If he staves off injuries for another 10 years, I could totally see him cracking top 20. He's only 32 and his ceiling will get him tons of playing time when healthy.
And why is that? He’s only involved in around 10-15% of the plays, and has no influence on the other players. It would be like not placing Barry Sanders as a top running back because his qbs and defenses were shit. Id argue even Barry has more control of his teams success than Mike Trout does.
Its fair to compare against different sports using transient properties, I think someone like God or Jesus may have been quoted by the guy at my local hole in the wall bar. Mike Trouts best seasons an average team turns into a 90 win team. In Barry’s worst seasons the Lions went from 10-12 wins to 4-6 wins.
I feel like anything before like 1930ish you have to take with a grain of salt because it was just a completely different game and the talent pool was so much smaller than it is nowadays.
I feel like a Mike Trout or Shohei level talent would absolutely run the league 100yrs ago, just like I still think guys like Babe Ruth or Ted Williams would be studs now because they were absolute menaces of their era.
Lots of factors. Hard to say if Trout or Ohtani would be great back then given the advancements in health, training, research, etc. or vice versa for Ruth or Cobb. Hell, Ohtani's pitching career would likely be over already in a pre-TJ (and TJ adjacent surgery) world.
i think it's just impossible to compare athletes from vastly different eras because there's no way babe ruth is putting up 180 WAR in today's game, and mike trout could have caught polio and never played baseball if he was born in the 1910s or something
>Hell, Ohtani's pitching career would likely be over already in a pre-TJ (and TJ adjacent surgery) world.
But he'd also likely never need surgery, considering he could shave 5 MPH off his fastball and still be the hardest-throwing pitcher of that era by far.
Yeah, but would that still be true without modern conditioning and mechanics? Too many factors that are impossible to compare. WAR tries, but the further apart in time two players are, the tougher it becomes.
Everyone has their own opinion, but just wanna say top 10 sounds way too high. Mays, Mantle, and Griffey should all be higher and that’s just at his own position.
Those guys are all great but I think the modern era has many aspects which make the overall quality of play (due to analytics and broader international participation) stand out compared to other eras. And then... Trout is the best player during this most competitive era.
If I was mentioning guys who played before 1947 when baseball was still segregated that argument makes more sense. Baseball is a very old sport. Mays and Mantle putting up video game numbers in the 50s and 60s is a little different when compared to Wilt doing it in the NBA’s infancy for example. The difference isn’t as great as you probably think.
Edit: Just thought of another NBA analogy. That’s like saying Curry is better than Michael Jordan because he was the best player in the league for the better part of a decade, in an era with more international players and analytics. That would just be silly lol.
I think the science behind Baseball has probably improved the level of play more than it has in most other sports. For example... even things like watching video clips of play could be more helpful than the utilization of video in other sports. Then you get into the computer age and slow-mo swing angle diagnostics and exit speeds... and I just think that most players today, on average, are probably much better than baseball players in the past. And things like that just simply may not hold as much truth with other sports. For example... prime Jordan might still be tops today whereas your best baseball players from the 80's might be second-tier compared to the top players today.
You should also consider the changes to equipment and field conditions. Players back then played in poorly lit stadiums compared to today’s standards. The fields themselves were grim compared to modern stadiums and had bizarre dimensions. Bat technology has improved tremendously. The pitching mound has been lowered to improve offense. There’s all sorts of stuff like that.
It wouldn’t be an absolute cakewalk if you plopped an average player onto a team back in like the 50’s. Of course Mike Trout would still be Mike freaking Trout. One injury and he’s probably done though. Mickey Mantle basically played his entire career with a torn acl.
Mantle is a no-brainer at no. 1 on the CF list, but Trout already has as many MVPs as Mays and Griffey combined and could pick up his 4th this year.
It's personal preference, and I know baseball has a heightened appreciation for longevity and milestones, but Trout at his peak is a better ballplayer than Griffey or Mays, which puts him above them on my list.
There’s no way you put Trout over Mays lol. Back then, it was very very rare for guys to win multiple MVPs. Mags lead the league in so many important stats and only won it twice, at 23 and 34. Especially in a “best player in best team” era.
Not that Aaron was as high peak as Mays/Trout and was more longevity, but Aaron only won it once despite the numerous times he should have. Ted Williams winning 2 in the 4 year span was an anomaly (and he would have arguably had another if not for the DiMaggio streak, showing just how much of a freak he was)
I feel like writing a longer comment to clear up my thoughts on this debate.
Mays is the no brainer number one. 3000 hit club, 660 HR, .300 career average, and one of the greatest defensive CFs of all time. His stats blow Mantle’s out of the water. A lot of people also forget he missed significant time at the start of his career to military service. There’s always what ifs for Mantle, Griffey, and Trout being healthy, but Mays genuinely could have been the first guy to pass Ruth’s 714 without his military service. I’d go as far as to argue Mays might be the greatest player of all time.
But yeah with the what ifs, if it weren’t for that damn sprinkler head it would probably be Mantle. As things are, really the one thing he has up on Mays is those 7 WS with those stacked Yankee squads. Other than that their accolades are comparable, although if you think gold gloves are a big deal Mays did have 12 to Mantle’s 1.
MVPs yes good point. Mays got shafted on MVP voting a lot in his career. He’d routinely lead the league in WAR and not even finish top 3 in MVP voting. I think that’s enough to get the point across so I’ll save everyone from more details. Griffey was one of the only guys in the steroid era not juicing. From 95-00 the AL MVPs were confirmed steroid users, a Pudge outlier season *wink wink*, and Griffey.
I think Trout will retire with stats very comparable to Mantle. As it stands him and Griffey are the two guys from this group with no type of playoff success. With players these great the only real separator is their counting stats. Griffey had 630 HRs to Trout’s near 400 currently, and Griffey had ~1100 more hits than Trout has right now.
