Trout Porn! (courtesy of Fangraphs)

[Angel Oracle]

So "no" to the Upton thread?

That is correct.   Melvin is just about done, and is still owed $39 million through 2017.   Justin is liable to draw an offer of say 7 years/$150 million from someone.

I would prefer to keep it more reasonable, like say if Cespedes could be signed for 4 years @ $15-17 million/season.

 

Not to mention that Justin has limited experience vs AL pitching.   That is a concern.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Angel Oracle

[DoubleOffTheWall]

We have a great young pitching staff that will be awesome for years to come. We also have Trout. That's a great foundation going forward. My only worry is that Mike S. and Arte, without someone like Dipoto, will just go crazy and pull another Vernon Wells type move and cripple the franchise. 

[Second Base]

Scotty, I appreciate and share your love of Trout, but this is a bit over the top. I agree that Trout belongs in the conversation with players like Mays and Mantle, and there's no reason to think he won't still be great in five years, even ten, but two things: I wouldn't (yet) place him above other all-time greats, except at an early age. By the end of this year he will, once again, lead all players in WAR through his age group - he's only behind Ted Williams (36.4) and Ty Cobb (36.2), and just by a hair (35.0); by year's end he should be at 38+. He probably won't continue that forever, but should be able to at least be among the very best players in terms of WAR per age group into his late 20s.

 

But here's the thing: We don't know how Trout will age. There's always the ghost of Ken Griffey Jr, who was a very similar player to Trout. Griffey wasn't as good right away, but was similar for a few years in his mid-20s, but then dropped off precipitously in his early 30s. Griffey's last really good year was in 2000 at age 30, which was declined from his absolute peak a few years before. Through age 30 Griffey had WAR of 73.9, good for 16th all-time. He played ten more years and ended with...77.7 WAR, which is still good but drops him to #40 among position players. In other words, over the injury-plagued last decade of his career he accrued only 3.8 WAR, mainly due to missing time and also having many negative seasons due to terrible defensive numbers. We see a similar if more moderate collapse in our own Albert Pujols, who was at 77.5 WAR through age 30, good for 8th all-time, but has accrued only 13 since, with his total of 90.5 through age 35 (so far) dropping him to 21st all-time among 35 year olds.

 

Now chances are Trout won't decline like Griffey or even Pujols. But he will decline. He may not get any better with the bat and his defensive value will gradually erode. He was a 10 WAR player at age 20-21, looks like an 8-9 WAR player now and possible for a few years to come, but at some point he'll be a 7 WAR player, and then 5-6, etc. Unless, of course, he improves with the bat to at least partially make up for loss in defense and baserunning.

 

But here's my point. The main difference between the greatest players of all time like Willie Mays and Ty Cobb and the lesser greats like Ken Griffey is usually how their "third act" is, that is, how they decline. Greatness is established in the first two acts--rise and peak--but the very greatest players are those that maintain greatness into their third act. It is what separates Mays from Griffey (although Mays was also better in his prime than Griffey ever was), or someone like Ted Williams or Stan Musial from Albert Pujols or Jeff Bagwell.

 

So yes, Trout is amazing. He's as good as a young player has ever been - and that's quite a statement to make. But right now we don't know if he's going to end his career as a slightly better version of Ken Griffey Jr or vie Ruth, Bonds, Mays etc for a place among the very inner circle outfielders. Most likely it will be somewhere in-between.

 

Oh yeah, and if I was a GM I'd take Harper and Goldschmidt over Trout. As an Angels fan, no, but you got to go with two superstar 6+ WAR players over one megastar 9 WAR player.

 

This is my fault for not clarifying.  What I meant when I said Trout was better than all, I meant that at an age relative place, Trout outperforms all.  And tho ones that have been as valuable as Trout, like Cobb and Mays, didn't have to play against the level of competition Trout has to face today.  Everyone's better, it's the natural progression of the game.  

 

This isn't to say of course that Mantle, Mays or Williams wouldn't have been good today.  Far from it.  All three of them would've still be very good, particularly Mays.  But could any of them measured up to Trout?  That's hard to say.  With respect to our elders, none of them were as strong as Trout is, not even the Mick.  None of them could move like Trout either.  Sure, Mays could run, he was fast.  But none of them were the freight train Trout is.  The only one I feel almost certain could've hit with Trout was Williams and even then he couldn't run or play defense with Trout. 

