Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1051: The Mike Trout Challengers

Episode Date: April 29, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jeff Manship, Chris Devenski, the biggest playoff-odds changers, Mets injuries, and Joey Votto’s comments on swing changes, then discuss which players, if any, can challenge Mike Trout for the title of best player in baseball, try to assemble a FrankenTrout, and conduct a brief Bryce Harper debate. Audio intro: […]

Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you Tell me I'm exceptional, I promise to exploit you Give me all your money and I'll rank some origami honey I think you're a joke, but I don't find you very fun Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you Hello and welcome to episode 1051 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters and by Ben and I. I am I, Jeff Sullivan. I write for Fangraphs. I am talking as always to Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. I am I, Jeff Sullivan. I write the fan graphs. I am talking as always to Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben.

Hello. How are you doing? I'm doing all right, but not as well as Jeff Manship, subject of former Effectively Wild banter. And I was just looking at his stats, which someone posted in the Facebook group because we were talking on the last episode about the quality of Korean baseball and, hey, maybe it's better than everyone thought well Jeff Manship in his first season over there has joined the rotation of Eric Thames's former team through five starts he has a 1.72 ERA and a 0.99 whip he was of course a

what mediocre reliever I guess you could say, in the majors. He, at least so far, has been a highly effective starter, which is nice. I wish him well. Seemed like a good guy. I talked to him. He was excited to go over there. So that's great. Everyone's happy. But if he continues to pitch that well, that will not be the best reflection on the KBO's talent level. However, on his same pitching staff, well, I guess he does have a better ERA than fellow former major leaguer Eric Hacker, who has started four times. He has a 2-3-1 ERA. Leading the team in hitting this year is one bold-faced player, Xavier Scruggs. Do you remember

Xavier Scruggs? I kind of do. I guess he's batted 100 times. He has hits in 25 of those times. Many of those hits have been hard. He has an OPS of 1.159, which is positively Thamesian. And yeah, so jury's still out on Korean baseball, I guess. Yes. Maybe Xavier Scruggs is very good. And maybe Jeff Manship is ready to be a starter in the major leagues. In any case, do you have any other banter or banter related topics I do not okay great but I do sort of it's kind of like half banter half stat segment stuff but just just for fun I know he allowed a home run yesterday and so that's too bad for him but I just want to read down the list of all current pitchers in total strikeouts seems Seems simple enough. Number one, Chris Sale, 52.

That's a lot. Number two, Clayton Kershaw, 39. That's a big gap. So anyway, I'm going to stop saying the number. I'm just going to read down names. And you can stop me, I guess, when you hear something weird. But you don't have to because I'm going to stop myself. Chris Sale, Clayton Kershaw, Carlos Martinez, James Paxton,

Corey Kluber, Lance McCullers, Danny Salazar, Marco Estrada, Max Scherzer, Luis Severino, Tywin Walker, Chris Archer, Jacob deGrom, Danny Salazar, Marco Estrada, Max Scherzer, Luis Severino, Tywin Walker, Chris Archer, Jacob deGrom, Chris Davinsky, Wade Miley, Rick Porcello, Chris Davinsky. That's where I will stop. Yeah. Chris Davinsky at present has 32 strikeouts. He is, of course, nowhere close to Chris Sale, who has 20 more.

But Chris Sale is a dominant starting pitcher. Chris Davinsky is a relief pitcher. Of all the names that I've read they've all thrown at least 22 innings except for Chris Tavensky who has not yet reached 17 he has struck out 32 hitters in 16.2 innings I will now read another list that is I guess I hope people like hearing lists on podcasts because I'm gonna do it I'm now going to read up from the top five pitchers right now in strikeout rate. Top five pitchers. And I'm not going to lie to you. This list is not quite as impressive as I was hoping it was going to be, but still the numbers are great.

Fifth place. I set a minimum of 10 innings pitch. Fifth place, Addison Reed, whatever. 36%. Fourth place, Corey Kniebel. Okay. 36%. Third place, Chris Sale, 37%. He's great. Second place, Blake Parker. He's back in Angels form. Blake Parker, 40%. Number one, Chris Davinsky, 53% strikeouts, 3% walks. Chris Davinsky has a strikeout minus walk rate of 49.2%.

