Handicapping Mike Trout
The perfect measurement of a baseball player will never exist. WAR is pretty good – and it’s certainly light years ahead of where we were a few decades ago – but it has its flaws. So do all other metrics, or combinations thereof. This is unfortunate because we may never truly realize exactly how much better Mike Trout is than everyone else.
Recently, Effectively Wild facebook group member Chris Jillings bravely attempted to capture the brilliance of Trout by using the FanGraphs sortable leaderboards. He searched for the most career WAR over the past decade and found Mike Trout on top. At first blush, there’s nothing surprising here, but then you remember his first full season was 2012. He gave every player in a baseball a FOUR YEAR head start and was still the best!
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
| 2 | Joey Votto | 1406 | 6052 | 53.6 |
| 3 | Evan Longoria | 1435 | 6151 | 49.6 |
| 4 | Adrian Beltre | 1387 | 5861 | 49.1 |
| 5 | Miguel Cabrera | 1506 | 6458 | 48.0 |
Look at the games played! Everyone else has about 400 more, yet they still can’t reach him! He’s not just beating slouches; these are #2-5 best players in baseball over the last 10 years! This is incredible on its own merit, but there’s more to discover. We can move the timeframe even farther back to see just how far down this rabbit hole goes.
2007-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
| 2 | Joey Votto | 1430 | 6141 | 53.4 |
| 3 | Miguel Cabrera | 1663 | 7138 | 53.0 |
| 4 | Adrian Beltre | 1536 | 6500 | 52.0 |
| 5 | Robinson Cano | 1744 | 7434 | 49.7 |
Over the last 11 years Trout is still #1. 2007 was Joey Votto’s debut season and he was worth -0.1 WAR over 24 games. Miguel Cabrera, Adrian Beltre, and Robinson Cano all gain ground. By the way, every player on this list is an easy Hall of Famer, including Cano who has 819 more games played and still trails by 4.7 WAR.
2006-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Miguel Cabrera | 1821 | 7814 | 59.3 |
| 2 | Adrian Beltre | 1692 | 7181 | 56.7 |
| 3 | Chase Utley | 1566 | 6609 | 55.5 |
| 4 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
| 5 | Joey Votto | 1430 | 6141 | 53.4 |
Moving the timeframe back to 2006 finally deposes Trout from the #1 spot. At the beginning of the 2006 season, he was a high school sophomore. Miguel Cabrera, one of the greatest pure hitters we’ll ever see, was still a Marlin at the time. Even he needs almost twice as much playing time as Trout to garner more WAR.
2003-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Albert Pujols | 2257 | 9837 | 76.4 |
| 2 | Adrian Beltre | 2162 | 9096 | 72.0 |
| 3 | Miguel Cabrera | 2226 | 9530 | 67.6 |
| 4 | Chase Utley | 1850 | 7676 | 64.5 |
| 5 | Alex Rodriguez | 1670 | 7235 | 60.1 |
| 6 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
We need to expand the search all the way back to 2003 to bounce Trout out of the top five. He’s replaced by Alex Rodriguez, who won his first MVP that year, his final season in Texas. Putting that another way, in the entirety of A-Rod’s Yankee career he failed to amass more WAR than Trout has through his age-25 season.
2001-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Albert Pujols | 2575 | 11188 | 89.1 |
| 2 | Alex Rodriguez | 1994 | 8692 | 77.9 |
| 3 | Adrian Beltre | 2447 | 10246 | 76.8 |
| 4 | Miguel Cabrera | 2226 | 9530 | 67.6 |
| 5 | Chase Utley | 1850 | 7676 | 64.5 |
| 6 | Carlos Beltran | 2318 | 9832 | 62.3 |
| 7 | Ichiro Suzuki | 2636 | 10681 | 58.2 |
| 8 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
| 9 | Barry Bonds | 843 | 3465 | 54.3 |
Trout is 8th in career WAR since 2001. There’s nothing particularly special about the top 8 until you look at the names surrounding him. 2001 was Ichiro Suzuki’s American debut. He needs all 3080 hits and 17 seasons in Major League Baseball to achieve more WAR than Trout. Also, Barry Bonds! From 2001 through the end of his career, Bonds slashed .325/.531/.731. Yes, that’s a .531 OBP. No, that’s not worth more than Trout! In fairness, this does actually capture fewer games for Bonds than Trout. Who cares. They are both so indescribably superior to everyone else that they can only be fairly compared to one another. In case you were wondering, Trout was in fifth grade at the beginning of 2001.
