2024 MLB Season Thread

Haha wait so your argument is that the path to best player is hoping the actual best player dies? That's a new angle I hadn't seen before. It doesn't matter because the thing already happened. We already saw it. So it's over unless Judge shows us 400 innings of 3.3 FIP baseball.

Can an opinion be worth less than zero?

Asking for a friend.

You were the only one using the word "dead". Mike Trout was the best player in baseball for a decent amount of time. Until he wasn't because he started to get injured all the time and he's only 32. The Ohtani as a pitcher argument might be gone once he tears his UCL again. Based on his two prior TJ surgeries and pitchers dropping like flies it's not that unlikely that his pitching career might be over in the next couple of years.

Chris Sale is really good.

What a steal, for a utility infielder that wasn’t even gonna play for us.

…Plz stay healthy

3 guys crushing him in those stats that were spouted off just a few posts ago. They all crush him in career stats, and all have his best seasons(lol he only has 2 seasons that he can even compare with theirs). You would think his stats this season would be a lot better than a guy who has been injured for a month, but not really.

I looked him up during his start, I thought he was closer to 40. He is definitely a nice piece to have.

Judge's chances of being the best player over a sustained period in the next few years aren't high, but that's not necessarily due to just Ohtani - it's more that Judge is 32 and there are lots of exciting young stars that are likely to be overtake this generation.

I would take Ohtani over Judge over almost any length of time if it came out that Ohtani won't pitch ever again. Ohtani's been the better hitter since the beginning of 2023, he's more than 2 years younger, looks quite a bit more athletic at the moment and has clearly been the more durable athlete with a less worrying injury history outside of the elbow, despite an insane workload over the past 3 years.

I was quite optimistic on Judge going into 2022 despite his age (back when some people here though it was a mistake for him to turn down the extension) because he's a late-bloomer with great tools and was highly athletic (especially compared to some large slugger archetypes that were being trotted out as comps). All of this is even more true for Ohtani purely as a position player. He's reportedly never taken hitting that seriously, with the bulk of training and mental energy devoted to pitching, he remains extremely athletic even as he nears 30 and he appears to be getting better. It's unclear how much pitching has been holding him back, but it seems likely that it's at least slowed down his development. This all bodes well for Ohtani.

It's also Aaron Judge that reminds me of Mike Trout circa 2022, not Ohtani. Lots of people had Mike Trout as the best player going into 2022 based on the past, rather than looking into the future.

Me too. I was just disagreeing with the notion that Judge is drawing dead vs. Ohtani because there's always the risk of severe injury.

I also don't think Judge passing Ohtani would make him the best player in baseball but that's a totally different question.

Oh so now you want to look at stats when before you said "I didn't look at stats but Hoffman and Wagner are better than Rivera?" [emoji851]

Ya'll are taking my "best player in baseball" quote too seriously.

Aaron Judge is hitting .393/.526/.902 in May. That .902 is his SLG, not OPS. He's been hitting nothing but homers and doubles.

At that rate Judge is obviously the best player in baseball.

I don't expect him to hit like that all year, any more than I thought Judge was washed in April (.207/.340/.414).

txdome's opinions on baseball are worth about as much as TWOG's on basketball.

JFC 18 games on a heater he's the best. What do his last 18 playoff games look like? You brought that up about what made Mo so great.

That's the sentence you focused on while ignoring the next one?

You are by far the worst poster ITT.

Here's a question txdome, without looking it up, where do you think Judge ranks in OPS+ among active players?

Top 3, the guy hit for power no doubt. Is he better than Mookie, Shohei, or Trout as a player? No.

Among active players he's 2nd in OPS+ behind Trout, who last qualified for a batting title in 2020 and has been in decline last 3 seasons. It's very unfortunate but Trout appears to be in his late-career Ken Griffey Jr. arc right now.

Meanwhile Judge is a late-bloomer who has been trending upwards last 3 seasons (193 OPS+ since 2022).

Zero GM's would take Trout over Judge right now and you're delusional if you think Trout is still better.

bruh

I think Soto and Judge are close if you're looking at the rest of the year (obviously inclusive of health concerns - if you assume both are healthy, Judge is clearly ahead) and Soto is probably a little ahead if you're looking at the next 2-3 years.

Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr are also probably ahead of Judge if you're looking at the next 2-3 years.

Maybe we need a baseball containment thread for negative sum opinion posters.

I'm open to suggestions.

I was referring to the post that included previous seasons. If we're using those then no one can touch Ohtani for best player in a five-year rolling window or whatever. Comparing WAR doesn't work because it's not a best player metric and requires two players to get the Ohtani number. If you want to compare any single position player to Ohtani on a best player (as opposed to most valuable) basis using WAR then you need to swap the pos adjustment to DH and impute position player pitching data. For 600 PA and 133 IP that's somewhere in the neighborhood of -5 WAR. Probably a rosy projection though because that pitching data is from blowout games and aggregated across players who've thrown a few innings at most.

If we ignore all previous seasons then sure there are more players in the running. Every projection system has Acuna on top. Judge drops out of the top 15 in ZiPS 2026 behind the rising superstars which still has Ohtani T3 in combined WAR. He should really just give up on pitching though and focus on hitting and playing a plus corner OF. The current environment is terrible for pitchers.

Paul Skenes will be pitching today in a few mins. 1235 game vs Giants at home.
Will be on MLBTV for a decent amount of markets.

I'm not sure if this quite makes sense - this seems comparable to saying that Mookie is better than Judge because the replacement defense level for a shortstop should be set to how well a random position player would play the position. I'm however sympathetic to the notion that a player that can add do more things is better than what simple aggregate value stats might imply.

I also feel that the replacement level is set a bit too high - I don't think there's an abundance of players in the minors that can put up 0.0 WAR (as a position player or a pitcher). Also, in the past, I think part of the reason why replacement level was set high was due to the opportunity cost - i.e. prospects being blocked and organizations not being able to see how those guys would do in the majors as well as the fact that there were more players that could theoretically be pretty good in the majors that didn't get a chance due to player evaluation being worse. But the circumstances have changed - borderline players like that I think are easier to spot, which means they are less freely available and the opportunity cost of a roster spot for the purposes of prospect evaluation/development is lower because advanced analytics and training make it easy for us to see how well a given prospect would fare in the majors and also for that prospect to learn to work on the specific skill gaps without being in the majors.

Has there been a hard study reflecting what Ohtani's WAR would be if the positional adjustment were to pitcher?

Heard a wild stat on the radio this morning. Not sure if it's true:

Luis Arraez has 2400 plate appearances in his career. He has struck out looking ONCE.