Mike Trout tracker, July edition: He's now better than eight more Hall of Famers

Mike Trout is squarely in the passing-Hall-of-Famers-in-career-WAR-every-few-days period of his career. He is still 27.

If I tell you that 27-year-old Mike Trout has more career WAR than, say, Barry Larkin, you could hear it as an incredible tribute to Trout, but you could also hear it as a diminishment of Larkin -- and if we diminish Larkin, we diminish the power of the tribute. To really appreciate Trout, it helps to appreciate just how incredible the Hall of Famers he is passing were and to understand how it is plausible that Trout is already actually more valuable than they were.

Trout started July with 69.5 career WAR. With another fantastic month -- he hit .286/.392/.821, ended July leading the American League in WAR and raised his career mark to 71.1 -- he passed eight more Hall of Famers. In Trout's honor, we will consider those eight.

Ed Delahanty, 69.7 career WAR (70th all time among position players)

How good Delahanty was:

1. Across the decade of the 1890s, these are the statistical categories in which Ed Delahanty led all of Major League Baseball: Hits, total bases, doubles, slugging percentage and OPS+. He was second in homers, RBIs, triples and WAR. He was third in runs scored. He was fourth in batting average. He was ninth in on-base percentage, 13th in stolen bases and 19th in walks. He had an excellent defensive reputation. Over the course of a decade, he was either the best or the second-best baseball player in the world, behind Billy Hamilton.

2. "Delahanty was a five-tool player long before the term came into use," his SABR bio says, and there's one way his Baseball-Reference page looks more like Trout's than perhaps any other great player: The distribution of his black ink, which signifies when he led his league in something. Like Trout, Delahanty didn't just lead the league in power stats, or speed stats, but in almost everything at some point or another. He led the league in average, and in OBP, and in slugging percentage -- all in different years. He led the league in homers, doubles and triples, all in different years. He never led the league in walks, though he finished in the top six four times, and never in runs, though he finished third, fourth and fifth twice. He led in RBIs, in hits and over and over in OPS (not that he knew it at the time). In his final full season, he hit .376/.453/.590, all three leading the league, and then -- just 42 games later -- his career ends, and all the stats stop. And that's probably what he's most famous for.

3. In 1903, when he was 35 and coming off one of his best seasons, Delahanty died. It's one of baseball's most shocking deaths and enduring mysteries. He was on a train near Niagara Falls. He was drunk -- his personal life had been falling apart -- and then belligerent. He got kicked off the train. He walked out onto a bridge over the Niagara River. He got in a scuffle with a night watchman, escaped the watchman's grasp and went over the edge of the bridge and died. It's not really known what happened: Did he fall in his drunkenness or did he jump? Was he suicidal, as some circumstantial evidence suggests? What sort of tragedy was this? It's never been known. "His naked body (except for tie, shoes and socks) was found 20 miles downstream at the base of Horseshoe Falls -- the Canadian portion of Niagara Falls -- seven days later," the SABR bio concludes. He was, at the time, one of the five greatest baseball players who had ever lived.

How Trout is plausibly better, already: The playing time gap between Trout and Delahanty is considerably smaller than for most of these Hall of Famers. Delahanty only played about 50 percent more games than Trout has already, and his first four years were quite poor. Delahanty's best year would be Trout's sixth best.

Gary Carter, 70.1 WAR (69th)

How good Carter was:

1. It's incredible what catchers used to be asked to do, and Carter even more than most. In 1982, he started 151 games at catcher. Only one catcher since World War II has ever started more, and only two catchers in this decade have started more than 137 (and none more than 143). He took 650 of his team's 693 plate appearances at the position that year, and if you don't think that all took a toll on his stats and his career, just look at the splits: He hit .313/.391/.588 in the first half, .271/.370/.429 in the second. "I'm on that burnout pace," he admitted at the time, citing Johnny Bench as an example. "I feel it in the mornings. Sometimes, it takes me a half-hour to get out of bed. There are days when I can't walk down the stairs without stretching and popping my legs back into shape."

2. But the next year -- 1983, when he was 29 -- he had, arguably, the best defensive season in catching history, 27 runs better than average. Only seven catchers over the past century have even cracked 20. It marked the end of a remarkable run of eight years and more than 100 runs saved on defense.

From a Sports Illustrated profile at the time: "Backup Catcher Tim Blackwell says Carter 'frames the ball,' that is, catches it with such a smooth movement of the mitt that every close pitch appears to be a strike, a technique he learned from former Expo Coach Norm Sherry. He can glance at a scouting report and within five minutes conduct a team meeting on it. He's not merely competitive; he's aflame.... 'I like being called the best catcher in baseball. Nobody remembers Number 2.'"

3. His positive attitude was legendary. He talked to everybody -- batters, reporters, fans on the edges of the stands -- constantly. He estimated that he signed as many as 100,000 autographs a year. "Carter may be that rarest of humans -- a truly happy man," that SI profile said.

How Trout is plausibly better, already: Very few catchers can stay at an All-Star level deep into their 30's, and Carter was no exception. He had 11 seasons as an above-average player, while Trout already has eight. Carter ranks 107th all time in MVP shares, which is very good. Trout already ranks 11th, and when he wins it this year he'll likely jump into the top five. Carter's career-high OPS+ was 146. Trout's career low is 168. Carter's best season, by WAR, would be Trout's sixth best.

Bobby Wallace, 70.3 WAR (67th)

How good Wallace was:

1. Wallace is the 21st Hall of Fame hitter Trout has passed this season, and it's a strong bet he's the least recognizable name of them all. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of him. Consider this: "There was one of the greatest ball players in the world, and the chances are that half the young fellows of today never heard of him." That was written by Honus Wagner, just six years after Wallace retired.

It seems fairly damning to his greatness than the young fellows of the day held him in low regard. But Wagner was writing about Wallace because he was naming him to his all-time team, as the shortstop (with Wagner presumably excluding himself from consideration). Which is pretty supportive of his greatness.