He's been amazing. He is technically on pace given his strikeouts and given how many games the astros have played chris davinsky is a full-time reliever who is technically on pace for 235 strikeouts this season i looked it up the most strikeouts in a single season of all time according to baseball reference for a relief pitcher is actually 183 by Dick Raddatz in 1964. I wasn't expecting that. Dick Raddatz also shows up in third place and seventh place on this same list. Maybe, maybe it will not surprise you to learn that Dick Raddatz kind of had three great years and then washed out. I don't know exactly why, but I think we kind of do. Yeah, Dick Raddatz great between 25 and 27 got worse.

But in any case, Chris Davinsky on pace for more than 200 strikeouts, the highest fall time, 183. Then it drops to 166, 162. There have been six relievers in history who have reached 150 strikeouts in a single season. Where do you put Chris Davinsky's ceiling for strikeouts this season? Yeah, that's a good question because back when Dick Raddatz was doing it, the league strikeout rate was obviously a lot lower, so it was harder to rack up those strikeouts then. So the question is, I suppose, innings really. How many innings can Chris Stavinsky pitch that we could extrapolate from there to get strikeouts. So last year he did pitch almost two innings per appearance out of the bullpen, I think. And he did something like Andrew Miller, I think it was maybe in Sam's profile of

him from this spring, said something about bringing back the mythical 40 game, 80 inning reliever. And Davinsky was that last year out of the bullpen. And now that he is trusted and is no longer a rookie and has been fantastic and seems to have settled into this role, you'd think that he will top that easily. If he keeps pitching well, there's always the chance that he could get pressed into starting again if something were to happen to the Astros rotation, but things are going pretty well so far there. So it does seem like he could at least be the 100-inning reliever, which is something that we haven't seen. It's certainly a rarity. So I don't know that he could get to 150,

right? He'd have to get to at least 120 innings or something like that, even optimistically. Yeah, he's currently on pace for 122. However, he pitched yesterday, so he probably will not pitch in the next game, etc., etc. His real pace, let's say comfortably 100 innings. Can Chris Davinsky strike out a batter and a half per inning, given that he's struck out more than half of his opponents so far this season? I mean, it'd be even more impressive if he had one of the best reliever strikeout rates, given that he is pitching more than most relievers and facing hitters multiple times and not being

able to just go all out for anything. So can he do it? I'd like to think he can do it. He's awesome. Had him on my other podcast. Fun to watch. uh just for a modern reference i guess when i was reading down that list of relievers it's a bunch of players from like the 60s 70s 80s mark icorn is up there dick selma rich gossage but in 2004 brad lidge threw 94.2 innings he struck out 157 batters he's fourth fourth all time in reliever strikeouts. And even though he's in fourth, he has far fewer innings thrown in that season than first place through third. So Brad Lidge is one example of a guy who just went crazy. Carlos Marmol actually struck out 138 in 2010.

Eric Gagne is there. Dylan Batances got to 135 in 2014. Is Chris Davinsky better in terms of strikeouts than Dylan Batances? Well, that seems like it could be a hot take, but here we are. I don't care. Chris Davinsky, he's fantastic. He's, I don't know, has Chris Davinsky become more interesting than Andrew Miller or are we all just kind of tired of writing about Andrew Miller? Yeah, I think, I mean, I've written about Chris Davinsky this year. Michael Bauman wrote about him also like a few days later, and you've written about him. So we've all already written our Davinsky articles too. But I guess he's more interesting just in that they're interesting for different reasons, right? Because Miller is not going to be like a hundred inning guy. I mean, he's fairly conventional in the number of innings he pitches. He just pitches them at strange times and he's like conventional closer as far as skill goes, but he comes in and all sorts of innings. And so we're interested in him because he's not married to save situations.

