Rough Weekend
The Los Angeles Angels had an extremely rough weekend as they got swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers are the real deal and the only team in the majors to not lose a series this year. It is never good to get swept, especially at home. The Angels struggled all around in the series and went 6-19 with runners in scoring position and left 16 men on base. The good news is that Anthony Rendon is starting to turn the corner after his slow start. He has hit now five home runs during this homestand with a stretch of four consecutive games. The good news is that the Angels are not in dead last and only six games out of a wild card spot. The even better news is that Mike Trout is on the team.
Mike Trout
Mike Trout has been an unbelievable talent for the Angles since he came up to the big leagues as a teenager. Trout has a career 73.2 WAR which ranks 85th all time. WAR or Wins Above Replacement is “a single number that presents the number of wins the player has added to the team above what a replacement player would add.” He has already passed Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Tony Gwynn and Future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera. To say that Mike Trout has had an impressive first 10 years to his career would be an understatement.
You Be the Judge
To help put Mike Trout’s greatness into perspective we can compare his career to the second best thing the league saw when he came up, Bryce Harper. Harper has a career WAR of 32.7 and one MVP award. Trout made his MLB Debut on July 8, 2011, and Harper made his debut the very next season on April 28, 2012. When they both came up as 19-year-olds. Trout has more than double the amount of WAR and has him beat in every major statistical category. That includes hits, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, runs batted in, and steals. All that while only having 116 more games than Harper. These two were phenoms when they came up within a year but Trout is now in a league of his own.
There have been some talks on social media stating that Aaron Judge is the best player in baseball after he had a home run streak. Aaron Judge is a tremendous talent and maybe even the face of Major League Baseball. Being the face of the league and being the best player in the league are similar but very different. Judge is an MVP candidate every year that he is healthy and this year he is off to a quick start. He currently leads the league in home runs outright and is tied for at first for runs batted in.
First Three Years
Judge is all over television, social media, and the world. However, Judge has a career WAR of 20.4. He can take the title as the face of the league and playing for the New York Yankees definitely helps his cause. The only thing in Judge’s way is his own health and the best player in the world, Mike Trout. Excluding Trout and Judge’s rookie years and the 2020 season, Mike Trout has a slight edge over Aaron Judge. Judge has a total WAR of 19.3 where Trout had a total WAR of 27.1. Aaron Judge has two opticals that he needs to climb to reach in order to be the best player in the league.
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