It's a 3 game sample size from 2014. Also, he is easily a top 5 CF considering he's: 5th in WAR, 3rd in WAR7, 5th in JAWS, 1st in WAR per 162, 3x MVP, 11x all star and 9 Silver Sluggers.
He has the 30th most WAR in baseball history =/= he's the 30th greatest player in baseball history. He's way higher. 1 WAR in 1920 is worth much less than 1 WAR in 2020.
They were also extremely important for identifying the generational prospects from the all-star prospects. There were two specific phrases that denoted a players potential was 95+. I played way too much MLB the show back in the day...
Really obvious. One was like "this dude is bound for HOF" and the other was like "this dude is going to win a buttload of MVP/Cy Young awards by the end of his career"
It was stupid easy to stock pile those guys and make even the smallest payroll teams dynasties after 3 seasons of sim. They've changed how it works now
I think they may have changed the formula for recent games but the way I used to do it was to trade A level potential players with the CPU but only give up those whose main good stat was injury.
In other words, for some reason, the game thinks that having a 90+ injury stat (so the player doesn't get injured) makes an elite player.
So I would trade for guys that have high stats in the five tools but maybe only mediocre injury stats and give up the high injury stat guys.
Since the game thinks A level is great regardless of the stats that contribute to that potential, you can pretty much steal guys from the top of the prospect lists. I would have like 5 guys in the top 15 at certain points all from trades.
Also, the kind of useless A potential guy tended to be easier to spot because they would often be really short.
This was as of like 3-4 years ago when I was still playing. They might have finally tweaked the game so it isn't possible to make those type of trades anymore.
Idk when exactly they changed it. But you can change the potential ratings for anyone. What's the difference between figuring out how the game hints that a guy has HOF potential vs just taking guys in your farm and giving them HOF potential?
If you are going to play MLB the show for the simulation factor, you might as well pick up OOTP
> What's the difference between figuring out how the game hints that a guy has HOF potential vs just taking guys in your farm and giving them HOF potential?
The second one is just straight up cheating? Also, they still show potential on the player card and in the roster screen, so there's still nothing stopping you from doing that (you'll just have to stockpile 90+ potentials instead of 95+ or whatever the old cutoff was)
Also, being able to change potential means that Trout won't be stuck at D potential all year because SDS's rosters were bad
Had the same experience playing 09 and 11 all the time back in the day and not again until 21 lmao I used to spend so much time reading those report cards
I played 10 and then 2022 and the most glaring issue to me is that they killed the trades. Now they make 0 sense. They use to make at least some sense. Contending teams would trade prospects for good players. Now they are random
Same as all sports video games. Make franchise mode barebones and invest in ultimate team modes where people are dumb enough to pay micro-transactions.
I give that scouting report an F
Edit: I went back and did a cursory search regarding Fish Man's prospects and found this from 2011:
>The rest of baseball caught up with the Angels in 2010. Trout was named the No. 1 prospect in the Midwest and California leagues, but he really popped onto the radar by recording a pair of 3.9 times from home to first in the 2010 Futures Game while also showing an excellent feel for hitting and stunning physicality. By the end of the year, he was ranked No. 2 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list.
Yep, that's definitely worthy of F Contact and Power with a D in Potential.
The show 11 would have come out before the 2010 season, right? I don’t play it so I could be wrong, but those games are usually a year ahead I thought. So would be interesting to see where Trout ranked on an mlb dot com list prior to the 2010 season.
EDIT: looks like it was released on 3/8/11, so best guess is that Sony didn’t update their prospect rankings or something. Pretty embarrassing, however they managed to overlook that.
[MLB 11: The Show was released March 8, 2011](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_11%3A_The_Show?wprov=sfla1). It went into development in the late-3rd quarter of 2010, so the devs would have definitely had access to Trout's 2010 numbers.
Yea there's no real good reason to give a 1st round draft pick a D in potential unless they show signs of falling off which I would think it's a safe bet Trout didn't.
Trout didn't play in the majors in 2010. He played great in the minor leagues at the A and A+ levels, but not even Nostradamus himself could extrapolate that to assume he'd be an all-time great at the major league level, so I can definitely understand the oversight.
To put it in perspective, there's probably a guy that put up a great 2023 season in the minors that will eventually go on to have a Hall of Fame career and become a household name in the 2030s. Good luck identifying them now though.
No it came out March 2011. I think it was around 2006/2007 the games were just called MLB 200X where the year was one year ahead of its release year then the first "the show" came out where they reset it to the current year it was released in
It actually goes by when the season ends. So for example Madden 08 was the 2007-2008 season (Pats undefeated season until Giants Super Bowl win.) Or the NBA 2K game out right now is 2K24.
Since the MLB season is contained within one year, it’s the only major one where the year name is the year it came out. MVP 2005 was the 2005 season (hence all the clips about the Sox breaking the curse + Manny on the cover), this year’s The Show is The Show 24, etc.
While that's true, before The Show, the series was just "MLB XX" and such and the years were off. MLB 98 came out in August 1997 and featured 1997 rosters and schedules; MLB 99 came out in April 1998 for the 1998 season.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989\_Sports\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989_Sports_Major_League_Baseball_series)
OOTP isn't based on year, it's the edition of the game. It's just a happy coincidence they decided to go 6 -> 6.5 -> 2006 -> 2007 -> 8 for whatever the fuck reason and it now aligns with x+1.
I would normally disagree with you, but after the Jim Ryan era I don't. The loss of [Japan Studio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Studio) hit me hard.
Every single "MLB XX" release has a year one higher than the season it was released for.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989\_Sports\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989_Sports_Major_League_Baseball_series)
The Show fixed this immediately with the first game release in 2006 because, of course they did. The years being off was always stupid.
