Greater career - Mike Trout or Bryce Harper?

Well we only got half a season of MLB data to go off of and Harper's definitely going to have a great career but Mike Trout could have a 10 WAR season at the age of 20, despite missing 20 games! It may be the second greatest age 20 season ever (next to ARod obviously). He's great in the field too. I can't vote against him at this point.

Just a guess, but I'll go with Trout.

dunno

Trout is a significantly better fielder, so I'll go with Trout.

Trout's gonna benefit in the counting stats department by being paired with Pujols and Trumbo for the foreseeable future..

I think the positional adjustment will be pretty difficult for Harper to overcome in the near term. Over the course of their entire career, I'm going to guess that Harper's power will give him an edge.

xp that's why the question is phrased in terms of WAR.

I think the positional adjustment will be pretty difficult for Harper to overcome in the near term. Over the course of their entire career, I'm going to guess that Harper's power will give him an edge.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 3:51 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark

basically my thoughts exactly

it's a clown question, bro

noooooo

Harper and Trout, asked about friendship. Trout: "We really don't like each other." Harper: "It's like Bird and Magic. He's Magic. I'm Bird."

There must be something wrong with me that I see this poll closes in 14 years yet I vote anyway.

u lyin xp

I really don't think any of us will have permission to use the Web in '26

harper i guess but good god how amazing are these two already

should probably have a companion poll that ends before ILX is a Facebook subsidiary, huh?

From Cliff Corcoran's MVP watch today:

Trout's first 258 plate appearances -- 8 home runs
Next 179 plate appearances -- 14 home runs

The second part of that would work out to 50 HR in a full season.

You have already voted in this poll and cannot vote again.

I'll be dead when this poll ends

http://www.trbimg.com/img-50358f3e/turbine/la-sp-0823-angels-notes-20120823-001/600

We'll all be dead

i will be alive and wealthy.

Only 13-1/2 years left to vote...I noticed that Harper played his 162nd game today (and hit a home run):

AB: 616
H: 175
2B: 31
3B: 10
HR: 31
R: 115
RBI: 77
BB: 68
SB: 19
BA: .284
SA: .518
OBP: .356
WAR: 6.8 (plus today)

Not sure how that measures up against the best first-162 by other players--even eliminating age from the equation, and allowing in Pujols or anybody else, it must still be Top 10.

I don't know why, but I love when players stat lines with double digits in 3B to go with good HR and 2B numbers. It just screams either 1.) I'm a crazy good athlete or 2.) I'm a crazy baseball player and am going to take every base you will give me.

how many caught stealing?

He's been caught seven times, so fairly ordinary. Don't know why I threw SB in. Force of habit--he'll be famous for other things.

Bryce should've braced for the impact with his hair.

http://d3fsqtc6sy2z27.cloudfront.net/uploads/c67d7fe02d23e32ee912303479ad4544_large

yaow

11 stitches in chin

No one posted about Trout's cycle last night? I just found out now.

he got halfway to another cycle in the first 2 innings tonight

maybe if he did more 'card tricks' like that he'd win an MVP, eh?

You're not still on that, are you? But you might be right--Cabrera's 2012 must have been a cheap card trick, because he's doing it all over again.

no disrespect to Miggy but him winning the MVP over Trout was such a joke

if Hamilton or the Grandyman hit two more then Miggy's not the MVP. why the hell do we even have an MVP award

As the season wound down last year--last week or so, say--I think the writers had decided they were going to give the MVP to Cabrera whether he got the TC or not. I'm not agreeing, but I don't think it's right to say the MVP was 100% predicated on the TC. Anyway, my point was that if there were an implied equivalency between a Triple Crown and hitting for the cycle--both just gimmicky parlor tricks--well, you know.

the triple crown is pretty impressive but then again we were a Gwynn broken wrist and a piazza lingering back injury away from a Dante Bichette triple crown so idk.

This again. I think Trout should have won but, you know, he achieved his basic rate stats -- all very close to those of Cabrera -- with 22 fewer games played. I can't fault a writer who took that into consideration and voted for Cabrera (who won by a fairly wide margin, right?).

xpost

no disrespect to Miggy but him winning the MVP over Trout was such a joke

if Hamilton or the Grandyman hit two more then Miggy's not the MVP. why the hell do we even have an MVP award

― frogbs, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 11:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is sort of a silly argument though, seeing as finishing with the most home runs IS important and awards voting is based on accomplishment relative to the rest of the players and not some random baseline. hamilton and granderson finished with fewer home runs than miggy, as did everyone else in the AL, and that's an accomplishment for miggy.

the ridiculous thing is that people still care about the triple crown at all when it's just an antique baseball card holdover that only considers one factor of offensive production and provides a good excuse for throwing out all the other ones

I'd like to point out I only called a cycle a card trick.

