MLB Alternative Reality: What if Sabermetrics Didn’t Exist?

With MLB news slowing as teams prepare for spring training, we’re taking a look at some alternative realities here at Call to the Pen. Today, we look at which players would be considered the game’s best if sabermetrics didn’t exist.

Mike Trout is the best player in MLB. That is a fairly agreed upon statement in the baseball community, and his stat lines and highlight reel catches could be used as exhibit A in a court of law. Trout led baseball in fWAR last year with a 9.4. Since entering the league in 2012, he has been 15 wins better than the second placed position player, Josh Donaldson. Clayton Kershaw is his closest competition with 35.7 wins above replacement (per FanGraphs) but Trout’s 42.0 is still a bit out of reach.

But what if WAR didn’t exist? What if we were going by the old standard of home runs, RBI, pitcher wins and ERA as the determining factors for the best player in baseball? Would Trout’s 29 home runs, 100 RBI and .315 batting average keep him on top? Well…

Most fans can tell you that Mike Trout‘s 29 home runs weren’t the most in baseball last season. That distinction belonged to Baltimore Orioles slugger Mark Trumbo who belted 47 to go along with a .256 batting average and 108 RBI.

In thumbing through the MLB MVP awards throughout the history of baseball, the first slash in the triple slash has almost always started with at least a .300 average, so even with the power that Trumbo exhibited, he still would not have been considered of MVP caliber. The same can be said for Chris Carter (41 home runs, .222), Khris Davis (42, .247) and Todd Frazier (40, .225), although a free agent like Carter would have likely been signed and paid handsomely by this point in the offseason.

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With this in mind, lets limit the search to those that have shown a decent amount of power and have hit above .300. The list is considerably shorter and the top player on it shouldn’t surprise too many. Miguel Cabrera has been deemed the best hitter in baseball for a number of years, and his 38 homers in 2016 to go along with a .316 batting average definitely pass the smell test. Just a touch below him last season was David Ortiz, who also hit 38 dingers but hit “only” .315.

If the powers that be were trying to skew a bit younger than a recently retired MLB player, Atlanta’s Freddie Freeman hit 34 home runs and just passed the bar at .302. He’ll be getting a bit more attention as the Braves continue to improve after being lost in the shuffle for a couple of rebuilding seasons. Adrian Beltre hit .300 on the nose and blasted 32, and Robinson Cano hit 39 while batting .298, but both are on the back nine of their careers.

Really the conversation would end up going down to two players: Mike Trout and Mookie Betts. Trout, while not having quite the same statistical accomplishments as some of the aforementioned players, does have the highlight reel plays that stick in people’s minds. He can also swipe bags (30 in 2016) and plays for a big market club. All of these factors work in his favor.

Betts on the other hand is playing for a historic franchise with loads of expectations, and last season he launched 31 homers, drove in 113 and hit .318, all of which beat out Trout’s counting stats. It should come as no surprise that Betts finished second to Trout in the AL MVP voting in 2016, either. Without sabermetrics, what was already an extremely close race (356 vote points to 311) could have been tipped in Betts’ favor. Trout’s dominance in wRC+ at 171 to 135 and the nearly two WAR difference between the two likely helped just enough to sway the voters at the end of the season. Since Trout has been doing this for a longer period of time the tie goes to the runner.

The pitching side of things is much simpler. Clayton Kershaw is perceived to be the best, and well, he is. Out of all of the pitchers to start more than one game since 2000, Kershaw has the lowest ERA at 2.37. Dellin Betances did start one game in that span and has a slightly lower ERA, but Kershaw has totaled 1,500 more innings, so the slight bump over Betances’ 2.16 ERA is understandable.

Even with relievers in the mix in that same timeframe, Kershaw ranks 10th among those that have tossed at least 140 innings, or roughly three relief seasons in today’s game if we’re being conservative. Craig Kimbrel, Mariano Rivera, Aroldis Chapman, Betances, Kenley Jansen, Jonny Venters, Robb Nen, Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito are the nine names above Kershaw and only Rivera comes anywhere near 1,000 innings pitched, which would still leave him 760 innings short of Kershaw.

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If you take a look at fWAR for those same parameters, Kershaw ranks third on the list behind Roy Halladay (64.3) and C.C. Sabathia (63.4), both of whom have at least 100 more starts than Kershaw. It’s ridiculous how good this guy is. So much for an alternative reality. Our eyes, ears and better judgement say that Kershaw lives up to his moniker as the best pitcher on the planet, while the best MLB position player is still quite possibly Mike Trout.