Greater career - Mike Trout or Bryce Harper?

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