3 reasons why Mike Trout will be MLB's next $300M man

In the final installment of this three-part series, we look at three reasons why Mike Trout - the inimitable Los Angeles Angels superstar working to distinguish himself as the greatest ballplayer who ever lived - will be the next player to land a $300-million contract.

Safest bet

Over the past couple days, we made cases as to why Bryce Harper or Manny Machado - both of whom will hit the market after 2018 - will be the next players to land $300-million contracts, and, between now and 2020, a bevy of other young superstars are going to hit free agency with similarly lofty targets.

Seeing as we're now anointing Trout the next $300-million man, though, it's incumbent upon us to demonstrate why those players won't receive deals of that magnitude. Here are a few potential scenarios:

• Making an unprecedented amount of weak contact this year, Harper continues to perform at an impressive but not quite elite level, resulting in an impressive but not quite mind blowing contract he probably would've scoffed at in 2015 after posting a 1.109 OPS (197 wRC+) as a 22-year-old.
• After two brilliant seasons in a row, Machado's surgically repaired knees start acting up, leading to a marked decline in his offensive production and defensive range that suppress his market value.
• Despite dominating in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery, Jose Fernandez, being a pitcher, suffers too many minor maladies in the two years leading up to free agency to command a deal of that size.
• Boasting enough capital to retain their young superstars, the Red Sox sign both Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts - the former will only become arbitration-eligible for the first time next year - to extensions that evoke the six-year, $144.5-million deal Trout received from the Angels in 2014.

So what is it that makes Trout so special? Well...

God among men

One day, decades from now, millennials will talk about Mike Trout in that breathless, almost mythical way that old baseball fans today rhapsodize about Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Here's the thing, though: Mike Trout, through his first six years in the major leagues, has been so much better than both of them. There is no apt historical comparison for Mike Trout. Right now, on a chronically mismanaged team toiling in a chronically overlooked time zone, Mike Trout is making history.

WAR leaders (1920-2016) through age-24

Today, there is Mike Trout and then there's everybody else. Since his 2011 debut, Mike Trout has produced 45.4 wins above replacement. The next-best player over that span is worth half that.

Father time spares no one, of course, and Trout's skills may diminish some in the four years between now and the end of his contract, but in an economy where Albert Pujols, at 32 and showing symptoms of decline, can command a 10-year, $240-million deal, Mike Trout, at 29, is poised to become the highest paid baseball player in history.

A bargain at any cost

Crazy as it sounds, superstars are actually underpaid in Major League Baseball. It's tough for Joe Sixpack to swallow that notion when he sees men throwing or hitting baseballs signing nine-figure contracts (and especially when those players start scuffling in the later years), but thanks to continued inflation, the cost of marginal wins continues to skyrocket.

Sure, committing $30 million a year to an individual seems nuts, but it actually makes a whole lot more sense than apportioning that money to two or three players - particularly when the individual receiving that $30 million is providing more than $100 million in value. Though nobody can know how Trout will age, or assume that inflation will increase by five percent each year in perpetuity, it's not unreasonable to project literally hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus value over the course of his big contract.

At $300 million, Trout may be a steal.