Xander Bogaerts. From Jorge Arangure, Jr.,
Sports On Earth:
By the time he became a teenager, Bogaerts had begun to overshadow some of the other players on the island. He played on select teams and participated in tournaments in places like St. Thomas, St Croix, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Although he always considered his brother to be better, few on the island shared that opinion.
Yet Bogaerts was virtually unknown in the scouting world.
He didn't get noticed by a major league team until he was discovered by a shaggy-haired, unkempt, beach-loving hippie who had spent the day unimpressed at a tryout in Aruba, and then asked one simple question, the defining question in Boston's signing of Bogaerts. It spoke of the inquisitive mind and persistence of the person whom the Red Sox had entrusted to scout faraway destinations in search of hidden gems.
"So," the man asked, after hours of tryouts on a dusty field, "have I seen everybody on the island I need to see?"
Mike Trout. From Tony Blengino,
Fangraphs:
The start to Trout’s career is almost unparalleled in modern baseball history. He ranks fourth on the all-time list of players with the most cumulative standard deviations above league average OBP and SLG in their first two years as a regular, behind Babe Ruth, Joe Jackson and Frank Thomas – who were all three years older and more physically mature than Trout when they completed their second seasons as regulars. ...
Where might Trout go from here? ... If he hits his ceiling ... that would put him in the mix with the top three of Barry Bonds, Ted Williams and Babe Ruth for best hitter of all time honors. If he hits the midpoint of those two tracks, he would rank seventh on the all-time list, behind those three plus Cobb, Stan Musial and Rogers Hornsby.
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