Quote:
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.
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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.