Mookie Betts is already building his Red Sox legacy
The 23-year old is on the path to greatness.
COMMENTARY
It isn’t exactly breaking news to announce that Mookie Betts is really good. If you’re paying even cursory attention to the Boston Red Sox these days, you are well aware of this. The only question at this point seems to be just how good is he? It turns out, he’s on track to be really quite something.
When players reach the majors, inevitably comparisons were tossed around. One player Betts was compared to, by some anyway, was Andrew McCutchen. At the time, it seemed far fetched. McCutchen is an MVP and five-time All-Star. He hasn’t played as well this year, but entering this season he had posted a .400 on-base percentage or better in four consecutive seasons. He’s a superstar. But as you can see in this graph, Betts has been better than him when you make an age-based comparison.
Through their age-23 seasons, Betts has nearly double the wins above replacement (WAR) that McCutchen did (WAR, is a catch-all measurement for a player’s value that factors in offense, defense and baserunning). And the good news is that Betts isn’t even finished with his age-23 season. With a month and a half left in the season, he has a good chance of fully doubling up McCutchen’s total.
That’s just an isolated comparison, of course. Let’s look at Red Sox history. How does Betts stack up there? Would you believe third-best ever?
In case you’re not familiar, wRC+ stands for weighted runs created plus, which is a catch-all metric to measure offensive performance, where 100 is league average, and 101 is one percentage point better than league average. It is adjusted so that you can compare players who played in different ballparks, leagues and time periods, so it’s great for historical comparisons.
As you can see, Betts is a slightly unique player. He is an above-average hitter, but not so great that he is in the Ted Williams/Babe Ruth/Fred Lynn stratosphere. He adds to his value by being an excellent defender and baserunner. He is by far the best Red Sox base runner ever through age-23, by FanGraphs’ metrics. And his defensive value is on par with Carl Yastrzemski, which isn’t too shabby.
Overall, it puts Betts just below two of the greatest players not only in team history, but major league history. If you ask baseball historians who the best center fielder ever was, plenty will say Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle, and they wouldn’t be wrong, especially since they played in the Integrated Era. But Tris Speaker’s name is always in the discussion. The same is true for Ted Williams. His actual place depends on what position you want to classify Babe Ruth as — Ruth played 1,132 games in right field and 1,040 in left field. And some of it depends on how much you want to celebrate Barry Bonds’ legacy. But after those two, it’s Ted Williams, Stan Musial (and Musial spent more than one-third of his career at first base), and perhaps Rickey Henderson. So, there’s certainly no shame in Betts falling behind Williams and Speaker.
Beyond that, Betts is the best the Red Sox have seen. Certainly he’s the best young position player the team has had since the team joined the Integrated Era in the 1950s. We often talk about how Tony Conigliaro would have had a shot at a Hall of Fame career if his career hadn’t been tragically cut short. Well, Betts has already blown past him, in terms of WAR. Betts has a better OBP than Conigliaro did, and his slugging percentage is nearly identical — .500 for Betts, .510 for Tony C. Betts has also hit twice as many homers as Fred Lynn had at the same age.
Throughout the team’s history, 186 position players have suited up by the end of their age-23 season. Of them, Betts ranks fifth in home runs and stolen bases, seventh in runs scored, and among those who played regularly, eighth in Isolated Power (which is slugging percentage minus batting average, a good measure of a hitter’s true power). He’s the real deal.
In fact, let’s not stop at Red Sox history, let’s look at what Betts has already accomplished in the context of major league history.
I broke this down by three time periods: 1901-present is what we consider the Modern Era; 1947-present is considered the Integrated Era, as 1947 was the year that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier; and then finally, I included the last 30 years to give us more of a recent context. I also included one position filter — outfield only vs. all position players.
Betts does remarkably well. In the “Notable Players Passed” column, you’ll find players who Betts has already passed in terms of career WAR. The column is larded with All-Stars and Silver Sluggers, and there’s even a couple of Hall of Famers in there.
Betts, currently, is seemingly on a borderline Hall of Fame trajectory. There are two obvious paths to Cooperstown for him – one, get a little better, and be truly excellent for a concentrated period of time. We’ll call this the Ken Griffey Jr. track. The other path is to maintain how good he is now for a very long time. We’ll call this the Carl Yastrzemski track.
Mookie Betts is not Mike Trout. He’s not Willie Mays. At least, not yet. But through his age-23 season – which isn’t even over yet – he has put himself amongst some very noteworthy company. Should he be blessed with continued good health, he could very well put himself in the conversation to be a Hall of Famer someday.
Red Sox in the Baseball Hall of Fame
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