It did work like that years ago, but they doubled up on a year and changed it. Off memory I think they put out MLB 2005 in March 2004 and MLB 2005: The Show in March 2005.
As other commenters mentioned, it was that way back when I was a kid and played those games. I haven’t played mlb branded games in a long time, so haven’t been paying attention to the releases.
Ootp, a game I do occasionally play, still does the year+1 format.
No. 2 on BaseballAmerica and No. 1 on MLB.com, ahead of Harper lol
In 2010 ***as an 18 year old***, he hit .341/.428/.490 with 56 SB in the minors. No idea what this video game was based on
Fun fact: There were only two teams in on him, the Yankees and Angels. The Yankees were gonna take him, but they had given the Angels their pick as compensation for Teixeria. The Angels had back to back picks and the person who scouted Trout said he was so sure about Trout that he'd basically quit if they didn't pick him. The Angels decided to prank the guy and used their first pick to take Randall Grichuk, which caused the scout to shit bricks. Much to his relief, the Angels picked Trout next and the rest is history. They were always going to pick Trout, btw.
Damn shame too, if the Yankees had Trout going into the 2010s....
He hit over .500 his senior year while also pitching multiple complete game shutouts. Trout was never not a stud. Game just didn't bother using a real scouting report
Lol yeah so did Joey Gallo. Every MLB player grew up absolutely dominating, usually on the mound too. Same way like 40% of nfl skill position players were all state/county QBs
I mean it was special. That said I grew up in South Jersey and I'm a big baseball nut. He was not talked about as a prospect the same way we talked about Billy rowell out of bishop Eustace. Trouts competition was pretty bad
those that went to see Trout play in person seem to be the only ones who were super high on him. remember reading a while back one scout had him graded at 70, but knocked him down a few points just to make his analysis more believable.
So the guy I mentioned Rowell was such a huge bust, it influenced scouts who watched Trout who didn't want to make the same mistake. Rowell was an 06 hs grad and tanked his stock real fast.
So if I'm not mistaken, in the minors the year before The Show 11 came out, he had 10 home runs off of 600 plate appearances, and that's what this game would have used for when creating his stats.
Trout generally wasn't considered a power hitter as a prospect, and even his rookie season in the majors he didn't show much power. He just kind of exploded his 2nd season with the Angels.
In terms of "rookie" season I meant his first season. Technically still a rookie by MLB standards during his 2nd season in the majors.
But prior to that, he wasn't some outstanding power prospect. Anyone who says they knew he'd be some incredible player are lying. No one really saw him as a can't miss prospect.
5 HRs in 40 games as a 19-20 year old rookie (20 per 162 games) isn’t exactly no power, but yeah, not like what he ended up doing from 2012 onwards.
But I do get the general sentiment behind what you’re saying.
He had only one HR in 164 ABs in Rookie ball, and nobody considered him a power threat, early on. He was known for his wheels and raw athleticism. The power showed up in his first full MLB season.
He was picked 25th overall, which is pretty good relatively to other players, but for Mike Trout’s talent, that was insultingly low. Strasburg at #1 was obvious and I don’t really regret that, Zach Wheeler at 6 is pretty good also, but everyone else fucked up big time including the Nationals again for picking Drew Storen at 10, which I mean turned out okay for us but he’s no Trout.
That's not as bad as in I believe it was the 2016 version when they had the wrong picture for Jose Ramirez. They switched Cleveland's Jose Ramirez and Atlanta's RP Jose Ramirez. It was very noticable since the pictures included their team hats.
Strider's in-game character for The Show 22 had long hair and was clean shaven before they updated it later in the season. He's never had long hair as far as I can tell.
This reminds me of a story I heard from my old boss. He has a friend who owns a baseball academy in NJ. That friend had a parent begging him and insisting to give his 12 year old a shot to play even though he coached 14 year olds. He turned the guy down over and over, insisting that he only coached 14 year olds and couldn’t make an exception because he’d heard the same story 1000 times. The 12 year old in this story was Mike Trout
"Validity unknown", says the flair. I'll shine light on this since I still have my PS3 hooked up.
Back then, MLB The Show did not have likeness rights for prospects not yet in the MLBPA, so the default rosters didn't have Trout. Through the course of the 2011 season roster updates were issued and Trout would have been added once SDS got the greenlight to add him after his debut.
In order to see the Scouting Report tab, you need to be loaded into a game mode such as franchise. Viewing rosters from the main menu will not show it. Therefore the scouting reports probably aren't directly in the rosters, but are generated by the game from the player's attributes. There may be some fuzziness so two people may see slightly different reports.
The most recent roster update I have was downloaded on November 7, 2011. [Here's what I see](https://imgur.com/a/wNdMTZ0) when I start a fresh Angels franchise with those rosters. Very similar to the OP, but not exactly the same.
The earliest roster update I still have is from August 8 of 2011 and the Mike Trout in that roster set is a little better. [Have a look.](https://imgur.com/a/KSPu3cG)
How do they come up with a report card like that on a first round pick less than 2 years removed from being drafted?? It's not like he didn't have big time production in his brief minor career.
The first three are just auto generated messages based off current ratings
The last message is based off of his potential which was too low, but IIRC basically all real life top prospects had too low potential in these games
More likely someone at San Diego Studios, the development team that makes The Show, was having a laugh with the Angels' top prospect because a bunch of the team are Padres fans. Doubtful this was random AI at work since these grades come up every time when you play MLB The Show 11, only the text blurbs change since those use an algorithm to change while the ratings are set by the developers.
The Show not improving rtts in any meaningful way kills this game for me. Let me use the contract money to buy a home or hire a trainer. Let me become a manager after retirement and start over as a manager in double-a.
