The Third Wheel

With all of the talk of the brilliance of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, there is no doubting that one other second year player has been forgotten. You have to give Harper and Trout credit, after all they have been nothing short of spectacular, but this one player deserves to be in the same conversation as Trout and Harper as he has more hits per game than both Harper and Trout and is arguably the best defensive player in the big leagues. The player that I am talking about is Manny Machado.

Manny Machado is a 20-year old third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles and in 116 games has already compiled 138 hits. Machado was selected by the Orioles with the third overall selection in the 2010 MLB draft after Bryce Harper and Jameson Taillon (Who?!) went 1st and 2nd respectively. Since being called up to the Major Leagues on August 9, 2012 Machado has been nothing short of incredible. He has been the firecracker that has helped bring the Orioles back to relevance in the Major Leagues by ending a 15-year playoff drought last season and being right in the thick of the AL East this season, only 3.5 games back of the division leading Red Sox.

What makes Machado so good? Two things stand out to me for Machado. The first is that Machado knows how to put the bat on the ball. Manny is currently in second place in the MLB in hits, trailing only Miguel Cabrera by 1 hit and is 4th best for qualified 3rd basemen with only 42 strikeouts this season. The fact that he is putting up such great numbers at such a young age is a great sign. In the month of May Machado had 44 hits which is the most ever in a month by a player under the age of 21. Manny Machado also holds the record for most multi-hit games for a player under the age of 21, and he still has a little less than a month to build on the record!!

The second thing that makes Machado so good is his glove. He can make the routine plays, along with the spectacular plays as you can see here...

and here...

These two gifs are just a small portion of Machado's extremely impressive defensive portfolio. So far in 2013, Fangraphs has evaluated Manny as the best defensive third baseman in the MLB as he has saved 15 more runs than the average 3B.

I'm not saying that Machado is better than Trout and Harper, but with all the stats and cool moving pictures that I have showed you, there is no doubt that he deserves to be in the conversation.