Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
My point is that the season is nowhere near unprecedented. It was bested last season by Kemp.
And I also made a mistake in taking the rest of that claim by KC Connection at face value - the idea that Trout's season was never bested by Junior.
Look at Griffey's 1997 season:
125 R, 56HR, 147 RBI, 15 steals and an OPS of 1.028 - That season crushes the season that Trout put up this year. Trout only has an appreciable edge in steals.
Yet WAR has Trout as having a better season this year than Griffey did in 1997. Why? Because WAR is not dispositive of anything and can be wrong just as easily as RBI can. WAR should be looked at as just another tool, not the tool that answers all questions.
Leave it to the super stats crowd to actually try to claim that Trouts season was better than Griffeys 96, 97, 98 or even 93. Griffey did get the MVP in 97, but not the other 3 years.
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So WAR is wrong in this case because Trout couldn't possibly have been worth more than Griffey in those seasons? Because Ken Griffey Jr. is some kind of legend in the game? Because it's "just another tool?" Not really seeing an argument here...just disbelief.
Trout's wRC+ in 2012 (175), which adjusts to both the league and ballpark, was better than any season Griffey ever had in his career (Ken's great 1993 came the closest at 167 wRC+). The defensive value that Trout provided (at least according to UZR) was also right up there with Griffey's best seasons.
I'm just not understanding the attempt to play this Trout season off as if it's somehow common. It isn't. This combination of super elite offense, super elite defense, and super elite baserunning over a full season is very rare. Maybe even more rare than the winning the collection of Triple Crown stats and certainly more impressive.