Those looking forward to any kind of bidding war for baseball’s best player after the 2020 season, sorry to disappoint you. Really. Bryce Harper looking forward to him joining up with the Phillies, about an hour south of where he was born and raised, can quit looking now.

When the Phillies signed Harper for thirteen years and $330 million, I suggested that plus the Manny Machado deal in San Diego (ten years, $300 million) would do Mike Trout the biggest favour of anyone. And if ESPN’s Jeff Passan is right, and the Angels are putting the finishing touch on a contract extension that’ll pay him $36 million a year for ten years after his current deal expires after the 2020 season, then I was right, too.

The one supposition in baseball today that nobody was going to contradict is that Trout was going to be an extremely wealthy young man. In human terms, he’ll still be a young man when the extension finishes its course, though in baseball terms he might be a senior citizen at age 40.

Including his 2019 and 2020 salaries Trout has $430 million coming until 2030. And he probably agreed to take less than he’s actually worth, which tells you the state of free agency now, but that wasn’t exactly Trout’s obsession. Staying with the only team he’s ever played for was probably far more important. For himself and for the game itself, since single-team careers were actually as comparatively rare before free agency as after. (And, yes, you can look it up.)

And if he keeps playing for at least half the term at the level he’s played since his first full major league season, Trout will graduate from legend to demigod, a status from which he’s not exactly long distance as it is now.

I’ve been tinkering with the concept of a real batting average for awhile. My original formulation didn’t quite satisfy, because I thought I needed to draw a better bead on figuring what a batter actually does by and for himself at the plate. The traditional batting average’s flaw is that it really should be considered a hitting average: it divides hits by official at-bats and treats all hits equally. Stop me if you get the idea at once.

But 1) all hits are not equal; and, 2) batters also draw unintentional walks and, believe it or not, perform sacrifices. If that seems like I’m approaching on-base percentage, yes, OBP is really a better way to measure a batter but it, too, accounts solely for official at-bats. So, out goes my original idea and in comes this measure: total bases (TB) plus walks (BB) plus sacrifices (SAC)  divided by plate appearances. Or, TB + BB + SAC / PA. Yes, I can think of any number of my childhood math teachers who’d need psychiatric attention after seeing me tinkering this way, since I was about as good a math student in school as B.B. King was at playing a vibraphone.

I’ve spent the past couple of days examining by that formula every Hall of Fame position player who played the majority of their careers in the post-World War II/post-integration/night baseball era. Here are the tables:

CATCHERS	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Ivan Rodriguez	10270	4451	513	107	.494
Gary Carter	9019	3497	848	132	.496
Carlton Fisk	9853	3999	849	105	.503
Yogi Berra	8359	3643	704	53	.526
Johnny Bench	8674	3644	891	101	.534
Roy Campanella	4815	2101	533	48	.557
Mike Piazza	7745	3768	759	45	.590
HOF AVG					.529

 

FIRST BASEMEN	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Tony Perez	10861	4532	925	115	.522
Orlando Cepeda	8698	3959	588	78	.532
Eddie Murray	12817	5397	1333	130	.535
Willie McCovey	9692	4219	1345	75	.582
Harmon Killebrew	9833	4143	1559	77	.588
Jeff Bagwell	9431	4213	1401	105	.606
Jim Thome	10313	4667	1747	75	.629
HOF AVG					.571

 

SECOND BASEMEN	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Bill Mazeroski	8379	2848	447	157	.412
Nellie Fox	10351	3347	719	256	.418
Red Schoendienst	9224	3284	606	116	.434
Craig Biggio	12504	4711	1160	182	.484
Rod Carew	10550	3998	1018	192	.494
Ryne Sandberg	9282	3787	761	102	.501
Roberto Alomar	10400	4018	1032	245	.509
Joe Morgan	11329	3962	1865	147	.527
Jackie Robinson	5804	2310	740	113	.545
HOF AVG					.489

 

SHORTSTOPS	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Luis Aparicio	11230	3504	736	177	.393
Ozzie Smith	10778	3084	1072	277	.411
Phil Rizzuto	6719	2065	651	195	.433
Pee Wee Reese	9470	3038	1210	176	.467
Alan Trammell	9376	3442	850	200	.479
Robin Yount	12249	4730	966	227	.484
Cal Ripken	12883	5168	1129	137	.499
Barry Larkin	9057	3527	939	126	.507
Ernie Banks	10395	4706	763	141	.540
HOF AVG					.414

 

THIRD BASEMEN	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Brooks Robinson	11782	4270	860	225	.455
Wade Boggs	10740	4064	1412	125	.522
Ron Santo	9397	3779	1108	107	.531
George Brett	11625	5044	1096	146	.541
Eddie Mathews	10100	4349	1444	94	.583
Chipper Jones	10614	4755	1512	100	.600
Mike Schmidt	10062	4404	1507	124	.600
HOF AVG					.547