It's a difference of two. Obviously hitting 30 home runs in a year where the next highest guy only gets 15 is a huge deal. I mean I guess you can argue that they were going to give it to Miggy triple crown or no, which makes the voters look even worse. Miggy's season is certainly MVP-caliber but Trout's was the best since the days of Barry Bonds, and he did it while missing almost a full month.

Okay--I inferred an implication (or implied an inferrence) from Morbius that wasn't there.

I think any observant baseball fan makes adjustments as necessary. If Bichette had won a Triple Crown that year, I don't think it would have been taken all that seriously. Coors Field obviously inflated his stats drastically in all three categories, and he also clearly would have been the worst player ever to achieve a TC.

I think it's a bad choice of words to call Cabrera's MVP a joke. The wrong choice, I'd agree, but he wasn't Andre Dawson in 1987. (You've stepped that back in your last post.)

Something I hadn't noticed until looking at the boxscores for Trout's last couple of games: the Angels have been batting him second for most of this season (80%+ of his PA)? I don't get it. You've got the greatest leadoff hitter since Rickey Henderson in your lineup, coming off a year where he scored just under a run per game, and you move him down to the second spot? I thought for a second I'd see Henderson or Ty Cobb at the top of the Angels' lineup, but no.

he's gonna get that many more first-inning rbis now

iirc the stats bros claim you should use yr best hitter at #2

Interesting. I'm working on the traditional model of best all-around on-base/power guy at #3--the Pujols/Cabrera guy--the McGwires bat cleanup, and the on-base/speed guys bat leadoff. The #2 guy is the low-strikeout contact hitter with some extra-base power: Ken Griffey Sr., just to show how up-to-date I am.

stats bros also claim lineup order doesn't really matter, just get your best players the most PAs

Yes--James used to run thousands of computer simulations and found that the difference between the lineups of maximum and minimum effectiveness wasn't all that significant. (I don't remember--maybe 25 runs a year?) Having said that, I'd still rather have Trout batting leadoff than second (least of all batting second behind a shortstop with a .300 OBP). I don't know if he unnerves the opposition the way Henderson used to, but at almost a run a game, give him the extra PAs, and get him up there first every game.

both hit homers tonight.

I think the general stathead view is that Cabrera is the best hitter right now, Trout the best player.

there was an argument when bonds was going batshit that the giants should bat him leadoff to force the opposition to pitch to him at LEAST once.

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/22290653/video-mike-trout-takes-ervin-santana-way-way-deep

holy cannoli

he's gonna get that many more first-inning rbis now

iirc the stats bros claim you should use yr best hitter at #2

― mookieproof, Thursday, May 23, 2013 6:10 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah keith law says this, i'm not familiar with the rationale really

stats bros also claim lineup order doesn't really matter, just get your best players the most PAs

― ty based gay dead computer god (zachlyon), Thursday, May 23, 2013 6:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what i tell my softball team every year!

weird that trout has -0.5 dbWAR so far this year

for the last time no one care's about your friend debbie's WAR formula

haha

trout's bomb went 463 feet btw

http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py?

input slash lines, get expected runs; don't know how accurate it is today
I used it when I was playing Simnasium Baseball a bit, mostly what I gleaned is that lineup differences aren't that big as long as you don't put together the least-optimal lineup

"Leading off and playing shortstop, Dave Kingman!"

I typed in a fake lineup and tried that--pretty neat. Batting your best hitter second does yield the top dozen or so lineups.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9314060/bryce-harper-washington-nationals-aggravates-sore-knee

I can't remember how I voted in this poll, but I hope it was Trout. Hubris is going to catch up to Harper.

you think trout would meekly acquiesce to sitting out a few games?

i don't really like harper but he's 20 years old and super competitive, and if it were andrelton you'd be cheering his moxie. nothing to do with hubris (yet)

I think Harper's does dumb stuff like running full tilt into walls because he's 20 and thinks he's invincible. I used "hubris" because of the refusal to change his slides. "It hurts me to slide headfirst, but I'm not going to change, because changing might hurt." Andrelton and my other BFF, Heyward, have both done time on the DL for headfirst-slide hand injuries, and I wasn't cheering anybody's moxie.

