Trout is on pace for a truly historic season

[DrungoHazewood]

To me WAR is an absolutely horrible statistic. I don't mind us trying to assign a value to estimate the amount of wins a player contributes. This number should not be subjective. WAR is a made up, arbitrary formula. It's the opposite of what stats should be, which is objective and concrete. Take for instance batting average. You divide the hits by the AB's. There is no ifs and or buts. Just this season baseball reference completely altered their WAR. Their old one had Matt Kemp as the best player in the MLB by a huge margin last year. Now he's back down to Earth. They are just taking made up formulas to assign a bogus value on a player. How about this one? The Dodgers are 4 games under .500 without Matt Kemp and about 15 games over .500 with him. I don't need a made up number to tell me he is the best player in the league. I already know when he's healthy that he is.

Let me just say I'm glad I missed the thread this addled thought spawned.

[Don_Aase_Fan]

Trout does it again in CF; arguably better than his catch @ OPACY...

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=23623763&c_id=mlb#/copy

Ridiculous!

[Aglets]

How historic?

According to ESPN, (which I believe uses bb-ref WAR), Trout has been worth 6 wins so far, which puts him on pace for 11.35 WAR for the season.

There have only been 12 single position player seasons in the history of the sport that have been that high.

The players that put together seasons like that are none other than Babe Ruth, Hornsby, Yaz, Barry Bonds, Gehrig, Ripken, and Honus Wagner.

Pretty darn good company. Interesting fact though, all of these guys were age 24 or older at the time they put up those numbers.

No one has EVER had this kind of a season at age 20 like Trout. The highest WAR season by any single position player at age 20 was Arod's 9.2 WAR in 1996.

We are witnessing real history this year with this kid, hope no one is taking it for granted.

8/13/12 UPDATE:

Using the same math as before, Trout has actually increased his pace for 2012. Now on pace for 11.48 WAR for the season. Weird to think that without Trout on the Angels they would be a below-.500 team (depending on how much stock you put into WAR).

[DrungoHazewood]

8/13/12 UPDATE:

Using the same math as before, Trout has actually increased his pace for 2012. Now on pace for 11.48 WAR for the season. Weird to think that without Trout on the Angels they would be a below-.500 team (depending on how much stock you put into WAR).

I don't have much trouble believing that replacing the best player in Major League Baseball with, like, Bill Hall would cost them 10 wins or so.

[Aglets]

September 4th update:

Yet again, Trout has actually slightly increased his WAR pace. He is now on pace for 11.54 Wins Above Replacement this year.

That would put him in the company of the top 8 or 9 single season performances by any position player in MLB history.

At this point Babe Ruth's 1923 season (13.7 WAR) seems out of reach though, which is the all time record for a non-pitcher.

[DrungoHazewood]

At this point Babe Ruth's 1923 season (13.7 WAR) seems out of reach though, which is the all time record for a non-pitcher.

I consider that the high mark for all players, since the top 28 pitcher WAR totals were compiled in deadball/19th century conditions that are impossible today. It doesn't really mean anything that Pud Galvin had 19.9 WAR in 1884, when he could complete 71 of his 72 starts. There is just a jarring break between the conditions of the 1910s and the eras afterwards that it's almost a different game. It would be like if in football there was some kind of innovation where QBs would never again throw 30 passes in a game.

So if Trout somehow got to 13.8 WAR I'd count that as the all-time record.

[Can_of_corn]

I consider that the high mark for all players, since the top 28 pitcher WAR totals were compiled in deadball/19th century conditions that are impossible today. It doesn't really mean anything that Pud Galvin had 19.9 WAR in 1884, when he could complete 71 of his 72 starts. There is just a jarring break between the conditions of the 1910s and the eras afterwards that it's almost a different game. It would be like if in football there was some kind of innovation where QBs would never again throw 30 passes in a game.

So if Trout somehow got to 13.8 WAR I'd count that as the all-time record.

