You might have noticed that I am asked to rank things from time to time. And who doesn't love a good ranking? Within that genre, the lowest-hanging fruit would seem to be simply rating the best players in MLB. The results are a matter of preference. How do you define best? What methodology did you use? What are the numbers underpinning your rankings?
For years now in baseball, this most basic of analysis topics has been completely, utterly undramatic. The answer has simply been: Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. If your method tells you something different, then the credibility of that method is hanging by a thread.
Yet last year, in conjunction with the release of our annual ranking of baseball's top 100 players, I was asked to poke around the topic. Trout topped our collaborative rankings for the sixth consecutive season. The questions to examine: Did my methods of answering the "best in the game" question agree? (They had better.) And would it be possible for anyone to catch Trout during the 2020 season? (Not really.)
Trout rendered the question moot by going out and winning his third American League MVP award, hitting .291/.438/.645 with 45 homers and 104 RBIs. Only a late-season foot injury prevented Trout from putting up his first 50-homer season. That's probably bad news for wanna-be Trout usurpers. He still has something left to shoot for. But within this paragraph, there are two essential threads to the same story -- Trout's continued greatness and that late-season injury.
Here we are again. Trout began last season as the unquestioned best player in baseball. He won another MVP award and deserved it. And thus, once again, any update on the central question is inherently undramatic. Of course Trout still is the best player in the game. Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Still, if you dig in under the hood, Trout's lead over the rest of baseball might be shrinking. And it's possible that it has shrunk enough that he could conceivably be surpassed in the coming season. It's not likely to happen. Not likely at all. But it's less impossible than it was a year ago at this time.
My definition of how to define "best in the game" ought to be re-explained. It's one I settled on while doing similar types of analysis while covering the NBA. You'd have a player not named LeBron James bob up and win an MVP award. Then there would be a smattering of think pieces wondering if James had relinquished his throne as the world's best basketball player. He hadn't. He'd either win the MVP award the next season, or be right back in the running, where he remains 17 seasons into his unparalleled career.
It's like that with Trout. Trout has led the majors in Baseball-Reference.com WAR, to cite just one metric, only three times in his career. He hasn't done it since 2016. Last season, he ranked third behind Cody Bellinger and Alex Bregman. The season before, he finished second to Mookie Betts. But he has been in the top three in seven of the past eight seasons, ranking 10th in 2017. The players who have finished ahead of Trout in bWAR at least once since 2012:
Corey Kluber (twice)
Aaron Judge
Alex Bregman
Andrelton Simmons
Bryce Harper
Clayton Kershaw
Cody Bellinger
Giancarlo Stanton
Joey Votto
Jose Altuve
Jose Ramirez
Max Scherzer
Mookie Betts
Nolan Arenado
Zack Greinke
Only Kluber has done it more than once. That, more than anything, is why Trout has never come close to giving up his best-in-game title. It takes more than one season to topple the king of a sport. Armed with that knowledge, I decided to rank players based on rolling five-year averages. The five-year window includes the season in question, the two before it, and the two after it. The method requires us to project seasons that have yet to happen, but that's only an issue for the two most recent campaigns. The idea is to create a snapshot of the baseline ability of a player at a given time.
Here's where the rankings fell entering the 2019 season:
1. Mike Trout (173.1 five-year win shares)
2. Mookie Betts (149.3)
3. Christian Yelich (145.6)
4. Alex Bregman (140.3)
5. Jose Altuve (134.5)
6. Freddie Freeman (130.6)
7. Anthony Rendon (130.3)
8. Francisco Lindor (129.8)
9. Nolan Arenado (127.8)
10. Charlie Blackmon (122.6)
I created this database using win shares, the Bill James invention, getting the data from TheBaseballGauge.com. I like win shares for these kinds of backward-looking exercises, though I acknowledge that the metric has its detractors and flaws. For this kind of thing, I think they work well. I don't like the way bWAR divides credit for pitching and defense, and I don't love the way that FanGraphs WAR is so reliant on defense-independent pitching when it comes to probing the past. None of these bottom-line measures is anything close to perfect. For this exercise, I use win shares.
The numbers are different from last year's piece because I decided to add the projection element for the missing seasons. This allows for better cross-era comparisons. The projections more or less assume a player will continue along his recent trajectory, with basic aging factors worked in.
OK, with that stuff out of the way, we can see why it was basically impossible for anyone to pass Trout. Even if he had somehow zeroed out on win shares in 2019, his five-year mark would have remained in the top five. However, the gap has closed somewhat. Here is the new top 10 as spring training approaches:
1. Mike Trout (171.2 five-year win shares)
2. Alex Bregman (168.8)
3. Christian Yelich (156.3)
4. Mookie Betts (150.9)
5. Cody Bellinger (144.8)
6. Anthony Rendon (137.7)
7. Francisco Lindor (130.9)
8. Nolan Arenado (127.8)
9. Freddie Freeman (126.8)
10. Marcus Semien (122.3)
Just as Bregman and Bellinger outpaced Trout in bWAR in 2019, they did the same in win shares, with Bregman leading the majors at 34.7, Bellinger coming in second at 33.9 and Trout finishing third at 33.5. That launched Bellinger into the top 10 for the first time, but Bregman was already there. Both players are younger than Trout, who is coming off his age-27 season. Thus the projection part of the formula sees Bregman and Bellinger continuing to rise a bit, while Trout is more likely to plateau. (Plateau at a historically good level, but still a plateau.)
Thus with the forecast five-year window that's in play here, it suddenly seems possible that if Trout has a so-so year and Bregman continues to get even better, he could slip past Trout in next year's rankings. However, it seemed like Betts might be poised to make a similar move last year, and he was merely really good in 2019 instead of Trout-level great. That's the thing with Trout: He's that good every year, and you have to sustain your advantage over him for two or three years to steal his crown. No one has been able to even come close to doing it.
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Trout ranks No. 1 by this best-in-game method for the sixth consecutive season, mirroring his streak atop our MLB Rank consensus ratings at ESPN. It's not a record reign, but it is historic. Here are the longest best-in-game reigns by my methodology:
Barry Bonds (14, 1990-2003)
Babe Ruth (13, 1918-30)
Mike Schmidt (8, 1977-84)
Albert Pujols (7, 2004-10)
Honus Wagner (7, 1902-08)
Mickey Mantle (7, 1954-60)
Mike Trout (6, 2014-19)
Ty Cobb (6, 1912-17)
Stan Musial had two separate best-in-game game reigns that totaled seven years, so he deserves a most honorable mention. As he has in so many ways, Trout is keeping heady company. If he can keep doing what he's doing, it's easy to envision him at least catching and passing Schmidt. That said, Trout's margin for error is shrinking. Here's his calculation for five-year win shares for each of the past six years, with his advantage over second place:
2014: 196.9, plus-42.4 over second place
2015: 190.0, plus-47.5
2016: 188.3, plus-33.5
2017: 180.6, plus-38.7
2018: 173.1, plus-23.8
2019: 171.2, plus-2.4
It's headed the wrong direction, which kind of flies in the face of the narrative that Trout just keeps getting better and better. In many ways, that's certainly true. His OPS+ totals for each of the past three years (186, 198, 185) are all well above his career-best total before that, which was 179 in 2013. The problem, and the reason others have gained ground in these metrics that are a mash of efficiency and cumulative production, is simply that he has missed too many games.
From 2013 to 2016, Trout played in a minimum of 157 games per season. Over the past three years, his season-by-season totals have been 114, 140 and 134. Bregman, on the other hand, has been at 155, 157 and 156. Bellinger has been at 132 (his rookie year), 162 and 156. On a pro rata basis, Trout stands alone. But you can't help your team if you're not in the lineup.
Let's say Trout had appeared in 150 games in each of the past three seasons, while producing win shares at the same rate. If that had been the case, his five-year win shares total would be 187.8. His lead over Bregman, Betts, Bellinger and any other B-named All-Stars would still be monumental.
That's the bottom line, really. On a per-game basis, Trout still produces more value for the Angels than any other player does for his team. It's still not particularly close. If he's going to lose his title as best player in baseball anytime soon, it's going to be because of the kinds of injuries that have robbed him of so many games in recent years. It's the exact same reason Mickey Mantle eventually lost his crown to Willie Mays back in the early 1960s, and he never got it back.
Trout takes a lot better care of himself than Mantle ever did, and his injuries have largely been a matter of bad luck. (Though, once again, I beseech you, Mike, to stop diving into bases.) Luck has a way of evening out. Age will play a part in this too, but Trout is only 28. It's been written many times that in sports, health is a skill. It's also been written many times that Trout has found a way to fix every suboptimal component in his skill set. If he can do that with injuries, and stay on the field for 150 or more games for the next few years, there is no reason he can't retain his title for the foreseeable future.
But if Trout again finds himself enduring long stays on the injured list, others are poised to take his place atop the ratings. Perhaps as soon as this season. All they have to do is keep out-Trouting Trout, something no one over the past decade has been able to do.
Three little things
1. It's probably just a social media phenomenon and thus not a phenomenon at all, but I've noticed a common concern about the new three-batter minimum rule. The idea is this: To skirt the new restriction, pitchers will simply fake an arm injury. I'm skeptical this would become a widespread practice, but I guess it's possible a wily manager might pick a crucial time to instruct a lefty reliever to suddenly "feel something" when a daunting right-handed hitter waits on deck.
It seems to me that there are a lot of common-sense ways to monitor this, not the least of which is simple umpire discretion. Still, I want to point out one fan's idea for what strikes me as an obvious fix to this as-of-now non-problem: If a pitcher has to be removed from a game before he has met the minimum, the opposing manager gets to pick the guy who trots in from the bullpen.
This is a precise mirror of basketball's rule that allows a coach to pick the opponent's free throw shooter if the player who gets fouled can't take the charity tosses. Thus the Ken "The Animal" Bannisters of the world don't have an easy out if they get fouled at a crucial moment.
As a reminder, we haven't seen an official announcement from MLB about any on-field rule changes that will be in effect for 2020. Thus, assuming the three-batter rule goes into effect as is widely assumed, we don't yet know what safeguards will be spelled out to prevent the kind of gamesmanship that we know teams are willing to engage in. However, I don't see a downside to the control suggested here.
2. After the details about the Betts blockbuster trade surfaced, everyone understandably started to slobber over the Dodgers' new prospective everyday lineup. Count me among them. (More on that in Little Thing No. 3.) On SportsCenter, we ran a graphic that highlighted the six L.A. regulars who have been All-Stars, with the two exceptions being highly touted second-year players Will Smith at catcher and Gavin Lux at second base. Both could well be future All-Stars.
One of the things that jumped out at me is how quickly we've adapted to the idea of "Max Muncy, All-Star." He's all of that, and not just in the literal sense that he earned a spot on the National League squad at the 2019 Midsummer Classic. Over the past two years, Muncy has emerged as one of the best hitters in baseball. During that span, Muncy ranks 17th in bWAR among position players and 15th in wins above average. His .256/.381/.545 line translates to a three-way tie for seventh in OPS+ among players with at least 800 plate appearances. The players he's tied with are Aaron Judge and Anthony Rendon.
Muncy is a very 2020 kind of hitter in that batting average is easily the least important part of his slash line. He's a take-and-rake slugger supreme straight out of the nightmares of the anti-analytics crowd. For all his strikeouts, he's consistent, with little variance in home-road performance (.860 home OPS; .870 road) or against pitcher handedness (.860 against lefties; .882 against righties). He can flat-out hit, all while being versatile enough to play three infield positions.
It's easy to forget Muncy's origins. This is someone whose entire age-26 season in 2017 was spent in the minors. He didn't earn a big league spot at the outset of 2018 either, but by the end of that season, he was starting and homering in the World Series. On Thursday, we got the news that the Dodgers had reached an agreement on a three-year, $26 million extension with Muncy. And while it's not a huge contract by MLB standards and has the potential to actually be team-friendly, the fact is Muncy has achieved a level of long-term security he could not have dreamed of less than two years ago.
I don't know if Muncy's story is merely tangential to the ongoing saga about the effects of analytics in baseball, or if the two stories are intertwined. I don't want to take Muncy's persistence and adaptability out of the equation. However, I can't help but think Muncy has benefited immensely from the use of metrics in scouting and development. And as long as metrics can keep giving us stories like the one of Max Muncy, I'm going to chalk that up as a vote in favor of the influence of analytics.
3. Just last week, I went to all the trouble of forecasting the best everyday lineups for every team. Then the Dodgers, Angels, Red Sox and Twins had to mess it up by conspiring to a complicated set of maneuvers that ended up sending Betts, one of baseball's five best players, to the Dodgers. After updating my depth charts and projected lineups, here is the new pecking order. Teams are ranked by projected runs created per 600 plate appearances for their anticipated base lineup:
1. Los Angeles Dodgers (97.2; Previous: 2)
2. Houston Astros (96.5; Previous: 1)
3. New York Mets (93.8; Previous: 3)
4. Los Angeles Angels (90.3; Previous: 4)
5. Chicago Cubs (90.1; Previous: 5)
6. Oakland Athletics (89.1; Previous: 6)
7. Atlanta Braves (88.7; Previous: 7)
8. New York Yankees (87.7; Previous: 9)
9. San Diego Padres (87.3; Previous: 10)
10. Washington Nationals (86.9; Previous: 11)
11. Minnesota Twins (86.4; Previous: 12)
12. Chicago White Sox (86.1; Previous: 13)
13. Boston Red Sox (85.8; Previous: 8)
14. Milwaukee Brewers (85.5; Previous: 14)
15. Tampa Bay Rays (84.3; Previous: 15)
16. Philadelphia Phillies (83.8; Previous: 16)
17. Cincinnati Reds (82.9; Previous: 17)
18. Cleveland Indians (82.7; Previous: 18)
19. St. Louis Cardinals (81.3; Previous: 19)
20. Toronto Blue Jays (80.9; Previous: 20)
21. Pittsburgh Pirates (80.4; Previous: 21)
22. Seattle Mariners (79.2; Previous: 22)
23. Arizona Diamondbacks (79.0; Previous: 23)
24. Texas Rangers (78.6; Previous: 24)
25. Miami Marlins (77.6; Previous: 25)
26. San Francisco Giants (77.4; Previous: 26)
27. Kansas City Royals (77.4; Previous: 27)
28. Colorado Rockies (75.6; Previous: 28)
29. Detroit Tigers (73.5; Previous: 29)
30. Baltimore Orioles (73.1; Previous: 30)