I'm higher on Trout then you are but right now with ARod and Lefty on the board he isnt getting my vote. 26th best player of all time? Sure you can sell me on that.
I think he is in contention for the 30 spot (ish). Giving him 25, I think, we can all agree is not proper. But him getting traction in the next 5 or 10 spots is valid, imho.
What is the more that is going on? I know that catchers bring more to the game than other position players but there is a sizeable gap in his numbers compared to other players still on the board. I haven't a convincing argument yet that the large gap is more than covered by these intangibles. The only things I've seen is "unicorn", "no catchers voted in yet" and "there are these things that they do". None of those seem even remotely worthy of skipping over 30 players, without some better ground work laid.
Except a lot of posts (not by you) have been about ignoring the totality of the career and focusing on the prime years. By those standards, it should seem that he should be getting more love.
Stats are incapable of representing catching skills.
I assume he is retired already and look at his stats in that context.
Except stats are available for pitchers. I'm not trying to argue that catchers don't have other intangibles not presented by stats. I'm saying that the arguments about the value of said intangibles putting a catcher this high seem thin. Most just accept that there are intangibles and just decide that the player should be ranked here because he has a legendary name. What did Bench do as a catcher that was so valuable that he would be Top 25? Was the Reds' pitching staff top 5 in MLB consistently? How was his caught stealing percentage compared to all other catchers? What did his pitchers say about him that was exceptional compared to other catchers? The unicorn still needs meat to be believable. Otherwise, its just a figment of the imagination and the ranking is a fever dream.
But we are not building the best team of all time. We are ranking the best players of all time. Artificial grass is tough on outfielders' knees. Are we going to give Tim Raines and Andre Dawson bonus points for playing so long in Montreal?
Yes, I would agree, which is why I'm okay with Cy Young being voted in over Lefty Grove. But Trout had an incredible prime and its been focused on for many a player already voted in.
Players getting lots of votes in the nomination process usually dictate results in the next 2 to 3 spots. And our conversations over a player has generally started 2 to 5 spots before election. Bench is getting helium so I'm trying to understand better why I should even consider him for Top 30 (or 25).
We (I) discount Rockies players, so why shouldn’t we reward Expos players?
But was the Expos Astro turf worse than all the other teams of that era that played on Astro turf? There were probably about 12-15 teams that played on turf back then.
We voted in Aaron at 5 not 2 (check the OP of this thread)
Agree. The hitting penalty for Montreal (or Houston or St Louis or Pittsburgh) were not nearly as extreme as Denver’s advantage.
