MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Your posts about his knee drip with what if.

 

They don't. The opposite.

Apples to apples.

I objected to your comparison of Trout to Mantle - and your use of the word 'excuse' - because Trout's defining injury is happening in his 11th season, not his first. And Mantle didn't make excuses for his play. Nor will Mike Trout. The truth of a career in baseball is the numbers you put up. The end.

'What if' in baseball or any other sport is just speculative fiction.

Mike Trout is a spectacular baseball player. A generational talent.

If he retires tomorrow, he'll be remembered as such.

 

With several injuries leading up to what could be the defining injury.

 

that makes zero sense

 

Of course it does. He broke his knee at 19. His entire greatness happened after the knee injury.

What if he doesn't break his knee at 19? I don't know, neither do you.

 

There's an entire national industry devoted to imagining Ken Griffey, Jr. minus the injuries.

https://calltothepen.com/2020/06/22/seattle-mariners-ken-griffey-jr-minus-injuries/

Ken Griffey Jr.'s stats—if he'd stayed healthy

https://www.wcpo.com/news/insider/ken-griffey-jr-what-if



Harold Reynolds: Turf kept Ken Griffey Jr. from breaking HR record

What if ... Ken Griffey Jr. had stayed healthy

How Many More Home Runs Would Ken Griffey Jr. Have Hit If He Had Stayed Healthy?

etc., ad inf.

 

Recall Mantle hurt his knee badly playing high school football, well before he joined the Yankees. The injury during the 1951 World Series was on a much bigger stage, of course, and loaded with the irony of not only it being DiMaggio's last games, but Willie Mays in the other dugout.

Mantle v. Trout is the Hot Stove League's equivalent of Steph Curry vs. any previous generational player in the NBA.

 

It's all baseball/sports chatter.

 

Mays lost a year in the army. Apples, all the way down.

 

Only played a month of the 1952 season before reporting and all of 1953. And at the risk of threadjack (here? yeah, I know), I always wonder what could have been had he not played so much of his career in a dump like Candlestick. Not that his numbers aren't spectacular enough, of course.

 

And only 34 games in 1952 before he was drafted, so in essence almost two full seasons. Then had never fewer than 620 plate appearances in a season until he was 36. (@HanSenSE is a faster typer!)

Aaron's the true underrated ironman. He was just never out of the lineup, season after season.

 

Aaron.

Quiet king of the game.