And that is one interesting aspect of bullpen usage. But Davinsky is, I think, a little bit different in that he's kind of like a long man, more so than Miller is, or the long man is almost extinct lately. So Davinsky is not really a closer. He could be, I guess. But he is interesting because he's going to kind of test the limits of reliever endurance, whereas Miller is more testing usage within games more so than cumulative usage. Two Andrew Miller fun facts I just noticed. This season, batters have swung at 48% of his pitches in the strike zone. They've also swung at 48% of his pitches out of the strike zone.

Andrew Miller, killing it. That's great. And also, maybe, maybe I'll ask you, do you think this reflects an adjustment or just April randomness for his career? And last year batters have hit roughly one out of every four batted balls against Andrew Miller to the opposite field. This year, they're at 52% and their strikeout rate is way down. Do you think that batters are just fighting off all Andrew Miller pitches trying to survive, or is this just chaos? I don't know.

Are his pitches any less effective than they were in the past? Are they moving different? Are they slower? Same stuff, same ratios. I wonder if he's just such a high-profile pitcher that batters have almost come up with kind of like a specific approach just against him. Because, I mean, he was the face of the playoffs, really, until the Cubs decided they were going to be the face of the playoffs.

So I don't really know. But it seems to watch. And one of us will probably write about it before the other. And then causing the other to throw up his hands and turn to something else. Maybe another Kristovensky article. Last thing I want to talk about, just kind of real quick, before the other thing we'll actually talk about, is just for a quick review,

because maybe people are curious about where the standings are right now. I wanted to look at the teams who have changed the most since the start of the year in terms of expected wins and playoff odds. I know I don't like saying playoff odds right now either, but just for the hell of it, according to Fangraphs, it is now April 28th and the Yankees are expected to win six more games than they were before the season started. So that is a reflection of their improvement and also their hot start. The Diamondbacks are at five more wins than before the season started. Brewers, Rockies, and Nationals follow those teams up at plus four.

At the other end, we have the Giants at negative eight. They are expected to win eight fewer games than when the season started. And the Blue Jays are at negative seven. The Mets are at negative four so bad starts for them all the Giants have had their playoff odds plummet from two out of three two out of three years they would make the playoffs to one out of five that's bad the Blue Jays are down 37% the Mets are down 21% and at the other side the Yankees are up 34% Diamondbacks 27 and Orioles and Rockies up 19 so big shifts and i guess the most notable ones here we knew the giants were in bad shape because of madison bumgarner we knew the blue jays were in

bad shape because they haven't won a game out of 22 but yesterday i don't know if these odds yet reflect the severity of what could be going on with the mets because we don't really know yet but yesterday could be a very devastating day for the new York Mets. Noah Syndergaard has a start scratch. Matt Harvey pitches, looks terrible. Ioannis Cespedes injures his hamstring and is sent for an MRI. So maybe stuff will come out between now and when this podcast is listened to. But look out. The Mets are having a very rough April.

And as much as everybody loves a comeback story more than a good the whole time story, this could be a lot to go back from. Yeah, we could probably do a whole episode on the Mets injury management this month, which has been as perplexing as always, I guess. For a while there, it seemed like they were strangely hesitant to use the 10-day DL, which is designed for the sort of nagging injuries that a lot of their players had. And then they did start using it, but they just had such an injury stack. So many people hurt at the same time that I don't know that even that could have helped

them. But yeah, I mean, they have this pattern, it seems in past years too, of either downplaying injuries publicly or also downplaying them internally so that they'll say that something isn't something to worry about and then it will turn into Tommy John surgery and so now it seems as if with Cespedes they should have given him more time to recuperate before playing him again but I don't know it seems to be a hallmark of the Mets I always hate second guessing injury management because what do we know about injuries in general and injuries in specific? With players, teams know everything about them.