Or let me take the cash i made and buy a team, then turn it into franchise mode or something. Idk just spitballin but make the mode more compelling.
IIRC didn't these scouting reports change based on how the player progressed, which was random? Either way I do remember when Trout and Gregory Polanco were almost considered the same prospect.
I was deep into the Show back in these days. Because of how the player progression was coded, the prospects HAD to be rated really low across the board or they would peak way too early and totally mess up the dynasty mode. The descriptions on the cards were computer-generated based on the ratings.
It was pretty annoying, actually, because even their speed and arm strength ratings would have to be set really low, so you’d have a real life 19-year old AA speedster with a B speed rating because otherwise the game would break.
I mean, that's pretty much what he looked like against the Reds this weekend (1 for 12 at the plate). Not sure how we managed to contain him like that, honestly...
I love looking at old sports games to see just how hilariously wrong they were about players who turned to be absolutely great.
Hell, Tom Brady wasn't even in most versions of Madden in his rookie year.
I think that was because the game was badly set up and having prospects be properly rated would break the franchise mode beyond repair. Especially with prospect potential because dudes would develop *fast*.
It's been a while, though, so that might not be entirely accurate.
Those comments cracked me up back in the day but I always wondered how they would rip on guys with an A+ potential for their current rating.
Still hilarious
The irony being the teams who would likely know about Trout was the Yankees and The Mets and their signing of Teixeira and KRod is what allowed the Angels to have both of their picks
Ah, this checks out with his draft scouting. He didn't take off as a prospect until he was in the Angels system and, by the time of his promotion, was considered a top tier guy.
In 09 he was [getting comps to Rowand](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10040180-revisiting-predraft-scouting-reports-for-mike-trout-aaron-judge-and-other-mlb-stars)
Yeah, I think the game was only using 2011 numbers and they autogenerated the report based only on that one year of data. It’s not a smart enough game to project into the future, is it?
13 years later I just haven’t seen him play enough to disagree with that…only heard rumors of how good he is bc MLB does a terrible job of getting him on camera.
I watch baseball everyday and never get to see a once in a generation player.
I miss the report cards from The Show. The snarky comments combined with often they were wrong were hilarious.
"Nothing more" is MLB-level snark.
Nothing more than the 30th best player in history, seems a rightful summary
30th? He's in my top ten but I also tend to give extra weight to modern players.
He should be 30th by fWAR, but I concur
If he staves off injuries for another 10 years, I could totally see him cracking top 20. He's only 32 and his ceiling will get him tons of playing time when healthy.
Have to win a World Series
And why is that? He’s only involved in around 10-15% of the plays, and has no influence on the other players. It would be like not placing Barry Sanders as a top running back because his qbs and defenses were shit. Id argue even Barry has more control of his teams success than Mike Trout does.
I think you’re in the wrong subreddit
Its fair to compare against different sports using transient properties, I think someone like God or Jesus may have been quoted by the guy at my local hole in the wall bar. Mike Trouts best seasons an average team turns into a 90 win team. In Barry’s worst seasons the Lions went from 10-12 wins to 4-6 wins.
Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, Ken Griffey are all scrubs
Yeah, or he'll be in the same pot as that bum, Ted Williams.
This is a good point as well. Decent number of top WAR guys from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Things were a lot less balanced back then.
I feel like anything before like 1930ish you have to take with a grain of salt because it was just a completely different game and the talent pool was so much smaller than it is nowadays. I feel like a Mike Trout or Shohei level talent would absolutely run the league 100yrs ago, just like I still think guys like Babe Ruth or Ted Williams would be studs now because they were absolute menaces of their era.
Lots of factors. Hard to say if Trout or Ohtani would be great back then given the advancements in health, training, research, etc. or vice versa for Ruth or Cobb. Hell, Ohtani's pitching career would likely be over already in a pre-TJ (and TJ adjacent surgery) world.
i think it's just impossible to compare athletes from vastly different eras because there's no way babe ruth is putting up 180 WAR in today's game, and mike trout could have caught polio and never played baseball if he was born in the 1910s or something
>Hell, Ohtani's pitching career would likely be over already in a pre-TJ (and TJ adjacent surgery) world. But he'd also likely never need surgery, considering he could shave 5 MPH off his fastball and still be the hardest-throwing pitcher of that era by far.
Yeah, but would that still be true without modern conditioning and mechanics? Too many factors that are impossible to compare. WAR tries, but the further apart in time two players are, the tougher it becomes.
He could shave 10 off and be that, most likely
The only reason people don’t say integration is because of those few greats right before it in the 1910-30s.
Exactly.
Everyone has their own opinion, but just wanna say top 10 sounds way too high. Mays, Mantle, and Griffey should all be higher and that’s just at his own position.
Those guys are all great but I think the modern era has many aspects which make the overall quality of play (due to analytics and broader international participation) stand out compared to other eras. And then... Trout is the best player during this most competitive era.
If I was mentioning guys who played before 1947 when baseball was still segregated that argument makes more sense. Baseball is a very old sport. Mays and Mantle putting up video game numbers in the 50s and 60s is a little different when compared to Wilt doing it in the NBA’s infancy for example. The difference isn’t as great as you probably think. Edit: Just thought of another NBA analogy. That’s like saying Curry is better than Michael Jordan because he was the best player in the league for the better part of a decade, in an era with more international players and analytics. That would just be silly lol.
I think the science behind Baseball has probably improved the level of play more than it has in most other sports. For example... even things like watching video clips of play could be more helpful than the utilization of video in other sports. Then you get into the computer age and slow-mo swing angle diagnostics and exit speeds... and I just think that most players today, on average, are probably much better than baseball players in the past. And things like that just simply may not hold as much truth with other sports. For example... prime Jordan might still be tops today whereas your best baseball players from the 80's might be second-tier compared to the top players today.