 

LEFT FIELDERS	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Lou Brock	11240	4238	761	93	.453
Tim Raines	10359	3771	1330	115	.504
Rickey Henderson	13346	4588	2190	97	.515
Carl Yastrzemski	13992	5539	1845	118	.536
Jim Rice	9058	4129	670	99	.540
Billy Williams	10519	4599	1045	81	.550
Willie Stargell	9027	4190	937	84	.577
Ralph Kiner	6256	2852	1011	16	.620
Ted Williams	9788	4884	2021	25	.708
HOF AVG					.555

 

CENTER FIELDERS	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Richie Ashburn	9736	3196	1198	130	.465
Kirby Puckett	7831	3453	450	81	.509
Andre Dawson	10769	4787	589	142	.512
Larry Doby	6299	2621	871	45	.562
Ken Griffey, Jr.	11304	5271	1312	110	.592
Duke Snider	8237	3865	971	84	.597
Willie Mays	12496	6066	1464	104	.611
Mickey Mantle	9907	4511	1733	61	.636
HOF AVG					.561

 

RIGHT FIELDERS	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Tony Gwynn	10232	4259	790	130	.506
Roberto Clemente	10211	4492	621	102	.510
Dave Winfield	12358	5221	1216	114	.530
Al Kaline	11596	4852	1277	149	.541
Reggie Jackson	11418	4834	1375	81	.551
Vladimir Guerrero	9059	4506	737	64	.586
Frank Robinson	11742	5373	1420	119	.587
Hank Aaron	13941	6856	1402	142	.603
Stan Musial	12718	6134	1599	88	.615
HOF AVG					.559

 

DHs	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Paul Molitor	12167	4854	1094	184	.504
Harold Baines	11092	4604	1062	108	.520
Edgar Martinez	8674	3718	1283	87	.587
Frank Thomas	10075	4550	1667	121	.629
HOF AVG					.560

The average RBA among all those 69 Hall of Famers is .532. Eleven of them have RBAs of .600 or better: in ascending order, Chipper Jones (.600), Mike Schmidt (.600), Hank Aaron (.603), Jeff Bagwell (.606), Willie Mays (.611), Stan Musial (.615), Ralph Kiner (.620), Jim Thome (.629), Frank Thomas (.629), Mickey Mantle (.636), and Ted Williams (.708), with Williams the only one of the group above .700.

Now, I give you the $430 million Angel through the end of last season:

	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Mike Trout	4673	2219	998	44	.698

Think about that a moment. In terms of a real batting average, accounting for all his plate appearances, the real value of his hits, plus his walks and sacrifices, Mike Trout has a higher real batting average than all but one post-World War II/post-integration/night baseball-era Hall of Famer, and he’s only behind Ted Williams by ten points while being ahead of runner-up Mickey Mantle by 31 points. (And, to put things into further perspective, Trout’s home ballpark isn’t exactly a hitter’s paradise.)

In case you were wondering, here’s where Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, the big nuggets of this winter/spring’s free agent class (whose home ballparks until now haven’t exactly been hitters’ paradises, either, though Nationals Park is more neutral), happen to sit lifetime so far:

	PA	TB	Walks	Sacs	RBA
Bryce Harper	3957	1693	585	43	.587
Manny Machado	4074	1810	296	43	.527

Bet on it: If Trout had hit his first free agency this winter/spring, Harper and Machado would have been footnotes by comparison. All three have played in all or parts of the same number of major league seasons (seven), all three have been considered among the game’s elite, but Trout leaves Harper and Machado far enough behind that they’ll need GPSs to keep an eye on him.

Now we can mention the secondary details, such as Trout is going to earn the highest average annual salary on the extension in baseball history, for now. Not to mention all reporting on the deal saying that Trout’s extension, like Harper’s new deal, has no opt-out clause and full no-trade protection. And, we can think aloud about the reasons beyond his baseball virtuosity that Trout was shown that kind of money: he may be the one player in baseball above all others now who couldn’t care less about it.

Baseball may have a real problem in making its best player the game’s face, but Trout isn’t exactly in a big hurry to cash in on the idea and never really was. If he got endorsements and television spots off the field, he didn’t go out of his way to hunt anything more. They came to him, he’d accept, but he wouldn’t lobby for more endorsements, bigger dollars from them, more branding from them. He’s the lowest maintenance superstar baseball’s seen in a couple of generations.

Maybe the only extravagance Trout was ever known to indulge (his known passion for meteorology is just that, a passion) was his proposal to the young woman who’s been his love since high school and his wife since December 2017—he hired a skywriting team to pour out, “Will you marry me Jess?”

Now, if only the Angels, who aren’t exactly in the poorhouse despite deciding to make Mike Trout worth the economy of a single tropical paradise, can figure out a way to build a team baseball’s best player and the no-questions-asked best ever to wear an Angel uniform can be proud of.