We know nothing about them. So it feels unfair to comment. And yet it really does seem to be a pattern with the Mets of, I guess, converting nagging injuries into serious ones. Yeah, I've always kind of poo-pooed the idea of the Mets just having like their own unique injury trouble, but at some point you just have to start paying attention. Okay, well, let's see. Here we have Harvey said he wasn't physically ready to pitch against Atlanta on Thursday because he completed a weightlifting session Wednesday. Okay, well, that's a David Schoenfield report about Matt Harvey's bad game yesterday. So, okay, that kind of could

explain why his velocity dropped as quickly as it did after starting out fine and he walked everybody. So hey, maybe Matt Harvey's okay, I guess. But still, Noah Syndergaard, second best pitcher in the National League, missed a start, cesspitous, injured, everybody else on the team injured, Mets 8-13, not looking great. I just realized unrelated to the Mets, but as another quick fun fact, in case anyone out there is curious carter caps is in the minor leagues he has been rehabbing trying to get back to the majors and the results have not been good he has thrown six innings he's allowed 10 runs six walks six strikeouts maybe i got a little bit ahead of myself when i figured that carter caps could be one of the best relievers in baseball this year still good it. It's April. But yeah, I mean, he was before. Yeah, so it wasn't

crazy. So wait, so Harvey used a workout from the previous day as an explanation for why he wasn't ready to pitch? Yeah, sorry. I know that came out of nowhere. But I was looking at his Fangraphs page. There's a Roto Wire news snippet at the top of certain Fangraphs player pages. And it says Harvey said he wasn't physically ready to pitch against Atlanta on Thursday because he completed a weight lifting session Wednesday. He was a late entrant, right? Because Syndergaard has his start scratched. So I don't know.

Maybe you might know more about how players work out, what their usual patterns are. But yeah, I don't really. But since he was moved up, I guess that makes sense. I was going to say that that would be a strange excuse to use because you should probably know when you can work out and not work out. That would seem to be an even greater indictment of the Mets training staff than anything else if that were a problem with a starter who is making his regular start. But if that wasn't the case, I suppose that makes sense and they were in need of someone. Yeah. And, and you know even if you want to write off matt harvey walking five striking at one against the braves who were not good well in the previous

start he had two walks and two strikeouts against the nationals also not very good matt harvey not completely back to where he was robert gesellman has an era that last i checked was over six i think maybe now it's gotten worse i don't know We've seen enough in the last few successful Mets seasons. We've seen enough points where they looked dead in the water and then they've recovered that of course you can't bury them. But this was supposed to be a race between the Nationals and the Mets in the National League East. And the Mets are already in last place behind the Nationals by seven and a half games. So that is a huge, huge difference. That is a deep hole to be buried in April. And i guess the good news is

that the giants who are supposed to be fighting the mets for a wild card slot are also terrible arguably in even worse shape it's been kind of a weird year for some of these could be contenders mariners bad blue jays bad mets bad giants bad dodgers under 500 rangers under 500 indians just fending off the white socks somehow i guess that's what's happening and the orioles are 14 and 6 and they've gotten less than nothing from chris tillman and manny machado who knows keep listening to us for baseball analysis yep speaking of which what are we going to analyze now mike tried episode okay episode of, but we're not going to cripple Mike Trout. We're not going to tie him to anything very heavy or going in another direction. We're not going to draw and quarter Mike Trout. I just want to have a little bit of an update on where we think the conversation stands in terms of Mike Trout being baseball's best position player default position i think we both agree mike trout should be considered baseball's best position player best player probably just overall yep so have we seen anything this year that could conceivably threaten his standing i have one player in specific who i think is putting

up a strong argument but i wanted to maybe throw it over to you to see if in case you have the same player in mind if mike trout is not the best player in baseball who do you think would be and i guess the easy answer would be maybe bryce harper being the clearest threat but he's not the guy i have in mind so let's see what you have to say i probably would have said harper if you had asked me to name one guy which you sort of did so which one are you thinking of so i'm thinking i i know i'm overlooking chris bryant here and just looking over the fangrass has a split you can look at the past calendar year which is i think preferable to looking at since the start of last year and also way preferable

to just looking at since the start of this year but anyway over the past year mike trout has been worth 10 war that is a lot second place chris bryant 8.6 and then cory seager and freddie freeman are the only players only other players above eight the player i have in mind and this is someone i would have dismissed even a few weeks ago when i wrote an article a lot like this for espn.com that article has since been fired francisco lindor i would like to talk a little bit so maybe this is more of a lindor episode i just wanted to make sure the door was open to other names. But Lindor is fascinating to me because I don't know how well these numbers are going to translate when spoken. I don't know how closely you've looked at Francisco Lindor this season. Maybe you've already planned an article to be written about him. But yesterday,

I mentioned that Chris Davinsky allowed a home run yesterday, which made it bad timing to bring up his dominance. But the home run he allowed was on one of his changeups. It was to Francisco Lindor. It won the game for the Indians effectively, and it was hit something like 450 feet to dead center. Francisco Lindor. Francisco Lindor, little dude, wasn't really supposed to hit very much. He stands 5'11", 190, apparently. That seems like that's not actually possible, but let's take that for truth. Francisco Lindor has always been, at least in the major leagues, he's been a pretty good hitter I think we can all agree switch hitter pretty good no one debates the fact that Lindor well he runs fine he's not like a great base running threat but he's fine he's a reasonably quick his thing is that he is maybe the best

defensive shortstop in baseball which makes him maybe the most valuable defensive player in baseball and I don't think anybody questions that. Whether it's him or Andrew Alden Simmons at Shoresop, I don't know, but they're both great. They're both great. So Lane Doerr, pretty good hitter, decent amount of walks, plenty of contact, gets singles and everything. But he's been sort of limited by not having a whole lot of power. He's hit 27 home runs over his first two major league seasons. This year, he already has six. And not only that, he has gone from hitting half of his batted balls on the ground to

hitting 33% of his batted balls on the ground. I don't know if anybody else has fly ball fatigue. I've kind of gotten there. I don't really want to write about swing, plane changes and all that for a while. Joey Votto does. Did you read his recent comments about that? I did not. Please enlighten me now.

Yeah, he has some comments that friend of the podcast, Zach Buchanan, reported, I think just today, possibly, or yesterday. He said, where I get concerned is the guys that make this attempt and burn out too much of their time and don't get a chance to be their best selves and either don't make it to the big leagues or don't perform their best in the big leagues because they're always attempting this new style of hitting. I see it with a lot of guys. Everyone tells the good stories, but there's a lot of shitty stories of guys who are wasting their time trying things. So he's essentially saying that because it's all the rage now, people whose swings are not

actually suited for this or who might not have the ability to change their swings in that way might hurt themselves by trying to conform to the trend. I think there was talk. I know, well, the numbers reflect, but I think Gregory Polanco was one guy who said he tried to hit fly balls and he just couldn't make heads or tails of it and it kind of messed him up. Now, granted, last year his grand ball rate dropped significantly and he had his best offensive season of his career so i don't know what that's about and he also had the most power of his career but anyway this year polanco back to hitting grounders back to not being very good so i don't know what's going on with greg polanco but that is a valid point that vada raises that we of course always notice the fly ball increases when a hitter is doing well. We pay less attention to when it's not working because I think that's less fun. But I think

maybe there's just a bias inherent in the writing profession where we look for things that are going well instead of things that are going poorly. I have a larger point I could speculate on about how maybe that is reversed from something that was true 10 or 15 years ago. Maybe that's a different podcast. I think there's a lot of positivity in writing anyway francisco lindor joey vato fly balls i agree with vato's point however there are players who make changes and then it works out for them we've seen a lot of them in general it is a pattern that we are seeing certainly enough of a pattern for joey vato to speculate and now we have francisco lindor hitting lots of batted balls in the air. And as I guess Brian Dozier is the example that always comes to my mind about can you be powerful even if you're not very powerful?

And you don't need to be Aaron Judge strong to hit home runs. You just need to be Brian Dozier strong. And Francisco Lindor is at least Brian Dozier strong. Do we have last calendar year war for him? Yeah. And it's only seven. Well, only seven. He's only been one of the most amazing baseball players in the world he's in seventh place is between josh donaldson and

justin turner lindor it was the the fly ball thing started happening i think toward the end of last season so this year his wrs plus is 167 which is right on where mike trout has been his entire career yeah again it's april it's not even an entirety of April. He's batted 96 times, walks up strikeouts, whatever. It's basically just Francisco Lindor as you knew him, except now with extra home runs. And that's the thing that opens the door for me because Lindor is a more valuable defensive player than Mike Trout. I think we can all agree on that as much as Trout is pretty good. Lindor is similarly good on the bases, not much worse if he's worse. He's younger. He plays all the time. He makes contacts a little more than Mike Trout. He doesn't not walk. And now if you introduce power, that was

the that was the big separation. There's nothing better for a baseball player to do than hit a home run. Now, if you're Chris Carter, that's not enough. You have to do more than just hit home runs. But the separation between Trout and Lindor's power and if Lindor is actually going to start hitting for power, I don't know how much of a gap is going to remain. Yeah. Well, you could maybe make the same claim about, say, Manny Machado, who has hit for a lot of power. And I think both of us maybe expected more patience to come from that as pitchers pitched around him and maybe he let some of those pitches go. So obviously he's also an elite defender, although with their baseman, not a shortstop. So coming into the year, he probably would have been my leading contender to take the title from Trout if anyone was going to. And I don't know that he has shown anything thus far that suggests he's any closer to that than I would have thought a month ago. But yeah, Lindor has at least made a greater gain in that time. I don't think there's really anything any player could do to convince

me that he is better than Trout other than have an entire full season that is better than Trout. And even that might not quite do it. I remember Sam and I, a couple of years ago, we definitely had this discussion about Harper versus Trout when Harper was having his big year. And then right around a year ago, we had the discussion again because Harper was off to a really great start and looked like he was going to put up another amazing season. And at that point, you would start to question whether he was as good or close to as good. And then, of course, we know that things happened and injuries or whatever, and he wasn't the same player for the rest of the year. Now he seems to be back. I haven't looked that closely, but certainly statistically he's there. Exit velocity-wise, whatever you want to say, he seems to be back to 2015 Harper. And maybe 2015 Harper

wasn't quite as good as the surface stats suggested, because as you covered, he was a little lucky on balls in the air, or at least did better than you'd have expected him to based on how he hit those balls. But if he is back to being that guy again, then he might have as strong a case as anyone just because he's really like the only active player who's had a trout level season, right? Like there's no one else who's had a 10 win year or whatever that year was for him. So the fact that he's demonstrated that once and everything we know about Bryce Harper from his past and how he's gotten off to the start he has this season,

never going to have the defensive value that Lindor does, obviously, but offensively has probably as high a realistic ceiling as anyone. So he'd probably still be my leading contender. Yeah, right. Josh Donaldson had nearly a 9-1 season a few years ago, realistic ceiling as anyone so he'd probably still be my leading contender yeah right josh jonathan had nearly a nine win season a few years ago but now that he's in his 30s and he's got the leg injuries it seems like i'm sorry to say josh jonathan is presumably post peak so a few years ago yeah 2015 trout according to fangraphs worth nine wins and bryce harper was worth nine and a half now again there were the statistics are in no way that precise. But right, it is important to remember that, yeah, just a few years ago,

there was a conversation being had about how Mike Trout did not finish first in war. And so you just said that there's nothing that could convince you short of a full season. But maybe, maybe there's a Bryce Harper exception in that how much Bryce Harper right now has a 246 WRC plus when he was at his best season, he was at 197. So basically he was at 200 right now he's at 250. How much of Bryce Harper hitting like a crazy person would you need to see to be convinced that he actually is this or roughly this level of good given what he's already done? Yeah, well, his 2015 just going by wrc plus was the best season since bonds right i think i remember that being the case and maybe we can discount it a bit based on the research that you did but still better than anyone since bonds so i mean like i'm almost willing to believe

now virtually like a what a sixth of the way through the season that he is that guy again just based on how well he's done and how hard he's hitting the ball and as we saw last season that doesn't mean it will continue but i kind of buy that over the last hundred plate appearances or so he was basically as good as he was that year or at least as good as his underlying stats suggested he should have been that year. So I'm basically buying it already. I need to see him do it for a longer period just because he has a history of, aside from 2015, not being able to stay healthy and not being able to stay at that elite level every single year and never has any serious injuries and durability matters and counts so it would take me a while to say i'd rather have harper than trout but in terms of talent today i'm not that far from saying it yeah right i guess it's it's worth remembering that harper is having a really good year uh mike trout technically would have the best offensive season of his career right now if the season ended uh so just gonna throw that out there he's been really good yeah let me ask

