And while finding evidence of Trout’s improvement over his big-league career requires some squinting, Harper’s is obvious: After walking in 10.4% of plate appearances across his first three seasons, Harper walked 19% of the time he came up in 2015. When he finally enjoyed a fully healthy season in 2015, he took a massive step forward offensively, posting on-base and slugging percentages well higher than anything Trout has done to date. Harper spent significant stretches of 20 on the disabled list, but none of his injuries has been of the nagging, chronic sort. And though he doesn’t steal bases like he did in his first two seasons, he appears to be adding power: He established new career highs in home runs and hard-hit ball percentage in both 20. Only nine players in Major League history - all of them inner-circle Hall of Famers or Barry Bonds - have had four straight seasons better than Trout’s first four seasons. Notice a trend? No one has ever, in all the years that baseball has been played, had a better start to his big-league career than Mike Trout. Last season, he became the top all-time MLB position player in career WAR through his age-23 season. In 2014, he became the top all-time MLB position in career WAR through his age-22 season. The next year, he became the top all-time MLB position player in career WAR through his age-21 season. ![]() ![]() That season, he became the top all-time MLB position player in career WAR through his age-20 season. He has led the American League in WAR every single year since 2012. As a natural center fielder, he plays a more valuable defensive position than Harper does, and he has proved extremely durable during his big-league tenure, playing at least 157 games in each of the past three seasons. Though Harper had a better 2015 season than Trout did, there’s really no arguing that Trout has been a far better player to date. So let’s get into it: The case for Mike Trout Harper is set for free agency after the 2018 season, and any extension the Nats may negotiate before then will almost certainly prove a lot more expensive than Trout’s because of Harper’s relative proximity to the open market.Īlright, that’s a heck of a lot of build-up for a conversation you probably figured out from the headline. If it aimed to figure which player will prove more valuable to his current team, it would swiftly and certainly settle on Trout, who inked an extension that will keep him with the Angels until 2020. This post aims to examine which player is a better bet moving forward, regardless of their respective contract statuses. Plus, Harper and Trout seem forever linked because they both became full-time Major Leaguers in 2012 at extremely young ages and because Harper seemed primed to become the best player in baseball from the time he was 16, and Trout really did become the best player in baseball by the time he was 20. Same for Machado, who is awesome and probably even a bit underrated but nonetheless not quite up to the ridiculous level of the outfielders here. When I reframed the same question to ask which player will have the best career from this day forward, the results proved far closer, with Harper holding a slight edge over Trout - 41% to 36%, as of Friday afternoon:Īs points out, this should make for a more interesting poll: Highest career WAR from this day forward?Īgain, there’s a pretty strong argument for Correa, but because he fell short of Harper and Trout and because he’s harder to compare to his slightly elder colleagues, I’m leaving him aside for the sake of this post. So on the occasion of Harper’s 100th home run on Thursday, I posted a poll to Twitter: Which player will finish his career with the highest WAR (wins above replacement)? But because Trout has such a huge lead over Harper (plus Correa and Machado, also included), the overwhelming majority of voters rightfully picked Trout. But Harper and Trout already have such impressive resumes at such young ages that it seems certain no team would pass them up for the risks associated with a player like Correa, who has yet to play a full Major League season. ![]() Cases could be made for Orioles third baseman Manny Machado and Astros shortstop Carlos Correa - especially since Correa is about two years younger than Harper and three years younger than Trout. No one bothers debating which two position players would go first and second, because the answer seems fairly obvious: Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, the game’s foremost young superstars. On Wednesday’s episode of MLB Now, host Brian Kenny posed an interesting topic of debate to the show’s panel, which included one extraordinarily handsome For The Win baseball writer: Which starting pitchers would be the first two picked in an expansion draft in which no player could be protected? It works because there are a bunch of pairs that might make sense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |