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Old 06-19-2018, 11:59 AM
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AGuinness AGuinness is offline
Garth Guibord
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Portland, OR
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arazi4442 View Post
I feel like we're going to look back at Trout vs. Harper the same way we now look at Nomar vs. Jeter
At first, I kind of took this as a slight to Nomar, who had a career peak (based on WAR7 - the best seven seasons of WAR in a career) that equalled Jeter's (43.1 for Nomar, 42.4 for Jeter based on B-Ref). Of course, Nomar was just injured way too much to build on his peak, while Jeter enjoyed many years of health and wracked up an impressive career.

Then I looked at the Trout vs. Harper parallel and it really doesn't do Trout justice. Harper, now in his 7th season, has a WAR7 of 26.7 (including one season of 10), so obviously there is some room to improve. Trout, now in his 8th season has a WAR7 of 60, and also has some room to improve that number with the current season being one of those seven for WAR7.

It might be easy to forget just how good Nomar's peak was, and the guy fell of the HOF ballot after two years, despite some damn good numbers that compare with some of the Hall's lesser shortstops or shortstops that have received more votes (Omar Vizquel, with 45.6 career WAR, got 37 percent of the vote last year).

But dang, Trout has lapped the field of his contemporaries already. Currently in his 8th year, everybody else in the top 10 is in their 11th year or later. The closest "under 10 seasons" player in the active list is Chris Sale, with 39.4 WAR and in his 9th season, at number 30 on the list. Mookie Betts and Nolan Arrenado both rank higher in the active career WAR list than Harper, and both each with fewer seasons.

Harper has ample opportunity to improve his career WAR and peak WAR, being so young. Of course, Trout does, too. Perhaps they'll end up closer to one another in the end, but I wouldn't bet on it. Trout has blown the field away in comparison to his contemporaries, and it doesn't look like the end is in sight.
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