you this i've been meaning to do an article on this maybe i still will if trout keeps being great which he will but i wonder how good a mike trout season do you think you could put together just using elements of mike trout seasons that have actually happened because he has become a different hitter in all these years, right? Like we've seen him go more for power, more for strikeouts, cut down on the strikeouts, steal more, steal less. He's been a different guy. He's been almost exactly as great every year, but in different ways. And so I was hearing something about this attempt Nike is making to have the sub two hour marathon. I was listening to an interview on Hang Up and Listen

about it that mentioned that there was an anesthesiologist who studied this and found that like the quickest possible marathon is like an hour 57 something if you took like the greatest observable human measurements in whatever the three components of determining how fast your marathon is are like your your top speed and how fast you get to your top speed and how long you can sustain your top speed or whatever it is if you took like the greatest measurements ever taken for a human being so as far as we know the the greatest achievable limits, and you put them all in one person, which has not happened yet, as far as we know, then in theory, you could get your marathon time down to that level without having to cheat in any

way. And so that's what I'm wondering about Trout. If we could just say, okay, he can do anything he's done already in the big leagues. We're not projecting him to do anything he hasn't done yet. He's just going to do all the best things he's done at the same time in the same season. How good do you think he would be? Would he even be all that much better than... I guess he was at his peak probably then in terms of speed and defense and stole the most bases had the most base running runs so you would take his defensive value from his first full year or at least his fielding value from his

first full year you might take his throwing value from a recent year because he's become a competent thrower so take his range take his speed from 2012 take his arm from whatever, 2016, and take his power from, I guess, 2015, and take his walk rate from 2016 and his strikeout rate from 2013, and you put it all together, how good is Mike Trout? Okay. So in Mike Trout's first full year, 2012, he was worth a little over 10 wins, according to Fangraphs, and he only played 139 games that year. He came up toward the end of April. So just doing a raw translation, that's 10.3 war divided by 139 games times he's had a maximum of 159. That ticks him up just short of 12 war, just adding durability. So that's Trout at peak base running, peak defense so far, but that's not giving him extra arm ratings because his arm has gotten better. That's actually been sort of his worst offensive season of the six identical offensive seasons he's had. So give him some arm boost. You can get him up to 12 wins. Give him an offensive boost because that year he struck out more than twice as often as

you watch give him something better there you can probably get him up to 13 war i don't know if you can budge much from there but you could have a 13 win mike trout just by putting together the different components of mike trout that we've seen in the six seven plus years yeah we've had him 13 wins above replacement yeah i. I should probably do that article. That'd be fun. Well, yeah, the hard part's already done. If you were watching Mike Trout on a semi-regular basis, would you notice the difference? Can you notice the difference between a 9-10 win player and a 13 win player?

You could probably notice the stylistic differences. I mean, he stole 11 bases one year and 49 bases another year. So that's probably something you would notice. And there was one year when he struck out a lot more. You might notice that. And you might notice that he's hitting 41 home runs instead of 20 something or 30. So I think if you watched every game, yes. I don't know that you could Necessarily compute the difference

In war in your head though God, I mean I know this began as an episode Talking about players who could surpass Mike Trout But here we are, we're back Mike Trout, this year Just in case anyone out there has not paid too close attention Mike Trout is swinging More aggressively than ever this season

He's swinging at a lot more strikes He's swinging at more first pitches The results so far have been fantastic He's hit the ball the other way He's focused less on pulling the ball He's just been all around good Super good for the Angels it's April His pitchers will make adjustments he will adjust

