postseason record.)

I don't know how much validity there is here, but it's an interesting approach to Harper's seasonal swings.

http://www.billjamesonline.com/how_old_is_bryce_harper/

Looking at the Active Career WAR leaders I realize:

1. Of course the only question now is between Harper and Machado, except:
2. Mookie Betts is as young and has more WAR than EITHER of those two. And is potentially better going forward if Machado stays at SS.
3. I forget sometimes just how unbelievably good Albert Pujols was. He was as good as any of these not named Mike Trout through 25 and then he just turned it up and was BETTER for five more years in a row.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mike-trout-has-been-as-good-as-manny-machado-and-bryce-harper-combined

I'm floored by the AAV, which is Jake Arrieta money. This almost seems like a deal designed to enable the #Phillies to sign a second prime free agent in two years.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) February 28, 2019

Curious how Bryce Harper's first seven seasons compare to Bobby Abreu's? Check the Play Index https://t.co/1SYvrZnKR5 pic.twitter.com/SiPbgY5CRM

— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) March 3, 2019

BA = #60 on the Mitchell Report.

lol abreu is my go-to example of WAR being a flawed metric

how so? i didn't really follow baseball during his entire career - i checked out in the mid 90s and came back in the early 2010s. but by his stats he looks really good, even by counting stats? 20-30 HRs, 30-40 steals, around .300 BA each year, really good plate discipline, high OBP?