And of course Andrelton just slid headfirst into 2nd, lol.

Harper, who twice tried to return to action after his wall collision in Los Angeles only to then be forced back to the bench, admitted that this was one of those cases. In fact, Harper says he probably should've gone on the DL after banging into the wall here at Turner Field in Atlanta on April 30, a collision that left him with a bad bruise on his left side.

"Of course. But I didn't want to go on (the DL). I thought hopefully my body could have got past it," Harper said. "I think after I hit the wall here (in Atlanta), I think I should have went on the DL, just try to get better and came back 15 days later. With a lot of guys out, I wanted to stay in the lineup the way I was swinging it. Of course, I want to play every day. It's something that, maybe I'll learn more in my career to take off 15 days instead of lose the month or whatever it is.

"If we're in September, October, I'm going to play. I wouldn't be sitting out right now. It's just one of those things where, you've got to be smart about what you do. Just try to come in every day and get better and do things the right way."
Prior to colliding with the right field wall here in Atlanta, injuring his left side in the process, Harper had a slash line of .356/.437/.744. In the 19 games he's played since that collision, he's hitting .183/.315/.350.

Harper again was asked if his all-out style of play will cause him to be more injury-prone than the average player.

"I think it's just the way I play," Harper said. "I go out there, I want to give 110 percent to these fans and for myself. I look at myself in the mirror and tell myself, 'Hey, you gave it your all today. I went 0-for-4, it happens.' A good day on the field means I'm going 110 percent, going hard, running everything out and doing things the right way. I'm not going to change that aspect at all.

"The way I work in the offseason, the way I work and get ready for my season, I don't think I'm prone to having a shorter career. I think I'm going play this game for 20 years, and I don't care what anybody says."

IOW, "My job is to play hard. Playing smart is for pussies."

With the deadline on this poll fast approaching, it might be worth revisiting. Yes, I'd still take Trout without much hesitation. But at the moment, they're in the same orbit.

Harper's advantage now is youth. He might pile up significantly better counting stats -- and rates too, assuming his speed/power holds up for the next 6-8 years at least.

Harper's huge game last night moved his OPS+ back over 200. I only count eight guys who've done that since 1960: Bonds (a whole bunch of times), McGwire, Bagwell, Thomas, McCovey, Mantle, Brett, Sosa, and Norm Cash.

in less sexy stats, 40th homer tonight

Seventh guy under 23 to do so. The others: Ott, DiMaggio, Matthews, Bench, Gonzalez, and A-Rod.

Unless Trout ups his BB% of his HR rate or Harper gets injured, I strongly suspect that this is going to be Harper from here on out. That said in terms of WAR he'll never catch up to Trout's 5/7 year peak and it might take him ten years to surpass in career WAR (a 16 WAR lead is a huge #).

Trout is 5th in the AL in homers and has just four fewer than Harper, I'm not sure why you see his HR rate as a weakness in comparison to Harper.

Trout has equaled his WAR from last year with two weeks left in the season, so he's not regressing. Maybe you're assuming that Harper will get even better, but I think it's more likely that this is his career peak season. Trout's been consistently amazing for four years, Harper has been great (and healthy) for one year.

It's def premature to declare a 'winner,' but a peak season at 22 would be... unusual.

Since I noted his slide on the Trout thread, he's had probably his best week since the break (.263/ .391/ .632).

I think (and this is just talk there is no science here who knows what these dudes will do going forward) that in order for Trout to achieve parity with Harper going forward he's going to have to either draw more walks or hit more homers (this is relative to what he's doing now). I think the speed/position/defense differences won't make up Harper's huge advantage in OBP otherwise.

I also think that going forward Harper is going to hit a lot lot more homers without necessarily sacrificing any other part of his offense. Trout may do that but to exceed Harper BB advantage it would have to be a huge jump.