Except they keep revising it. Didn't Cal have the highest WAR at one time for his '91 season?

[DrungoHazewood]

Except they keep revising it. Didn't Cal have the highest WAR at one time for his '91 season?

No, I don't think so. There have been revisions, and different versions have had different ways of defining replacement level, or the slope of history. BP's WARP used to have a really low replacement level, like a .150 or .200 winning percentage, which caused some odd results, like I believe Cal's '91 was rated at 14 or 15 WARP. But I think Ruth's best years were near 20.

I hope they keep revising as new knowledge comes online.

[Can_of_corn]

No, I don't think so. There have been revisions, and different versions have had different ways of defining replacement level, or the slope of history. BP's WARP used to have a really low replacement level, like a .150 or .200 winning percentage, which caused some odd results, like I believe Cal's '91 was rated at 14 or 15 WARP. But I think Ruth's best years were near 20.

I hope they keep revising as new knowledge comes online.

I have no problem with the revisions, I have a problem with calling something an "all time record" when it is in a state of flux.

[Aglets]

Still on pace for a season of over 11.4 WAR with fifteen games to go.

Ruth, Hornsby, Yaz, Bonds, Gehrig, Ripken, Wagner, and Trout.....craziness.

[Slappy]

To me WAR is an absolutely horrible statistic. I don't mind us trying to assign a value to estimate the amount of wins a player contributes. This number should not be subjective. WAR is a made up, arbitrary formula. It's the opposite of what stats should be, which is objective and concrete. Take for instance batting average. You divide the hits by the AB's. There is no ifs and or buts. Just this season baseball reference completely altered their WAR. Their old one had Matt Kemp as the best player in the MLB by a huge margin last year. Now he's back down to Earth. They are just taking made up formulas to assign a bogus value on a player. How about this one? The Dodgers are 4 games under .500 without Matt Kemp and about 15 games over .500 with him. I don't need a made up number to tell me he is the best player in the league. I already know when he's healthy that he is.

Man, you can use whatever metric you want with Trout. Batting average? His .329 is exactly .001 behind Miguel Cabrera. On-base percentage? Ted Williams-esque at .396 (3rd in the league). Slugging percentage? #4 in the AL at .562. His on-base plus slugging is .957, behind just Cabrera. His 45 stolen bases are #1 in the AL. He's also top ten in such concrete categories as hits, total bases, triples, times on base, sac flies, and stolen base pct.

Both the eye test and advanced metrics say he's one of the best defensive center fielders in the majors.

By your "Kemp Test", the Angels are 6-14 without Trout, and 74-53 with him (+21).

And the kid is a 20-year old rookie.

Unreal year for him.

[Gurgi]

Man, you can use whatever metric you want with Trout. Batting average? His .329 is exactly .001 behind Miguel Cabrera. On-base percentage? Ted Williams-esque at .396 (3rd in the league). Slugging percentage? #4 in the AL at .562. His on-base plus slugging is .957, behind just Cabrera. His 45 stolen bases are #1 in the AL. He's also top ten in such concrete categories as hits, total bases, triples, times on base, sac flies, and stolen base pct.

Both the eye test and advanced metrics say he's one of the best defensive center fielders in the majors.

By your "Kemp Test", the Angels are 6-14 without Trout, and 74-53 with him (+21).

And the kid is a 20-year old rookie.

Unreal year for him.

They need to see if his "training" buddies include Lance Armstrong.

[Pedro Cerrano]

They need to see if his "training" buddies include Lance Armstrong.

Yea, they need to look into this. MLB doesn't do drug testing and thus it's quite probable Trout, and any good player for that matter, is juicing.

[DrungoHazewood]

Ted Williams-esque at .396 (3rd in the league).

That would be Ted's 19th-best OBP, 0.086 off his career mark.

[Hallas]

That would be Ted's 19th-best OBP, 0.086 off his career mark.

Okay, but lgOBP during Ted Williams' career was .356. During Trout's mini-deadball career it's .311.