You should also consider the changes to equipment and field conditions. Players back then played in poorly lit stadiums compared to today’s standards. The fields themselves were grim compared to modern stadiums and had bizarre dimensions. Bat technology has improved tremendously. The pitching mound has been lowered to improve offense. There’s all sorts of stuff like that. It wouldn’t be an absolute cakewalk if you plopped an average player onto a team back in like the 50’s. Of course Mike Trout would still be Mike freaking Trout. One injury and he’s probably done though. Mickey Mantle basically played his entire career with a torn acl.
Mantle is a no-brainer at no. 1 on the CF list, but Trout already has as many MVPs as Mays and Griffey combined and could pick up his 4th this year. It's personal preference, and I know baseball has a heightened appreciation for longevity and milestones, but Trout at his peak is a better ballplayer than Griffey or Mays, which puts him above them on my list.
There’s no way you put Trout over Mays lol. Back then, it was very very rare for guys to win multiple MVPs. Mags lead the league in so many important stats and only won it twice, at 23 and 34. Especially in a “best player in best team” era. Not that Aaron was as high peak as Mays/Trout and was more longevity, but Aaron only won it once despite the numerous times he should have. Ted Williams winning 2 in the 4 year span was an anomaly (and he would have arguably had another if not for the DiMaggio streak, showing just how much of a freak he was)
I feel like writing a longer comment to clear up my thoughts on this debate. Mays is the no brainer number one. 3000 hit club, 660 HR, .300 career average, and one of the greatest defensive CFs of all time. His stats blow Mantle’s out of the water. A lot of people also forget he missed significant time at the start of his career to military service. There’s always what ifs for Mantle, Griffey, and Trout being healthy, but Mays genuinely could have been the first guy to pass Ruth’s 714 without his military service. I’d go as far as to argue Mays might be the greatest player of all time. But yeah with the what ifs, if it weren’t for that damn sprinkler head it would probably be Mantle. As things are, really the one thing he has up on Mays is those 7 WS with those stacked Yankee squads. Other than that their accolades are comparable, although if you think gold gloves are a big deal Mays did have 12 to Mantle’s 1. MVPs yes good point. Mays got shafted on MVP voting a lot in his career. He’d routinely lead the league in WAR and not even finish top 3 in MVP voting. I think that’s enough to get the point across so I’ll save everyone from more details. Griffey was one of the only guys in the steroid era not juicing. From 95-00 the AL MVPs were confirmed steroid users, a Pudge outlier season *wink wink*, and Griffey. I think Trout will retire with stats very comparable to Mantle. As it stands him and Griffey are the two guys from this group with no type of playoff success. With players these great the only real separator is their counting stats. Griffey had 630 HRs to Trout’s near 400 currently, and Griffey had ~1100 more hits than Trout has right now.
> Mantle is a no-brainer at no. 1 on the CF list lmao what, no he isn't
Mays is the greatest CF of all time, so clearly it’s basically objective fact (agreeing with you)
> Trout at his peak is a better ballplayer than Griffey or Mays that's debatable. i'm not saying that's flat out wrong, but it's debatable.
Top 10? Dude has played in 3 post season games hitting a solid .083 Jesus christ man lmao. Top 10?!?!? Lolll
It's a 3 game sample size from 2014. Also, he is easily a top 5 CF considering he's: 5th in WAR, 3rd in WAR7, 5th in JAWS, 1st in WAR per 162, 3x MVP, 11x all star and 9 Silver Sluggers.
Top 5 CF sure man. Top 10 player might be the dumbest take ever.
He has the 30th most WAR in baseball history =/= he's the 30th greatest player in baseball history. He's way higher. 1 WAR in 1920 is worth much less than 1 WAR in 2020.
WWI erasure
Just him and Albert bell.
“, be thankful” got me. I felt that coma
"Couldn't hit water if he fell off a boat" was my favorite comment
“His average is pretty average for an average.”
"No, he's not hiding 'heavy hands,' he's just sloooooooow."
They were also extremely important for identifying the generational prospects from the all-star prospects. There were two specific phrases that denoted a players potential was 95+. I played way too much MLB the show back in the day...
Well..don't leave us in the dark..what were they?
Really obvious. One was like "this dude is bound for HOF" and the other was like "this dude is going to win a buttload of MVP/Cy Young awards by the end of his career" It was stupid easy to stock pile those guys and make even the smallest payroll teams dynasties after 3 seasons of sim. They've changed how it works now
do you know the last game to do this so i can try it out lol and any recommendations on which one i should play
I think they may have changed the formula for recent games but the way I used to do it was to trade A level potential players with the CPU but only give up those whose main good stat was injury. In other words, for some reason, the game thinks that having a 90+ injury stat (so the player doesn't get injured) makes an elite player. So I would trade for guys that have high stats in the five tools but maybe only mediocre injury stats and give up the high injury stat guys. Since the game thinks A level is great regardless of the stats that contribute to that potential, you can pretty much steal guys from the top of the prospect lists. I would have like 5 guys in the top 15 at certain points all from trades. Also, the kind of useless A potential guy tended to be easier to spot because they would often be really short. This was as of like 3-4 years ago when I was still playing. They might have finally tweaked the game so it isn't possible to make those type of trades anymore.