Harper has also been pretty great relative to his age group from the get go. This seems unlikely to be a flash in the pan season. I'd be surprised (barring injury) for him not to continue at this level through his peak years.

harper is still waiting for the rest of his age group to break into the majors, for the most part!

i don't know who will be better. they're both phenomenal. i just hope that they both stay relatively healthy.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/bryce-harpers-quest-to-join-bonds-mantle-ruth/

I think (and this is just talk there is no science here who knows what these dudes will do going forward) that in order for Trout to achieve parity with Harper going forward he's going to have to either draw more walks or hit more homers (this is relative to what he's doing now). I think the speed/position/defense differences won't make up Harper's huge advantage in OBP otherwise.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, September 17, 2015 10:29 AM (4 hours ago)

i mean those other things were basically what made trout special! trout's a league-average fielder and baserunner at this point -- which seems crazy to say -- so if that continues then yeah, i don't think he can win a mash-off vs harper. but maybe trout slims down a bit again and improves other parts of his game; if he can do that he can be every bit as good as harper, even if harper is putting up monster offensive seasons like this

the thing too is like these kids are SO YOUNG, it seems foolish to predict what's going to happen next year with them let alone in 5 or 10 years. trout in particular has changed his game so much since he's been in the bigs

Sure this is just amateur prognosticating. That said idea of Trout slimming down strikes me as unlikely (just his build alone).

he's always been huge but iirc two offseasons ago he beefed up even more to his current state, which coincided nicely with his drop-offs on the bases and in the field

Trout is reading this thread and he's not pleased.

haha!

I just find it weird to pick through the deficiencies in Trout's game when he's putting up his fourth straight 8+ WAR season and this year is only a win or a win and a half worse than Harper in what might be Harper's peak season.

He's like 6-7 years from his peak. They both are.

xp it's pointing out deficiencies to say you suspect that he will not be as good as another player going forward?!?! Maybe I'm missing point of thread comparing these two dudes.

People seem to be assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that Trout is slowly declining (or has peaked already) and Harper will continue at his current pace (or possibly improve). I'm not really getting the logic there, for me, it looks more likely that Trout is still as great as he ever was and Harper may have peaked already. Let's wait for Harper to put up at least one more great (and healthy) season before saying this is the new norm.

Nope I'm going to predict it's the new norm! Good thing nothing depends on me being right (well maybe the respect of message board posters lol but frankly I never had much of that right).

You might have bragging rights on Friday Jan 1, 2027 when we'll finally know the answer! Those are some heavy stakes.

i think it's pretty safe to say harper has "peaked", given that he's having a truly historic offensive season. it's pretty unlikely that he's going to get BETTER. i mean what's he going to do, hit .400? put up a 13 win season?

he might go .370/.520/.730

Uh hit even more homers. Draw even more walks.

hr every at bat

People seem to be assuming (correct me if I'm wrong) that Trout is slowly declining

parts of his game (baserunning, defense) have been rapidly declining since his first full year. people quickly became married to the idea of trout as the modern day willie mays, so even if his offense makes up for it they're still gonna focus on how he went from being a five-tool guy to a one-tool guy.

If you take a single season of WAR as a measure of peak (which should be defined more broadly, but let's say you do), I don't think it would be that surprising if Trout never again reaches his 10.8 of 2012 or Harper his ~11.0 of this year (if he stays on course). However it's calculated, and I still couldn't tell you how, a WAR of 11.0+ for a position player is extremely hard to do. Six guys have done it post-war: Mantle (twice), Mays (twice), Yaz, Morgan, Ripken, Bonds (twice). Trout would have been the seventh with a full season in 2012, Harper may be the seventh this year. If you took all players since the war, it would be far, far more likely to find players who had their greatest seasons at age 21 or age 22 than players who hit 11.0+ in a single year.

If you limited that to just great players, though--and start with the reasonable assumption that Trout and Harper will have great careers--I don't know. I'm guessing the great majority of HOF players since the war had their greatest single seasons after the age of 25.

Uh hit even more homers. Draw even more walks.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Sunday, September 20, 2015 6:38 PM (51 minutes ago)

history seems to show that there's a ceiling on how much a guy can do. barry bonds excepted, i mean

Ceiling on those two isn't usually 22 though.

it would be far, far more likely to find players who had their greatest seasons at age 21 or age 22 than players who hit 11.0+ in a single year.

And very rare to in a player with WAR > 11 in an age 21 or 22 year, which makes then even more remarkable. But it doesn't make it less likely that they reach even higher peaks in their mid-late-twenties, like most players do.