 

The true deciding factor as you indicated is the third act.  Griffey got hurt and couldn't complete his.  Bonds cheated, so we can't take his into account fairly.  Mantle liked alcohol and girls too much.  Teddy would've been the greatest hitter of all time, but his age 24-26 seasons were taken from him because he's a freakin' American Hero.  That just leaves Mays.  He did it at an elite level until he was 40. 

 

There's no telling where Trout will be in the future.  If he stays healthy, there's no doubt in my mind that because of his talent. he could be the best of all time not only because of the numbers but because he did it against BETTER competition.  Something else to take into account, in Mays' day, players played with reckless abandon.  There was no though as to preservation or future contracts.  If you can steal a base, you do it.  Trout has to play in an age where his ball club would prefer he remains stationary to preserve his body for the long run.  If Trout played in the 50's and 60's, he might've stolen 50 bases a year. 

[Angelsjunky]

I would imagine if fangraphs was around for the DiMaggio vs Williams argument some genius would come up with a formula that consecutive hits games are meaningless while another shows on a graph that batting. 400 us detrimental to offensive cohesion.

 

[Angelsjunky]

This is my fault for not clarifying.  What I meant when I said Trout was better than all, I meant that at an age relative place, Trout outperforms all.  And tho ones that have been as valuable as Trout, like Cobb and Mays, didn't have to play against the level of competition Trout has to face today.  Everyone's better, it's the natural progression of the game.  

 

This isn't to say of course that Mantle, Mays or Williams wouldn't have been good today.  Far from it.  All three of them would've still be very good, particularly Mays.  But could any of them measured up to Trout?  That's hard to say.  With respect to our elders, none of them were as strong as Trout is, not even the Mick.  None of them could move like Trout either.  Sure, Mays could run, he was fast.  But none of them were the freight train Trout is.  The only one I feel almost certain could've hit with Trout was Williams and even then he couldn't run or play defense with Trout. 

 

The true deciding factor as you indicated is the third act.  Griffey got hurt and couldn't complete his.  Bonds cheated, so we can't take his into account fairly.  Mantle liked alcohol and girls too much.  Teddy would've been the greatest hitter of all time, but his age 24-26 seasons were taken from him because he's a freakin' American Hero.  That just leaves Mays.  He did it at an elite level until he was 40. 

 

There's no telling where Trout will be in the future.  If he stays healthy, there's no doubt in my mind that because of his talent. he could be the best of all time not only because of the numbers but because he did it against BETTER competition.  Something else to take into account, in Mays' day, players played with reckless abandon.  There was no though as to preservation or future contracts.  If you can steal a base, you do it.  Trout has to play in an age where his ball club would prefer he remains stationary to preserve his body for the long run.  If Trout played in the 50's and 60's, he might've stolen 50 bases a year. 

 

I hear you Scotty, although don't think we can say how players from past eras would have fared today. They would have been different people, different upbringings, diets and exercise regimes.

 

I'm a big fan of tennis and this question gets bandied around a lot: who is the GOAT? (Greatest of All Time). On one hand you could argue that it is Novak Djokovic, because he surpassed Nadal, who surpassed Federer, who surpassed Sampras, etc etc. But I think greatness has to be contextual - that is, how good was a player relative to his peers and then compare that across generations. As great as Djokovic has been over the last five years, he's not as dominant as Federer was during his prime - not to mention Rod Laver back in the 1960s.

 

Back to baseball, in my 35 years of following baseball, the greatest player I ever saw was Barry Bonds in the the early 2000s (for pitchers it would have been Pedro during a similar period). Yes, steroids, I know. But I'm just talking about performance on the field. I don't think a player has been that dominant over the rest of the field since Babe Ruth in the 1920s.

 

Trout isn't that kind of dominant, but he's more dominant than any other player in my memory. Over the last four years, here's the WAR leaders:

 

2012-15 WAR leaders

34.3 Trout

25.4 McCutchen

22.3 Cabrera

21.9 Posey

20.3 Donaldson

 

That's quite an edge over the field. For comparison's sake, here's Bonds crazy run in the early 2000s:

 

2001-04 WAR leaders

47.3 Bonds

33.6 Rodriguez

30.0 Pujols

27.5 Edmonds

27.4 Rolen

 

Or if we want to take pre-roid Bonds:

 

1990-93 WAR leaders

37.7 Bonds

25.7 Griffey Jr

24.3 Henderson

24.1 Ripken

23.0 Thomas

 

Actually, early 90s Bonds is a remarkably close comp, with a very similar level of dominance. I remember Bonds being considered one of the best in the game, but not head and shoulders above everyone else. Why? Because of a lack of advanced metrics. If Trout lived in any other era, we wouldn't realize how good he is. He'd still be among the very best in the game, but not as far above everyone else as he has been - more like Bonds in the early 90s, when there was debate about who was better, Bonds or Griffey (to me it was always obvious).

