ESPN Top 100

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Tabe

There's certainly a chance that Trout has faced lesser competition for his MVPs. I haven't bothered to dig into that. I know he lost at least one to Miguel Cabrera when Miggy was in his prime - a prime that pretty much any superstar would be proud to have.

As for Trout's ranking, yeah, I wouldn't put him top 20 right now either. It's clearly based on future projections and I'm not comfortable with that. If you did that and were making a list in 1965, Sandy Koufax would've been an easy top 10 pick. Instead, of course, he was retired a year later.

But I'm also not going to sit here and criticize the guy because he's been stuck with lousy teammates (seriously - the best pitcher he's played with is either Jered Weaver or a freaking DH). The year they made the playoffs, they had 2 guys hit 20 homers - Trout and the corpse of Albert Pujols. One year, they had 2 guys in the starting lineup who hit under .190. Another year (2019), they were 2-2/3 innings from becoming the first team in history to have no pitchers throw 100 innings in a season.

So, yeah, Trout went 1 for 12 in 3 games in the playoffs. It happens. Jose Altuve, the gold standard held up earlier in the thread, had a stretch of 3 games where he went 0 for 17. He had another of 0 for 10. He also had back-to-back 1 for 13 stretches for a total of 2 for 26. But, yeah, let's kill Trout because he had a very brief cold streak, one that is perfectly normal among every player who has ever held a bat.

Chris,

For the record, I'm not dissing Trout, I'm just waiting till he finishes his career before even thinking about where he belongs on an all-time list. Everything you said I don't disagree with at all. It wasn't me saying anything about Trout's playoff history, or blaming him for who else they have onthe team. Just making sure you weren't directing some of your comebacks at me. LOL