@JeffPassan
Closest thing to 2015 Bryce Harper in history is probably 1993 Barry Bonds.
Harper: .343/.470/.674, 206 OPS+
Bonds: .336/.458/.677, 206 OPS+

Wow, that is close. I'm surprised, though, that Harper's OPS+ isn't the higher of the two by 5-10 points; '93 was a big hitters' year, really the beginning of the offensive boom of the next decade.

1993 NL: .264/.327/.399
2015 NL: .254/.317/.398

I guess the park adjustment is significant.

Matthew Kory, BP:

Yet another reason Mike Trout is better than Bryce Harper: choke-preventing neck width.

trout's neck would have broken papelbon's hand

lol

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/history-peaks-and-mike-trout-the-year-four-update/

Mike Trout has now played four full seasons, and he’s accumulated more than 37 WAR. Only nine players in Major League history have done that in any four-year stretch. Trout’s done it to begin a career.

post also has a nice chart summarizing the best 4-year peaks by WAR

great post. that table is fun to look at that.

Aside: somewhat incredible McCutchen has had the same 4 year peak than Cabrera and Frank Thomas.

Yeah, I was amazed to see chase utley way up on the list, above all these all time greats. I mean I knew he had a great run, but O_O

chuck knobloch!

would trout's WAR be higher if he'd had an identical performance in the (lower-offense) national league? or is that factored in/not a factor

league factors are included yeah

yeah everything in the WAR calculation is calculated relative to replacement level which itself is relative to the strength of the league, position, etc

knoblauch had a nice run for a bit there. he scored 140 runs one season!! then he made 140 errors in another season.

kind of crazy to say, but trout's got a 25 (!!!!) WAR cushion at this point. stick a fork in it

opening day homers for both of em

Trout's was impressive.

Harper's hit 2 HR tonight in two AB. He's .380 with 6 HR and 18 RBI--but he started off that way last year, too.

trout seemingly hasn't missed a beat either

Just imagine how old we're all going to feel when the poll results come in (the voting period is already 1/3 over!)

is it fair to say that cubs series fucked up BH last year?

another huge night from harper

trout read your post and decided to hit a HR

Harper's been walked all three times today, once intentionally. Hope he responds better to this kind of thing this year than he did last year.

Harper's obviously not going to keep this up, but the one thing I could see him doing this year (the way Washington's offense is going; Trout can't, or at least can't this year, because of his lousy team) is score 150+ runs, which since 1949 only Bagwell managed to do. He's scored 26 in 21 games so far (Thames has 27, but that seems a little chimerical).

yea w Zimmerman seemingly 'back', that lineup is terrifying

still waiting for the Nats to "arrive". I remember all the talk about shutting Strasburg down, it was okay because the Nats were gonna dominate for years to come - instead we got *record scratches* The Kansas City Royals!?!?

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?

he had a very nice run with the phillies, definitely in the hall of the very good but (yes subjectivity alert here) anyone following baseball at the time would not put him in the near-elite status his war would have you believe. tbf the bad back end of his career is maybe clouding my judgment a bit but walking a lot and striking out even more does not a great player make!

his career trajectory is interesting. there used to be a general idea of youth leading to a "prime" (age 25-30, give or take), then a slow decline to retirement. but in recent years that's kind of been revised to players generally being at their best in the first few years, then a slow decline all the way to retirement. but very few players actually follow that exact trajectory. bobby abreu does. he was at his very best in his first few years, then very good for years afterward, then good, then serviceable, then mediocre, then old and bad, in a very linear fashion. also very durable!

Bobby Abreu's career, in one character:

\

Abreu wasn't elite, but you could easily make the argument that he was the most underrated player in baseball during his prime.

Harper isn't elite either, save for his one MVP year.

In an O Henry twist, it seemed that when people started to pay attention to Bobby Abreu being really good 5 Tool player is when his production seem to slide. This be at the peak when he won the home run derby and then went into a total power slump in the second half, that seemed to be when his power slid of in general.

The Craig Biggio dynamic: by the time everyone notices how good you are (in Biggio's case, predicated on his getting 3,000 hits), you're no longer good.

Earlnash otm, Abreu’s career seemingly can be split into his pre-derby 6.0 WAR-type minor star seasons and his post-derby “solid but now-overrated” era.

Harper will clearly be elite at the end of this season.

I would not be surprised that Harper might win a HR title or two playing in Philly, but 13 years is a long, long time. I could see Harper getting knicked up over and over, as it has happened already. I'd probably be looking to move him to 1b pretty quick and get him out of the outfield.