Idk when exactly they changed it. But you can change the potential ratings for anyone. What's the difference between figuring out how the game hints that a guy has HOF potential vs just taking guys in your farm and giving them HOF potential? If you are going to play MLB the show for the simulation factor, you might as well pick up OOTP
> What's the difference between figuring out how the game hints that a guy has HOF potential vs just taking guys in your farm and giving them HOF potential? The second one is just straight up cheating? Also, they still show potential on the player card and in the roster screen, so there's still nothing stopping you from doing that (you'll just have to stockpile 90+ potentials instead of 95+ or whatever the old cutoff was) Also, being able to change potential means that Trout won't be stuck at D potential all year because SDS's rosters were bad
I played The Show 10 and then not again until the show 19 and the thing I missed the most was these report cards lol
Had the same experience playing 09 and 11 all the time back in the day and not again until 21 lmao I used to spend so much time reading those report cards
I played 10 and then 2022 and the most glaring issue to me is that they killed the trades. Now they make 0 sense. They use to make at least some sense. Contending teams would trade prospects for good players. Now they are random
Wonder why they stopped?
Same as all sports video games. Make franchise mode barebones and invest in ultimate team modes where people are dumb enough to pay micro-transactions.
):
I give that scouting report an F Edit: I went back and did a cursory search regarding Fish Man's prospects and found this from 2011: >The rest of baseball caught up with the Angels in 2010. Trout was named the No. 1 prospect in the Midwest and California leagues, but he really popped onto the radar by recording a pair of 3.9 times from home to first in the 2010 Futures Game while also showing an excellent feel for hitting and stunning physicality. By the end of the year, he was ranked No. 2 on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list. Yep, that's definitely worthy of F Contact and Power with a D in Potential.
The show 11 would have come out before the 2010 season, right? I don’t play it so I could be wrong, but those games are usually a year ahead I thought. So would be interesting to see where Trout ranked on an mlb dot com list prior to the 2010 season. EDIT: looks like it was released on 3/8/11, so best guess is that Sony didn’t update their prospect rankings or something. Pretty embarrassing, however they managed to overlook that.
[MLB 11: The Show was released March 8, 2011](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_11%3A_The_Show?wprov=sfla1). It went into development in the late-3rd quarter of 2010, so the devs would have definitely had access to Trout's 2010 numbers.
He only had 56 steals in 2010 compared to Juan Pierre's 68 so they were technically right. I guess.
Ah that makes sense. Still though, you think they would have looked at some mid season prospect lists or something
Seems like they were just throwing darts at the board to come up with their grades haha
Yea there's no real good reason to give a 1st round draft pick a D in potential unless they show signs of falling off which I would think it's a safe bet Trout didn't.
Trout didn't play in the majors in 2010. He played great in the minor leagues at the A and A+ levels, but not even Nostradamus himself could extrapolate that to assume he'd be an all-time great at the major league level, so I can definitely understand the oversight. To put it in perspective, there's probably a guy that put up a great 2023 season in the minors that will eventually go on to have a Hall of Fame career and become a household name in the 2030s. Good luck identifying them now though.
SDS devs dont actually do much in the development of their games besides the bare minimum, shocker
2011? No that’s totally wrong. They were one of the best, if not the best, sports games then.
Who thinks devs are writing these descriptions anyways? This is content team
No it came out March 2011. I think it was around 2006/2007 the games were just called MLB 200X where the year was one year ahead of its release year then the first "the show" came out where they reset it to the current year it was released in
It actually goes by when the season ends. So for example Madden 08 was the 2007-2008 season (Pats undefeated season until Giants Super Bowl win.) Or the NBA 2K game out right now is 2K24. Since the MLB season is contained within one year, it’s the only major one where the year name is the year it came out. MVP 2005 was the 2005 season (hence all the clips about the Sox breaking the curse + Manny on the cover), this year’s The Show is The Show 24, etc.
While that's true, before The Show, the series was just "MLB XX" and such and the years were off. MLB 98 came out in August 1997 and featured 1997 rosters and schedules; MLB 99 came out in April 1998 for the 1998 season. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989\_Sports\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989_Sports_Major_League_Baseball_series)
Ah ok, I didn’t realize they made that adjustment. Ootp still does the x+1, and that’s the most recent one I’ve paid attention to.
OOTP isn't based on year, it's the edition of the game. It's just a happy coincidence they decided to go 6 -> 6.5 -> 2006 -> 2007 -> 8 for whatever the fuck reason and it now aligns with x+1.
No it would’ve come out before the 2011 season
Sony is embarrassing in general.
I would normally disagree with you, but after the Jim Ryan era I don't. The loss of [Japan Studio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Studio) hit me hard.
That's never how it's worked. Do you think they just dropped the show 2025 a few months back? That would make no sense.
Every single "MLB XX" release has a year one higher than the season it was released for. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989\_Sports\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989_Sports_Major_League_Baseball_series) The Show fixed this immediately with the first game release in 2006 because, of course they did. The years being off was always stupid.
Well that's silly. My mistake!
It did work like that years ago, but they doubled up on a year and changed it. Off memory I think they put out MLB 2005 in March 2004 and MLB 2005: The Show in March 2005.
As other commenters mentioned, it was that way back when I was a kid and played those games. I haven’t played mlb branded games in a long time, so haven’t been paying attention to the releases. Ootp, a game I do occasionally play, still does the year+1 format.
No. 2 on BaseballAmerica and No. 1 on MLB.com, ahead of Harper lol In 2010 ***as an 18 year old***, he hit .341/.428/.490 with 56 SB in the minors. No idea what this video game was based on
Fun fact: There were only two teams in on him, the Yankees and Angels. The Yankees were gonna take him, but they had given the Angels their pick as compensation for Teixeria. The Angels had back to back picks and the person who scouted Trout said he was so sure about Trout that he'd basically quit if they didn't pick him. The Angels decided to prank the guy and used their first pick to take Randall Grichuk, which caused the scout to shit bricks. Much to his relief, the Angels picked Trout next and the rest is history. They were always going to pick Trout, btw. Damn shame too, if the Yankees had Trout going into the 2010s....