 

Anyhow, just riffing off of what you said and providing more Trout Porn.

Edited July 17, 2015 by Angelsjunky

[Oz27]

This is an unrealistic scenario - but if MLB suddenly started from scratch and every contract was voided, how much would Trout get? Would it be that surprising if someone offered 10/450 and tried to build their team around him? $30mil + AAV contracts seemed unrealistic not all that long ago, now they're just a thing. Frankly, contracts in that range are being given to people whose value is way less significant. My point in all of this is Trout's open market value now is astronomical. You'd see teams doing whatever they could to shed payroll to have a crack and then see him sign a massive contract, even if he wanted to stay and take a hometown discount, if he were a free agent now. Would he get $7-8 mil per projected war? That's not really feasible for him. But there's no doubt the AAV of a Trout contract would be north of $30mil and probably above $35mil too if he hit free agency after this year.

[Blarg]

"We’ve gone from pulling out Mickey Mantlecomparisons to having to admit that that might not be a fair comparison to Trout. ZIPS projects him for +47 WAR over the next five years; over that same time period, the system projects Paul Goldschmidt and Kris Bryant to be worth +46.9 WAR combined."

 

 

And…… boom goes the dynamite.

 

One day someone is going to have to admit they can't compare the two due to a lack of data preceding this current era of baseball.

 

You may be able to find some archival footage of Mantle playing, most games preceding 1970 were never televised. So to measure a players reaction time or route taken to the ball is almost impossible to ascertain from brief glimpses into the day to day play of the players of the past. Oft times the 3 cameras following the entire game miss plays to the outfield or are so distant to the action you see little of what transpired from the crack of the bat to the catch.

 

Spin forward to today and the home run derby can track the elevation, acceleration and distance of every ball hit into every corner of the yard. No guesstimates or eyeballing, you see breakdowns of plays where they measure reaction time and path taken to a ball along with vertical and horizontal leaps that separate the Trouts from the lesser Gods.  

 

So we bathe in the glorious statistical shower of numbers, all the while making bold statements about players value against those that most have never seen more that a baseball card. It is disingenuous no matter how many times AJ posts the yelling at cloud pic.

 

Let's just agree that Trout is a level above his current competition but I am wary of the accolades based on new metrics that ignore his strikeout rate, as if striking out nearly as many times as DiMaggio, Mantle or Williams reached base by a hit is somehow insignificant.

 

Oh, and if you really want to be fair in measuring WAR then let's give back Williams 3 consecutive years in his prime, age 24-26, in which he was truly in a war and figure those years as the logical progression of two 10.6 WAR years followed by a 10.8 WAR season and see how Trout matches him. That is adding an additional 32 WAR to his resume and still doesn't compensate for his Korean War hiatus. That puts him at a 155 career WAR without the advantage of any additional help from modern stats.

 

I'm not yelling at clouds, just guys full of hot air.

Edited July 17, 2015 by notti

[tdawg87]

http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/total_zone.shtml

[laagamer]

If Trout is still performing this well in a few years, my guess is that whoever is GM will open up extension talks a couple years before free agency. But I do think it is worth seeing how the next three players pans out. The Angels have him locked up for 5.5 more years; a lot can happen in that time. I'd probably start talking about re-negotiating after his age 26 season, when he has two years left.

Well it's obvious to me that you just hate Michael Trout.

Must be an Oakland fan or something.

[ScottT]

Trout is second in route efficiency for OF, behind Lorenzo Cain.

 

He is amazing.  

[Blarg]

So, as of now, it's fair to say Trout is no Ted Williams.

How about the fact Trout doesnt hit in Fenway seeing nothing but pale faced pitchers?

I feel I can comfortably say that Trout is the best player I've seen in my lifetime and therefore better than the players from the 30's and 40's.

You may want to review your stance on Williams considering he played against Satchel Paige.

[Tank]

Trout is second in route efficiency for OF, behind Lorenzo Cain.

 

He is amazing.

I thought only Phil Shane is amazing.