To them back there's nothing that he cannot do Except fend off Bryce Harper or Francisco Lindor Maybe yeah I remember getting Sam to say that Bryce Harper was a better hitter than Mike Trout, I think, like almost exactly a year ago. I think I got him to say that, and that was right before Harper went in the tank for the rest of the year. So dangerous to say that sort of thing. So dangerous to say that sort of thing. So what would it take for you to make that pronouncement, given that Harper's 2015 was better than any offensive season Mike Trout has had, maybe even after you adjust it in

the way that you did with the fly balls and the luck? I don't know whether that'd be the case, but probably close to it. So given that he has had one year, recent year, when he was probably a better hitter than Mike Trout's ever been, and he is off to a start that was commensurate with his abilities that year, how much more of Harper maintaining a 200 plus WRC plus, which of course Trout is doing currently also, would you need to say that so what i love about harper is that he just walks all the time this year he actually has six more walks than strikeouts he has it's so difficult to have similar numbers in those stats especially in this day and age of course but he's done it

now going on this would be his third year in a row of having basically as many walks as strikeouts which is fantastic he's clearly strong the one thing that I can never get myself to look entirely past is that he plays for one of the good teams in the National League East, and the only good pitching staff that he faces with regularity is the Mets. It's the same as whenever people focus on specific Nationals or Mets numbers, especially this early in the year, I just look at, well, you basically played the Phillies, Braves, and Marlins. These are not very good teams, certainly not very good pitching teams and so i

just can't get past harper beating up on like the braves pitching staff which doesn't tell me anything because many players could beat up on the braves pitching staff is not very good so it's the the sort of league context in the divisional context that compels me to give trout some sort of additional edge but of course it does make all the difference. Bryce Harper is not good because he's in the National League East. God, it's not a better hitter, better hitter than Mike Trout. That's what's on the table. I can't. No, no. You know what? I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it yet. I have not seen enough. I think Trout hits the ball harder. I think his play discipline is no worse. His contact skills are no, I can't see it. Bryce Harper needs to do something new to me to show or Trout needs to strike out twice as often as

walking like he's doing now. If he sustains that all year, then maybe maybe that'll do something. But I can't I can't do it. I'm not going to go there. Mike Trout better than Bryce Harper. Mm hmm. All right. Well, to close the way we started. I'm not going to go there. Mike Trapp, better than Bryce Harper. All right. Well, to close the way we started, I'll just say that if you had to pick a player to be the best player in baseball who would be best for the game from a marketing perspective and a fan friendliness perspective, it would probably be Francisco Lindor, which is kind of just a happy coincidence that he happens to be incredibly lovable and fun to watch. In addition to being one of the leading contenders to be the best player in baseball, he could be like Trout, which is a nice guy, works hard, says nothing objectionable, but is not particularly charismatic or at least doesn't make an attempt to be publicly.

is not particularly charismatic or at least doesn't make an attempt to be publicly. And then you have Harper, who is that way, but comes off as brash, at least to some people at some times. And I don't know, he's compelling, but he's not endearing in the way that Lindor is. So if you had to just pick someone purely based on personality who would be best for the game to be the best player in baseball, probably be Francisco Lindor. So if that does happen, that would be a boon in multiple ways. And of course, even if he doesn't displace Trout now, he is how much younger than Trout? Well, I can answer that very quickly. Lindor is 23 years and five months, and Trout is 25 and eight months, so it's two and a half years almost. So even if Lindor doesn't catch up to Trout now, there could be a point where he does, maybe when Trout is 32 and Lindor is 30 or something.

So there's a possible future, at least, where Lindor is better than Trout, even if he is not currently. Yeah, for marketing, you want Harper. For the brashness, you want Sindergaard. He's a good personality. You want Lindor out there. And I think you probably want Mununuri Kawasaki.

He's one of the best players in baseball. I think that would be delightful for everybody. All right, shall we end our week on that note? Let's do it. All right. Shall we end our week on that note? Let's do it. All right. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already done so include Nicholas Karsner, Mike Carlucci, Jeffrey Young, Deb Kendall, and Daniel Kleinsorg. Thank you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Thanks dylan higgins for editing assistance keep your questions and

comments coming from me and jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system by the way quick psa the ringer mlb show will be back on itunes on monday including all the april episodes that you may have missed so keep an eye out for that in your feeds if you're subscribed have a wonderful weekend. We'll talk to you all next week.