Pretty funny and great for Randall Grichuk. A prank on the scout made him an extra $27k in draft bonus money
>Damn ~~shame~~ good thing too, if the Yankees had Trout going into the 2010s.... FTFY
“D in potential” That scouting report has potential to suck my D lol
He hit over .500 his senior year while also pitching multiple complete game shutouts. Trout was never not a stud. Game just didn't bother using a real scouting report
Lol yeah so did Joey Gallo. Every MLB player grew up absolutely dominating, usually on the mound too. Same way like 40% of nfl skill position players were all state/county QBs
Okay sorry Mike Trout being a god-tier hitter in HS wasn't all that special and didn't catch anyone's eye
I mean it was special. That said I grew up in South Jersey and I'm a big baseball nut. He was not talked about as a prospect the same way we talked about Billy rowell out of bishop Eustace. Trouts competition was pretty bad
those that went to see Trout play in person seem to be the only ones who were super high on him. remember reading a while back one scout had him graded at 70, but knocked him down a few points just to make his analysis more believable.
So the guy I mentioned Rowell was such a huge bust, it influenced scouts who watched Trout who didn't want to make the same mistake. Rowell was an 06 hs grad and tanked his stock real fast.
Just reading about it now. Yeah taking him before Lincecum would certainly make you question your scouting process
iirc these scouting reports were pulled directly from their attributes. Trout was still a prospect so it’s not like he was a 99 overall lol
Half a dozen HRs? He’s averaged 6 HRs per 24 games for his career so far.
And are you thankful for it?
very
We all are. A healthy Trout is great for baseball
More if he’s playing in my teams stadium! How fun!
😢
So if I'm not mistaken, in the minors the year before The Show 11 came out, he had 10 home runs off of 600 plate appearances, and that's what this game would have used for when creating his stats. Trout generally wasn't considered a power hitter as a prospect, and even his rookie season in the majors he didn't show much power. He just kind of exploded his 2nd season with the Angels.
He played 40 games and wasn't that good. His rookie season he was ROY and 2nd in MVP voting.
In terms of "rookie" season I meant his first season. Technically still a rookie by MLB standards during his 2nd season in the majors. But prior to that, he wasn't some outstanding power prospect. Anyone who says they knew he'd be some incredible player are lying. No one really saw him as a can't miss prospect.
5 HRs in 40 games as a 19-20 year old rookie (20 per 162 games) isn’t exactly no power, but yeah, not like what he ended up doing from 2012 onwards. But I do get the general sentiment behind what you’re saying.
Then why are you arguing with me?
Didn’t he have like 6 HR in like the first 10 games or so this year
He had only one HR in 164 ABs in Rookie ball, and nobody considered him a power threat, early on. He was known for his wheels and raw athleticism. The power showed up in his first full MLB season.
I believe Miguel Cabrera’s called him a career minor leaguer back in 2002 or 03, I don’t remember the year.
well he did play most of his career in the AL Central
ZING!
hehehe 
🤣🤣
Well he's no Jon Dowd. That's for sure.
Maybe this got in his head. Maybe that’s why he’s loyal to the Angels. In his mind, they gave a nobody like him a shot
He was picked 25th overall, which is pretty good relatively to other players, but for Mike Trout’s talent, that was insultingly low. Strasburg at #1 was obvious and I don’t really regret that, Zach Wheeler at 6 is pretty good also, but everyone else fucked up big time including the Nationals again for picking Drew Storen at 10, which I mean turned out okay for us but he’s no Trout.
Dude was picked after Randall Grichuk. What a scrub.
If they drafted Strasburg and Trout, that’d be an all time draft
“And I took that personal”
The Yankees were gonna take him actually. The Angels just got there first.
That's not as bad as in I believe it was the 2016 version when they had the wrong picture for Jose Ramirez. They switched Cleveland's Jose Ramirez and Atlanta's RP Jose Ramirez. It was very noticable since the pictures included their team hats.
Strider's in-game character for The Show 22 had long hair and was clean shaven before they updated it later in the season. He's never had long hair as far as I can tell.
Strider would look straight out of the 70s if he had long hair
brought to you by fanatics
This reminds me of a story I heard from my old boss. He has a friend who owns a baseball academy in NJ. That friend had a parent begging him and insisting to give his 12 year old a shot to play even though he coached 14 year olds. He turned the guy down over and over, insisting that he only coached 14 year olds and couldn’t make an exception because he’d heard the same story 1000 times. The 12 year old in this story was Mike Trout
Good thing Mike Trout took his advice and didn’t hurry
There's wrong, there's wrong wrong, and then there's this.
I like how the closest thing to his actual talent emergence here was speed, and even that was probably under-graded
I mean, it's pretty difficult to get speed wrong.
It is difficult to predict the future haha
That's true, but fast is fast. Speed is extremely measurable and predictable.
Sure. So it was still funny, per the original prompt. Glad you noted and appreciated it.
What was funny? I'm serious. Was there a joke in there?
Yeah, he stole a ton of bases when he first came up. His speed tool was arguably as good as his hit tool in 2012
"Validity unknown", says the flair. I'll shine light on this since I still have my PS3 hooked up. Back then, MLB The Show did not have likeness rights for prospects not yet in the MLBPA, so the default rosters didn't have Trout. Through the course of the 2011 season roster updates were issued and Trout would have been added once SDS got the greenlight to add him after his debut. In order to see the Scouting Report tab, you need to be loaded into a game mode such as franchise. Viewing rosters from the main menu will not show it. Therefore the scouting reports probably aren't directly in the rosters, but are generated by the game from the player's attributes. There may be some fuzziness so two people may see slightly different reports. The most recent roster update I have was downloaded on November 7, 2011. [Here's what I see](https://imgur.com/a/wNdMTZ0) when I start a fresh Angels franchise with those rosters. Very similar to the OP, but not exactly the same. The earliest roster update I still have is from August 8 of 2011 and the Mike Trout in that roster set is a little better. [Have a look.](https://imgur.com/a/KSPu3cG)
"Terrific Hitter." "A below average hitter..." Amazing.
