MLB: Most Interesting Man in Baseball – Part II

Quarterfinals

1 Mike Trout vs. 8 Shohei Otani

Our first matchup pits The Just So Good against The Exception to the Rule. In Trout and Otani we have a true battle of skill. Trout is the best player in the world, while Otani is the best player playing outside of the U.S. right now.

Of course, “best” is not what we’re trying to quantify; instead, we are worried about “interesting.”

Let’s tackle Otani first. The 22-year-old righty is a pitcher first and foremost, and, wow, what a pitcher he is. As Ben Lindbergh noted in his excellent piece on Otani for The Ringer, Otani recently broke the NPB record with a recorded pitch speed of 165 kilometers per hour (or 103 mph). He did this in a save attempt because although Otani’s main job is that of starting pitcher, there is nothing this man can’t do. For MLB comparison’s sake, he’s at least as interesting as Aroldis Chapman, King of the Fast Pitch in the U.S.

Of course, Otani is a starter first and foremost, and given that he is fresh off an NPB MVP, it’s probably not too surprising that he is a very good one at that. Just how good was he though? We cited these stats last article, but let’s hit you with them again real quick. In 2016, Otani went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA, 0.957 WHIP and 11.2 SO/9. For comparison’s sake, here were Clayton Kershaw’s numbers in 2016: 12-4, 1.69 ERA, 0.725 WHIP, 10.4 SO/9. Outside of Kershaw’s just stupid-low WHIP, those numbers look mighty similar. So we’ll add 80 percent of Clayton Kershaw’s “interesting-ness” to Otani.

We’re not done yet, though. As you all know, Otani can bring it with the stick as well. In 382 plate appearances in 2016 (he was used as the team’s DH throughout the season when not pitching), Otani hit .322 with 22 HR and an OPS of 1.004. For MLB comparison’s sake, in his historic debut, Gary Sanchez hit .299 with 20 HR and an OPS of 1.032. So now we can add one full Gary Sanchez-worth of interesting to Otani.

So is a combination of Aroldis Chapman, 80 percent of Clayton Kershaw, and Gary Sanchez enough to top the best player in the world? In a word, no.

We busted out a few Trout nuggets in Part I of this series, but it’s time to go back to the well with a few more crazy stats:

• Trout is the only player in MLB history with 30 HR, 125 R, and 45 SB in a single season. He did that in his rookie year.
• He and Willie Mays are the only players with multiple seasons of .320 BA, 25 HR, and 30 SB. Trout accomplished that feat in his first two professional seasons.
• In 2014, he became the youngest ever unanimous MVP.
• In 2016, he became the first since Babe Ruth to lead the league in WAR five straight seasons. He is yet to not lead the league in WAR.
• Simply put: Most WAR before the age of 25 in the history of the sport.

Trout is on pace to shatter MLB records and completely re-write the record books. Being able to see how that plays out is simply too much to fall in round one, even if his matchup is a three-headed version of Chapman, Kershaw, and Sanchez. Trout moves on.

2 Yoenis Cespedes vs. 7 Ichiro Suzuki

See this is where the Twitter followers method of seeding has a weakness. This is a potential championship matchup in the very first round. Of course, if we want to have a spicy first round, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Like Michael Scott, its weaknesses are actually its strengths.

Cespedes and Suzuki represent two ends of the spectrum. Cespedes is a true showman, a man who can pull off riding a horse to spring training and actually look cool doing it.

He’s a man who can host family barbecues flashy enough to inspire one of the funniest Twitter accounts in the sport.

It’s not just off-the-field stuff with Cespedes, though. It’s shocking that MLB hasn’t implemented a rule to disallow the use of an actual howitzer instead of a right arm, but they are still allowing it.

Unfortunately for Ces, he ran into a buzzsaw in the first round. The resident Cagey Veteran in MLB right now, Ichiro is on such a different level that he has earned the Prince-eqsue one name treatment. He has Ichiro running across the back of his jersey, and those six letters are all any baseball fan needs to immediately recollect hundreds of amazing baseball highlights. You thought Cespedes had an arm on him? Peep this:

That cat is a cool 42 years old in that video. Come on. Japan’s main man moves on.

3 Sean Doolittle vs. 6 Carter Capps

Bullpen battle! The two men from baseball humor’s equivalent to the Upright Citizens Brigade (the bullpen) meet in the first round. As noted in Part I, the bullpen is a veritable breeding ground for some of the best characters in league history. From Rollie Fingers to Dennis Eckersley to (my favorite player of all time) Dan Quisenberry, MLB bullpens are always stacked with a great group of weirdos.

In 2017, no two are more interesting than Doolittle and Capps. On the field, Doolittle is a strong reliever, with an ERA+ of 126 over his five years in the major leagues. Doolittle is most interesting off the field, however. Doolittle has been a known commodity for a few years now, as he is one of the most entertaining follows on Twitter. A’s Twitter even had a Sean Doolittle Appreciation Day back in 2014 inspired by one of FanSided’s own.

Doolittle most recently made news when he and his wife hosted 21 Syrian refugee families. In the current political climate, this made big news, but as Doolittle told Sports Illustrated in a recent article:

To us it seemed like a humanitarian thing to do… Helping people in need is not a zero-sum game. And compassion shouldn’t fall along political lines.

That’s a pretty cool dude.

Let’s be honest, Capps doesn’t really have a chance here. His pitching motion is pretty cool, and his ERA+ of 331 in 2015 was certainly interesting, but Doolittle cruises in this first-round matchup.

4 Glen Perkins vs. 5 Trea Turner

The He’s One of Us vs. The Next Big Thing (?) matchup – a classic. These are two of the most common characters in baseball, and these two guys are at the head of their class respectively.

Here’s a quote from Perkins’ foreword to the 2017 Baseball Prospectus Annual:

I stumbled upon BP sometime in early 2009 when I read an article containing the acronym FIP. Advanced statistics, at least from a player’s point of view, were not even in the embryonic stage, but that term and its meaning stuck its tentacles in my brain and didn’t let go.

Doesn’t that sound like a guy you’d love to bump into at a bar and realize four hours later that you had just engaged in the best baseball conversation of your life?! “We could be friends!” you might think to yourself.

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• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

But ask yourself this question, are you really that interesting? Not to be overly harsh, but if The He’s One of Us character makes a run at the Most Interesting Man in Baseball title, isn’t that just saying that secretly I believe that the most interesting man in baseball is me?

You know who is a lot more interesting than me? The 23-year-old do-it-all center fielder in Washington. If we extrapolate Turner’s 2016 production over a full 162-game season, he’d end up with a .342/.370/.567 slash line with 118 R, 29 HR, 89 RBI, and 73 SB! You know who the last player to hit .340 with 70 SB in a season was? Ty Cobb in 1915, and he didn’t come close to hitting 29 HR. Turner’s 2016 was on a historic pace, and while simply extrapolating his 73 games over a 162-game pace is obviously a dangerous game, that’s part of the fun.

The unknown is half of what makes Turner (and the rest of The Next Big Things) so fun. The potential for failure is a definite possibility. Would it shock me if Turner hit .240 with less than 10 HR in 2017? It would surprise me, but it wouldn’t make me keel over and die. We’ve seen plenty of flashes of potential who turned out to be flashes in the pan instead of the real deal. That possibility for Turner only makes him all the more interesting and pushes him past Perkins and into the semifinals.

Next: Part I if you missed it

Speaking of semifinals, we’ll be back over the weekend to set our championship duo and then settle who is the Most Interesting Man in Baseball right now.