DH probably will be in the NL by the time the contract hits, so it is possible that could be a benefit to Philly at some point.

http://www.dirtsheet.com/los-angeles-angels-considering-10-year-350-extension-for-mike-trout/

You have to love "considering." They're also considering offering Pujols to the Red Sox for Mookie Betts--they just want to time it right.

Who is the worst outfielder Hoskins or Harper

someone find me a position player who had a better career than bobby abreu and also never made the top 10 in mvp voting (in his league) in any season

Was going to say Robin Ventura but he had one top 6 mvp vote in 1999.

Now back to my very important question.

i feel pretty confident that hoskins is worse

Ian Kinsler, arguably. Almost the same bWAR in five fewer seasons. Also would rank higher in a list of all-time second basemen whereas Abreu would be much farther down the list of outfielders.

good call

yeah, i had the realization a few months ago that ian kinsler is one of best second basemen since integration and yet he's seen as just a good, solid player. combo of his value coming from above average (but not elite) defense, speed, above average (but not elite) offense, and playing for the tigers, i guess

oh and Willie Randolph as well, basically managed to put up a stellar WAR over an 18 year career in which he never hit more than 7 home runs in a season (finishing with 54!) but he was a good baserunner, walked a lot, and was outstanding in the field.

Found one more with a slightly higher career WAR than Abreu, his value completely camouflaged by his era and his park: Willie Davis. (Four MVP finishes in the 15-30 range.)

did willie randolph even get any interviews after being fired by the mets? far less successful managers have gotten multiple chances, but he just seemed to drop off the face of the earth

Kinsler did very well to sign with the Padres.

One follow-up on Bobby Abreu, then Trout/Harper can have their thread back.

In the history of baseball, there are two players who have played in 150 games or more for 13 consecutive seasons:

Willie Mays
Bobby Abreu (Happy 45th Birthday)

Pete Rose, Cal Ripken Jr., and Rafael Palmeiro likely would have matched if streaks were not interrupted by strikes.

— Chris Bodig ⚾ (@cooperstowncred) March 11, 2019

I know that's one of those specious benchmarks with cherry-picked parameters (if you drop it to 145 games, Aaron hits 16 consecutive seasons), but who would ever come up with Abreu as one of the two?

more hot bobby abreu content

Bobby Abreu has been selected as the 2019 Toyota Phillies Wall of Fame inductee!

He will be inducted on Saturday, August 3, as part of Toyota Alumni Weekend. pic.twitter.com/TthmZAbIpf

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) March 20, 2019

brb - have to go buy a Toyota

In the liner notes to one of the Pavement CD reissues, Stephen Malkamus references Bobby Abreyu's scream at the 2005 HR derby

I'm sure most of you are aware of this, but I'd be a little cautious about Harper's great start. April is far and away his best month historically: .310/.438/.627. No other month is even close.

MLB leaders in OPS as of this morning:

1. Harper - 1.479
2. Trout - 1.476

trout is having an insanely hot start

considering the lineup around him, i'm not sure why anyone ever throws him a strike

Trout's gonna benefit in the counting stats department by being paired with Pujols and Trumbo for the foreseeable future..
― johnathan lee riche$ (mayor jingleberries), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 2:01 PM (six years ago)

At the time, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

trumbo we believed in u

Just to jump the gun by several miles...If Trout were to win MVP unanimously this year, he'd move ahead of these players in MVP Award Shares: A-Rod, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Aaron, Mantle, Mays. (And MVP votes were easier to come by in a smaller league...DiMaggio did lose time to the war, and Gehrig's a separate thing because of an erratic MVP structure pre-1931.)

I'm sure most of you are aware of this, but I'd be a little cautious about Harper's great start. April is far and away his best month historically: .310/.438/.627. No other month is even close.

― clemenza, Tuesday, April 2, 2019 7:58 PM (two months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

welp

Trout's 2019 OPS by monthly splits:

March/April - 1.052
May - 1.032
June - 1.236

Harper:

March/April - .878
May - .811
June - .718

Harper's K rate is noticeably higher, which i guess could be attributable to scuffling under early "new contract" pressure but he's on pace for 200+, which is maybe alarming for a guy who only twice before just barely exceeded averaging one K per game (and in some seasons was well below that).

most alarmed by the lack of power. the ball is juiced, he plays in a bandbox and he's three homers behind tommy la stella

the stats have his defense as considerably better than last year or the overall WAR might be embarrassing

wonder if his defense is better bc they've got him exclusively playing RF vs last season when Washington stuck him in center 1/3rd of the time.