That was the scouting report for the Angels as a team, not for Trout specifically.
“He’s got an ugly girlfriend. An ugly girlfriend means no confidence.”
Could be the GOAT. Nothing more
Lol number 2 overall prospect just "meh."
How do they come up with a report card like that on a first round pick less than 2 years removed from being drafted?? It's not like he didn't have big time production in his brief minor career.
The first three are just auto generated messages based off current ratings The last message is based off of his potential which was too low, but IIRC basically all real life top prospects had too low potential in these games
I wonder how many old mlb the show saves are out there were Trout was an absolute scrub
Ironically, it would be an apt description of pretty much the entire angels’ team, sans trout and ohtani, since 2011
Did actual scouts think this or just The Show?
He was the #2 prospect in baseball coming into 2011. Literally nobody thought this. Looks like really bad AI in retrospect.
Stupid me thought this was draft
More likely someone at San Diego Studios, the development team that makes The Show, was having a laugh with the Angels' top prospect because a bunch of the team are Padres fans. Doubtful this was random AI at work since these grades come up every time when you play MLB The Show 11, only the text blurbs change since those use an algorithm to change while the ratings are set by the developers.
The Show need to bring back Scouting Reports
The Show not improving rtts in any meaningful way kills this game for me. Let me use the contract money to buy a home or hire a trainer. Let me become a manager after retirement and start over as a manager in double-a. Or let me take the cash i made and buy a team, then turn it into franchise mode or something. Idk just spitballin but make the mode more compelling.
Oliver Perez was a 99 potential on everything in one of the games. Either High Heat with Schilling on the cover or MVP with Manny on the cover
it is as if they were trying to be wrong
Op: now do Shohei in the rookie season. I bet it was just as cruel
I forget which one it was but it said that David Wright wouldn't be a base stealing threat....after he had a 30/30 season.
"Could be top 5 hitter all-time, nothing more."
In other words, he's no Grant Green.
Mike Trout.
He ended up being pretty good in real life
There’s a lesson to never blindly put complete trust a given narrative, on you or in general, don’t sell yourself short
IIRC didn't these scouting reports change based on how the player progressed, which was random? Either way I do remember when Trout and Gregory Polanco were almost considered the same prospect.
How can the overall grade be a C given the other grades?
Batting cage form too...
Ok, does anyone want to actually verify this by popping MLB 11: The Show into their PS3/PS2?
2 out of 4 right ain't bad 🤣
That trout guy is decent
He probably played this game in late 2010, read this, and decided he was not gonna let that be the truth
I was deep into the Show back in these days. Because of how the player progression was coded, the prospects HAD to be rated really low across the board or they would peak way too early and totally mess up the dynasty mode. The descriptions on the cards were computer-generated based on the ratings. It was pretty annoying, actually, because even their speed and arm strength ratings would have to be set really low, so you’d have a real life 19-year old AA speedster with a B speed rating because otherwise the game would break.
I mean, that's pretty much what he looked like against the Reds this weekend (1 for 12 at the plate). Not sure how we managed to contain him like that, honestly...
I love looking at old sports games to see just how hilariously wrong they were about players who turned to be absolutely great. Hell, Tom Brady wasn't even in most versions of Madden in his rookie year.
Because I still only have an Xbox 360, I bought MLB 2K12 during covid and they had him rated somewhere in the upper 70s
I think that was because the game was badly set up and having prospects be properly rated would break the franchise mode beyond repair. Especially with prospect potential because dudes would develop *fast*. It's been a while, though, so that might not be entirely accurate.
Those comments cracked me up back in the day but I always wondered how they would rip on guys with an A+ potential for their current rating. Still hilarious
I know, right? Imagine how they must feel now knowing all the success he's had and championships he's won. Jokes on them, right?
This is hilarious. Iirc, some scouts for the Angels said he had Hall of Fame potential. But no other teams really had him on their radar.
TBF, that's cuz NJ isn't exactly a baseball factory. Most teams are sending their scouts to Cali, Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc
Yup. Really dumb IMO. I understand you gotta focus somewhere, but Trout being missed as a prospect by basically everyone is such a fumble.
The irony being the teams who would likely know about Trout was the Yankees and The Mets and their signing of Teixeira and KRod is what allowed the Angels to have both of their picks
What the Angels have done to squander his career ought to be a crime
Ah, this checks out with his draft scouting. He didn't take off as a prospect until he was in the Angels system and, by the time of his promotion, was considered a top tier guy. In 09 he was [getting comps to Rowand](https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10040180-revisiting-predraft-scouting-reports-for-mike-trout-aaron-judge-and-other-mlb-stars)
Hows a rookie overall C w potential of a D. Gnna have a drug problem? Gambling maybe? Lol
"will never win a playoff game" SPOT ON
Well, he hit .220 with 5 HR 16 RBI and 4 SB that year, so...pretty damn accurate
Yeah, I think the game was only using 2011 numbers and they autogenerated the report based only on that one year of data. It’s not a smart enough game to project into the future, is it?
He only hit 5 homers in 2011.
He also only played 40 games.
Clearly the game knew he would only play 40 games when it said if he hits 6 bombs to be thankful
Hindsight is 20/20 my friend
True, but he was also the #1 prospect in 2011. Feels like the outlook could’ve been a little more positive lol
maybe they thought they were onto something with all the ultra hyped prospects that have failed over the years.
13 years later I just haven’t seen him play enough to disagree with that…only heard rumors of how good he is bc MLB does a terrible job of getting him on camera. I watch baseball everyday and never get to see a once in a generation player.