Greater career - Mike Trout or Bryce Harper?

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*