I can tell you I've seen them both play, a lot, and while I'd like either as a franchise player, I'm taking Trout over Harper, and it's memorialized here for all to reference later.
Mike Trout and the $400 million question December, 16, 2013
By Buster Olney | ESPN.com
If you think salaries are crazy now, just wait until Mike Trout's first long-term deal.
During the winter meetings last week, general managers rotated through the ESPN workroom to answer thematic questions. Their responses are used going into and coming out of commercials during "Baseball Tonight," and one of the questions posed was: Who is the best player in the game?
I was unable to eavesdrop on all the answers given to Jennifer Chafitz, the producer in charge of that project, but the GMs I did hear stepped around that question -- maybe out of respect for their own players, and maybe to honor the general MLB rule that you shouldn't speak about another team's player.
If you gave the GMs truth serum, their answer would be unanimous, or almost unanimous, because the vast majority of executives view Mike Trout as the best player in the game -- and not by a small margin.
He is 22 years old as he wakes up today, at the outset of his career, and over the past two seasons, he has reached base 564 times. How does that stack up? Zachary Jones of ESPN Research dug this out for me:
Most times on base 2012-2013 Mike Trout: 564
Miguel Cabrera: 562
Shin-Soo Choo: 556
Prince Fielder: 542
Andrew McCutchen: 541
Joey Votto: 541
And here is how Trout stacks up in a few other key stats over the past two seasons.
Runs: First (538)
Extra-base hits: Sixth (140)
Stolen bases: Second (82)
WAR: First (20.1)
As you'll note, the stats mentioned above are all counting stats, and Trout's standing is all the more impressive when you consider that he didn't get called up until four weeks into the 2012 season. In terms of WAR, the No. 2 player is Robinson Cano, a full 4 WAR (16.1) behind Trout.
And in the divisional era (since 1969), just two players have had a higher two-year WAR than Trout.
Barry Bonds: 23.7 (2001-02)
Barry Bonds: 21.0 (2002-03)
Joe Morgan: 20.6 (1975-76)
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Trout is fast approaching that time when he will be in position to wreck the Angels in arbitration, setting new records, given that his case argument will be: He is doing stuff that no player in the history of baseball has ever done before.
The Angels have three distinct paths to take with Trout:
1. They could trade him -- but let's dismiss that, because owner Arte Moreno is a smart guy and can draw upon the 1919 Red Sox's decision to swap Babe Ruth as an example of what not to do with an all-time great talent.
2. They go year to year with him on his contract decision, protecting themselves against the possibility that he gets hurt or regresses -- but also risking the very real chance that his arbitration cases will net $15 million to $30 million or more before he reaches free agency and sets up the craziest bidding war in the history of free agency. (For the record, he will be eligible for arbitation for the first time next winter.)
3. They could sign him to a long-term deal.
If the Angels go this route, of course, they can assume that signing him will cost a lot more than the $180 million that Moreno spent to buy the team a decade ago.
I asked a long-time agent who does not represent Trout what he might ask for in a negotiation for a multiyear deal, and he paused for a few moments, like someone savoring a good piece of steak.
"Why not do something that's never been done before?" he asked rhetorically.
What do you mean?
"Twelve years, $400 million."
No player has ever signed a contract guaranteeing $300 million. If what the agent suggests actually happened, Trout would simply skip over the hundreds-of-millions figure that starts with a "3" and just go right to the "4."
It seems insane. But it also seems possible, given that all of the usual negotiating rules for agents don't apply to Trout.
Sometimes, a team will give a young player a long-term deal gambling that they will continue to develop into a high-level player. This is what happened when the Rays signed Evan Longoria and what the Rockies did with Troy Tulowitzki.
But Trout alters that equation because he already is the best player in the game. He already is doing things that no other player has ever done. He has been in the big leagues only two years and 70 days, and has yet to accrue enough service time to qualify for arbitration -- but once he does that, he's in line to be paid over the top of any scale.
There's really no reason for Trout's agent, Craig Landis, to allow the Angels to buy out one or two of the free-agent seasons given that Trout might be making $15 million or more by the 2015 season, through arbitration. Trout really is in position to go one of two routes:
1. He could go through his arbitration year to year, setting records, and then become a free agent at age 26. If healthy -- and the chance of injury is his primary risk -- he may well wreck Alex Rodriguez's record for a contract of $275 million.
2. He could ask the Angels for the type of record-setting, $400 million-ish deal to sign now. In other words, something that has never been done before.
He is in a position with an absurd amount of leverage, in position to make an absurd amount of money. He figures to become the first player in history to sign a deal for more than $30 million annually.
The Angels have to keep that in mind as they plan out their future, and prepare budgets that are already becoming cramped under the confines of the $189 million luxury tax threshold, because of the forthcoming obligations to Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton. According to Cot's Baseball Contracts, this is what they already have on the books going into seasons beyond 2014:
2015: $117 million
2016: $112 million
2017: $58.4 million
All of that before they pay Trout -- who is seemingly destined to become the highest-paid player ever -- a single dime.
Everything that the Angels do should be informed by the reality that Trout will be making $30-plus million a year in the not-too-distant future. They need to start carving out that room ASAP. Yes, Matt Garza would make a lot of sense for them in 2014, to augment a rotation that should already be improved by the addition of Hector Santiago and (perhaps) Tyler Skaggs.
But if signing Garza requires a long-term, big-money deal, the Angels might be better suited taking somebody else on a shorter, cheaper deal, like a Bronson Arroyo.
One executive mused last year that the best thing about working for the Angels would be knowing that you could watch Trout every day in his career. There will be a day soon that Moreno and the Angels will be paying handsomely for that privilege.
