Quote:
Originally Posted by D. Bergin
Just a hare-brained theory, and I'm certainly not going to research it any further  , but if you had to average in the WAR of the bench player's that had to replace Trout's spot in the lineup with the player's who had to replace Mookie, I'd wager their WAR totals would be closer together then they are...and they're NOT THAT far apart, considering Trouts career started 3 years before Mookie. |
On average, this shouldn't make any difference. Replacement level is intended to be the level of the last guy off the bench, so you should expect (PLAYER'S WAR + REPLACEMENT'S WAR) to just equal PLAYER'S WAR. Now, that's just on average, and a given team might have a stronger bench than average, and maybe the Red Sox/Dodgers had a better bench than the Angels. But it's hard to see how that should change your evaluation of Trout/Betts (as opposed to the BOS/LAD vs. LAA front office that constructs the roster).
As for the question of which career would you rather have: even though Trout is the greater player, I think I'd go with Mookie. It must be incredibly frustrating to get injured over and over again and have to sit on the sidelines for, effectively, years on end.