Both these dudes reinforcing some opinions today

My golfing friend didn't play tonight because he's at the Jays game; Trout's hit two HR, one a grand slam.

Right now, Harper isn't even in the WAR team top 10 headshots on the 2019 Phillies Baseball Reference page.

That homer Trout hit the night before and that rookie hit were absolute bombs the night before in Toronto.

I still think it's funny that, for me--whether fair or not--the most devastating nickname ever was Steinbrenner playing off of Reggie and calling Winfield "Mr. May," and Harper comes along and basically lays claim to "Mr. April."

it appears that harper has started all but one of the phillies' 73 games (he was a pinch hitter in one game last week). which might not be the most productive use of a guy who's scuffling

Trout finished 3-6 tonight with the 2 HR and 7 RBI. in his worst season he won the MVP award.

mike trout is hitting .420 in 69 career at-bats with the bases loaded

this is not a joke

101 rbis in those 69 AB....

I was checking Bryce’s B-Ref page and he’s got that WAR up to 2.6, which means barring some absurd hot streak (not an impossibility obv) he’ll finish outside the NL top ten again. He only finished in the top ten once, in his MVP season. fWAR may tell a different tale but idk.

Trout is presently at 8.1, finally ahead of Cody for the MLB lead.

He's having a great August--8 HR, .678 SLB--and he picked the perfect time to get hot, but yeah, he'd dug himself such a hole in the spring, he'll have to stay hot to put up a 4.0-5.0 WAR season. I'm not sure you'd even call him overrated anymore, because I doubt there are many writers left who view him as one of the best players in the game. Overpaid, definitely.

Sorry he’s only at 2.4 bWAR!

At $9M/win on the open market (or thereabouts), he's not overpaid. Maybe on the back end of the contract he will be, but based on AAV, he's worth the money.

As a fan you probably expect more from the player who signed the biggest contract in baseball history (total value) (at the time), but that's a different story.

have to go with trout

i feel like trout has the advantage

Trout has arguably had the better start to his career

If I had to pick one over the other, though. I don’t know.

This has now become a clowning-around thread.

At $9M/win on the open market (or thereabouts), he's not overpaid.

I'm actually about halfway through Baseball Prospectus's book Between the Numbers, and there's a chapter on that. (The book came out 10+ years ago, but it delves into basic issues still debated today.) If you take one number to measure that, yes; a 5 WAR x $9M/win makes him worth considerably more than the $11M he's getting this year--much more than the $27M a year he'll be getting for the next decade, even. But they provided three or four ways to approach that. He's worth the money in years like this one, where the Phillies are in the middle of a playoff race and probably going to end up in that 85-90 win window. If they're below that, though, or safely above it, that $9M figure drops appreciably. And whether he's worth it compared to other free-agents and upper-echelon (my preferred term for the ubiquitous and suddenly annoying "elite") players, another way they measure that, I think that's more open to debate. Skip forward to next year and assume he puts up 6.0 WAR. I have to believe that any team spending wisely and getting a little bit of luck (or at least avoiding bad luck) could generate a lot more than 6 WAR with $27 million.

Or you could be the Toronto Blue Jays, paying $45M right now to Troy Tulowitzki, Russell Martin, and Kendrys Morales, about 40% of their current payroll. Give me Bryce Harper for $27M!

Unless Trout ups his BB% of his HR rate or Harper gets injured, I strongly suspect that this is going to be Harper from here on out

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, September 17, 2015 8:38 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

what lottery tickets should I buy?

Kind of embarrassing to see Trout being measured more against Bellinger and Yelich these days.

Harper just mashed one oppo vs Porcello into the Monster seats

Leaning Trout.

I wonder what we're going to think about the Harper and Machado contracts five years from now?

good question

Similar Batters through 30
Barry Bonds (934.5)

aight we just need to get him some cream and some clear and make the next decade exciting

seeing this pop up made me think of Trout as a Mantle figure if the injuries keep piling up (inner circle Hall of Famer but still a what if) but Harper is no Willie.

per similar batters, though, Duke Snider is a strong comparison. Hopefully the aging curve is kinder to Harper.