2000-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Albert Pujols | 2575 | 11188 | 89.1 |
| 2 | Alex Rodriguez | 2142 | 9364 | 87.4 |
| 3 | Adrian Beltre | 2585 | 10821 | 80.7 |
| 4 | Miguel Cabrera | 2226 | 9530 | 67.6 |
| 5 | Chase Utley | 1850 | 7676 | 64.5 |
| 6 | Carlos Beltran | 2416 | 10245 | 62.8 |
| 7 | Barry Bonds | 986 | 4072 | 61.9 |
| 8 | Ichiro Suzuki | 2636 | 10681 | 58.2 |
| 9 | Chipper Jones | 1720 | 7228 | 57.1 |
| 10 | Lance Berkman | 1845 | 7708 | 55.8 |
| 11 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
Trout finally departs the top 10 if we stretch back to Y2K. He is surpassed by Bonds, Chipper Jones, and Lance Berkman. Every player on the list except for Bonds and Berkman has played twice as many games as Trout in this window, and Berkman has basically doubled his total.
1996-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Alex Rodriguez | 2719 | 11999 | 113.5 |
| 2 | Barry Bonds | 1561 | 6568 | 91.8 |
| 3 | Albert Pujols | 2575 | 11188 | 89.1 |
| 4 | Adrian Beltre | 2814 | 11649 | 84.3 |
| 5 | Chipper Jones | 2351 | 10008 | 81.5 |
| 19 | Todd Helton | 2247 | 9453 | 54.8 |
| 20 | Brian Giles | 1841 | 7827 | 54.6 |
| 21 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065 | 54.4 |
| 22 | Vladimir Guerrero | 2147 | 9059 | 54.3 |
| 23 | Jeff Bagwell | 1466 | 6457 | 53.6 |
Reaching back to 1996 removes Trout from the top 20. He’s directly in front of a pair of players who are already in the Hall of Fame. Jeff Bagwell was in his prime, but 1996 was Vladimir Guerrero’s rookie season. In other words, Trout has already accumulated more career WAR than Vlad did in his entire career. Apparently, so has Brian Giles, so take that for what it’s worth.
1992-2017 fWAR Leaders
| Rank | Player | G | PA | WAR |
| 1 | Barry Bonds | 2116 | 8963.0 | 125.6 |
| 2 | Alex Rodriguez | 2784 | 12207.0 | 112.9 |
| 3 | Albert Pujols | 2575 | 11188.0 | 89.1 |
| 4 | Chipper Jones | 2499 | 10614.0 | 84.6 |
| 5 | Adrian Beltre | 2814 | 11649.0 | 84.3 |
| 30 | Todd Helton | 2247 | 9453.0 | 54.8 |
| 31 | Rafael Palmeiro | 2104 | 9098.0 | 54.5 |
| 32 | Mike Trout | 925 | 4065.0 | 54.4 |
| 33 | Vladimir Guerrero | 2147 | 9059.0 | 54.3 |
| 34 | Edgar Martinez | 1669 | 7184.0 | 53.5 |
To take Trout out of the top 30, we need to expand the search to 1992. He was born August 7, 1991. The 32nd best position player in the world over the last 26 seasons was 7-months-old on that first Opening Day! The next best player since 1992 with fewer than 1000 games played is Josh Donaldson, who sits in 82nd place with 36.8 WAR over 831 games.
Of course, Trout has an awful lot of baseball left. Health permitting, he’ll increase his career WAR by another 7-10 in 2018. That will make the search engine dive even farther back to adequately handicap him relative to the best of his peers. Then, he’ll do it again in 2019, 2020, and so on for another 8-12 years. By the time he’s through, no leaderboard may be able to contain him at all.
-Daniel R. Epstein
