Trout v. Legendary cards

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Tabe

Ryan's was measured 10 feet in front of the plate.

And that point is immaterial - they've been measuring the same way for at least a couple decades now. And the average fastball has gone up significantly in that time (2.5mph from 2008 to 2019 alone). Regardless of any adjustments you make, guys are throwing harder now than they did 12 years ago. And harder than 70 years ago.

The "dilution" of talent was mentioned earlier because of expansion. That's an argument that holds no water. The US has roughly 220% of the population (150m - 328m) now that it had in 1950. Meanwhile, MLB has 188% of the teams. AND MLB now draws players from around the world, which it did not do in 1950. In other words, not only has the talent not been diluted by expansion, it's actually been concentrated. Expansion hasn't kept up with population growth.

You have 32 NFL teams, 30 NBA teams and 30 MLB teams. The US population increase doesn’t come close to covering that and that doesn’t account for other sports. Baseball was pretty much the only major sport for a long time. The NBA didn’t even exist until after WW2. The NFL was an after thought. Jackie Robinson was a much better football player, in fact baseball was his worst sport at UCLA. Yet he ended up in the BBHOF.

The best athletes are not playing baseball. Athletes may be better, but if the second tier athletes are now the ones playing the game, they are not better than the first tier athletes from a previous era. I remember an interview with Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis about the Crenshaw HS baseball program in the 80s. They said that it was completely different than when they played a decade earlier. Baseball was no longer cool, the guys who would have played with them were now just playing football or basketball due to specialization.

You are throwing out absolutes like they are facts, they are not. They are your opinion. I disagree with them and that is my opinion. If you want to think Trout is great, fine, but I am not convinced. I have been watching the game for over 50 years and he isn’t close to the best player I have seen. He isn’t close to a 5 tool player. Maybe he can improve and convince me or maybe he declines like the other would be “greats.”