It's literally insane how similar Manny Machado and Bryce Harper's careers have been. And despite what everyone would think, the stats show Manny Machado's been better. It's especially because of his defensive value, overall in their careers so far Manny Machado has 52.0 WAR and Bryce Harper has 42.5 WAR. So of the rookie class of 2012, it goes:
1. Mike Trout
2. Manny Machado
3. Bryce Harper
Who would have thought? But anyway it is literally so so insane how similar their offensive statistics are. Here they are:
Manny Machado
.282 283 HR 853 RBI 312 2B 1597 H 839 R 18 3B 2794 TB 52.0 WAR
Bryce Harper
.280 285 HR 817 RBI 298 2B 1379 H 913 R 23 3B 2578 TB 42.5 WAR
162 Game Avg.
Manny: .282 32 HR 96 RBI 35 2B 2 3B 10 SB 313 TB 5.8 WAR
Bryce: .280 33 HR 96 RBI 35 2B 3 3B 14 SB 302 TB 5.0 WAR
Judge's 2022 season is the 2nd highest wRC+ ever by someone not named Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, or Rogers Hornsby, after Mickey Mantle's 217 in 1957. Judge had a 207 wRC+. It's the highest since 1957, no one has legitimately gotten over 200 since Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams both did in 1957.
wRC+ is the best single measure of hitting, it combines everything really well into one stat.
Pujols won 3 MVPs, in 2005, 2008, and 2009. But he should have won 6 or 7.
He deserved it in 2003, when he got cheated by Bonds (9.2 WAR for Bonds to 8.7 for Pujols, Pujols was 2nd in the voting and 2nd in WAR)
He also deserved it in:
2006 (5.2 Ryan Howard to 8.5 Pujols, 2nd in MVP voting, led league in WAR)
2007 (6.1 Jimmy Rollins to 8.7 Pujols, 7 other guys after Rollins in the voting before Pujols, he finished 9th in voting, led league in WAR)
And potentially in 2010 (7.0 Joey Votto to 7.5 Pujols, 2nd in voting, led league in WAR for position players, Roy Halladay had 8.3)
He also led the league in WAR in all three years he actually did win MVP.
So he definitely deserved it in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, and potentially in 2010.
So Pujols should have won 6 or 7 MVPs, including 5 straight in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
He was ridiculously consistently excellent for the first 11 years of his career when he was in St. Louis, starting from the very beginning in his rookie year in 2001. He was at MVP level every year from 2003 to 2010, and was insanely insanely consistent about it.
This is his WAR each year in those years:
2003: 8.7
2004: 8.5
2005: 8.4
2006: 8.5
2007: 8.7
2008: 9.2
2009: 9.7
2010: 7.5
I've never ever seen anything else like that.
Shohei Ohtani won the World Series when he was in Japan!! I didn't know that.
He won the MVP in 2016 after he led the league in both OPS and ERA, then led his team to the championship that year, including a walk-off single in Game 3 of the World Series when his team was down 2 games to 0.
I looked into his whole playoff history in Japan and learned all about it after I saw he won the World Series there.
Ohtani was a rookie as an 18/19 year old in 2013 for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, that's who he played all 5 years for in Japan from 2013-2017. His first playoffs was in 2014 as a 20 year old, he won his first ever playoff start in Game 1 of his first ever playoff series, against the Orix Buffaloes. His team won the series after the last game was delayed for a day by Typhoon Vongfong.
They lost in the next series that decided the pennant 4-3 to the eventual champion Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
The Hawks won the World Series the next year in 2015 too.
In 2016, Ohtani led the league in OPS (1.004) and ERA (1.86), won the MVP, and led his team to the World Series title.
To get to the World Series, they had to get through Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. In Game 1, Ohtani started and went 7 scoreless innings with only one hit allowed vs the team with the league's best on base percentage, while he went 1-2 at the plate, and his team won 6-0.
Ohtani got on base at least once and scored in every game of the series, and then in the last game he came in and shut Fukuoka down for the save to send his team to the World Series, retiring all three hitters he faced, striking out 2 of them, and throwing 2 pitches at 165 kph (102.5 mph), which broke the NPB record he set in September of 164 kph, which broke the record of 163 he set in June.
In the World Series, Ohtani took the loss in Game 1, but he went 6 innings with 3 ER and 11 strikeouts and went 2-3 at the plate.
His team also lost Game 2 and went down 2-0 in the series.
But Ohtani came up big in game 3, he hit 2 doubles earlier in the game and then hit a walk-off single in the 10th.
After that they won the next three games in a row to win the World Series, the 3rd one ever for the Nippon-Ham Fighters.
Overall, Ohtani hit .375/.412/.625 with 4 doubles in the World Series.
That year, on top of everything else, he also won the Home Run Derby and All Star Game MVP.
This video is Ohtani's 2016 season highlights, I set it to start at a good place in the video. There's some really good highlights and then about a minute and a half after where I started it it enters the final part of the video with really good stirring music in the background, starting with the game where Ohtani's team clinched the Pacific League top spot, with him on the mound throwing a 1-0 shutout with 15 strikeouts. Then it goes to the playoffs and all of his highlights from the playoffs including his walk-off single in the World Series.
This video starts with Ohtani's team down 2-1 in the 8th inning of game 3, about to go down 3-0 in the series. His teammate hits a double to the outfield and scores 2 runs, including Ohtani zooming around and sliding in to put them up 3-2.
The other team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, scored one in the 9th to tie the game 3-3 and send it into extras. That set it up for Ohtani's walk-off single here in the 10th.
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