ESPN Top 100

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Everybody else can do what they want. I just feel you need to wait till they are finally done so you can compare complete careers to complete careers - apples to apples. Obviously the closer to the end of their career a player is, the more you know of what they've done and how those accomplishments compare to others in history. But Trout is barely halfway through his career, assuming he comes back 100% healthy and continues playing for many more years, but there is no guarantee that is going to happen. So for now, Trout appears to be getting a lot of credit for how people think he's going to be doing in the future, which isn't fair to those who completed their careers and for whom their final accomplishments are known. And while a player is still playing, you really don't know how much longer they'll continue to play. So how do you decide when they're close enough to the end of their careers to start properly comparing their careers with others, especially when you don't normally know much in advance when they will end their careers. And rather than trying to pick some arbitrary date to be able to start comparing an active player's career to those of retired players, like one year, or maybe two years, before they finally retire, I'm for not guessing at all, and just waiting till they actually retire. Just makes sense to me.

It's a consistent position, but I guess my thought is you need to be flexible and when you have someone where it's pretty clear your assessment won't change much, it's fine to rank them. Pujols, Miggy, Verlander I would certainly put in that category. And I really have no issue ranking ANYONE based on performance to date, worst case you reassess later.

[insidethewrapper]

2021 Angels record with and without Trout playing :

With Trout 17-19 .472
Without Trout 60-66 .476

[nat]

There's an obvious way to rank active players without wishcasting on their future: rank them based on what they've done already.

Given what's he's done already, it's obvious that Trout isn't a top-20 player. I don't think I've seen anyone here disagree with that. ESPN's ranking is too high. (But then their list is terrible for lots of other reasons as well.)

FWIW, he's 75th all-time in WAR. Sandwiched between Bobby Wallace and Paul Molitor. Subjectively, that feels about right. If he were to retire tomorrow, he'd be a deserving but not top-tier hall of famer.

Now, that's probably not where he's going to end up. I'm still pretty confident that Trout will end up being a top-20 player. He's not there yet, and so shouldn't be ranked there yet. But from the fact that we don't know where he'll end up at the end of his career, it doesn't follow that we can't rank him now, given what he's already accomplished. (With the acknowledgement that the list will need to be revised in the future.)

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It's a consistent position, but I guess my thought is you need to be flexible and when you have someone where it's pretty clear your assessment won't change much, it's fine to rank them. Pujols, Miggy, Verlander I would certainly put in that category. And I really have no issue ranking ANYONE based on performance to date, worst case you reassess later.

Of course, but the thing is, do you really want to have an all-time list where you have current players you have to reassess and move around every year based on how their last season was? It is bad enough when you have to move people around when someone finally retires and comes onto the list for the first time ever.

And besides, with this crazy world we have today, you never know what's going to happen. So can you really just go and make your judgements of someone as it appears they're nearing the end of their career, sure, if you want to. As in the case of Pujols, I doubt anything detrimental to him or his career will come out at this point, and till he retires. But what if it suddenly was discovered that he'd been using corked bats throughout his career, or maybe he gets caught failing a drug test for PEDs. Or how about an informant comes forward with the evidence and revelation that during his time with the Cardinals, that team was involved in a cheating scheme/scandal on a par with what Altuve and the Astros had been doing, and Pujols was directly involved and taking full advantage of it for years. I honestly don't believe any of that would ever happen, but you never know 100% for sure. I figure if a player is getting that close to finally retiring, why be chomping at the bit to hurry up and judge/grade him? If he's that close, let him finish his career, and then do the assessment and ranking. Just makes the most sense to me.